OPPO smartphones delisted from 3DMark for cheating

It seems like more and more manufacturers are caught red-handed for cheating in popular benchmarks. The most recent one is OPPO. OPPO’s devices apparently detect 3DMark by name, and boosts performances to artificially raise scores higher than otherwise attainable.

The OPPO Find X score disparity was determined via extensive testing by Tech2, while UL Benchmark’s own testing revealed the OPPO F7 also has such a feature in place. It should be safe to assume that all of OPPO’s devices do this. The OPPO devices offered up to 41% higher performance in detected benchmarks than when the benchmark is not detected.

OPPO has reverted to UL Benchmark regarding this issue:

“When we detect that the user is running applications like games or 3D Benchmarks that require high performance, we allow the SoC to run at full speed for the smoothest experience.

Which isn’t all that weird. But UL Benchmark requires manufacturers to offer the higher performance mode as a toggle, or enables it automatically when the devices identify heavy workloads, but not as a hidden feature that enables when recognized benchmarks are run.

OPPO further explained that it has a way to maximize performance upon user interaction, and limits the performance of the device to around 80% when devices are not in active use for a few seconds. No difference in performance was noticed when tapping on an unrecognized version of the 3DMark though.

What do you think about OPPO’s practice of boosting their benchmark scores?

Pokdepinion: If OPPO detects games too, it wouldn’t actually be too scandalous, because games require what 3DMark measures: gaming performance. The only issue would be how many games can OPPO whitelist for the performance mode? And how soon?