3DMark, the most popular graphics benchmarking application for PC and smartphones, has announced that it has delisted the OPPO Find X on its benchmark rankings as the phone was caught producing artificially high scores in the Sling Shot Extreme benchmarks.
First discovered by Tech2, a media publications that has performed an extensive test on the device then reported the issue to UL Benchmarks, the developer behind the app. The OPPO Find X was initially ranked at #4 for the said benchmark, it has since been delisted and users will not be able to compare to other devices.
How 3DMark validates the actual score is through a private version of the app, while the ones that we install from Google Play is the public version, which the company has found that the OPPO Find X performed 41% higher than usual.
OPPO has issued an official statement and admits that the OPPO Find X does indeed tend to maximise its performance when running games or 3D benchmarks, while running unknown apps will adopt the default power optimisation strategy, the phone will automatically be adjusted to 70%-80% of the maximum performance after users have left it unattended for 5 to 10 seconds.
Fortunately, OPPO says that it is looking into this and will be upgrading the phone’s software and strives to distinguish between the requirements on undetected apps or the subjective needs of its users.
Under 3DMark’s rules, optimising performance by detecting heavy computation demands is allowed, however when it comes to benchmarks, a phone should detect it as if it were any application.
In our phone reviews, we generally do not judge the phone’s performance by looking at its benchmarks and while it serves as a reference to us, a great smartphone experience is ultimately determined by how reliable its usability is on a day-to-day basis.
