Google blocked Pixel 8 reviewers and owners from benchmarking the Tensor G3 chip | Hacker News Reader

Google blocked Pixel 8 reviewers and owners from benchmarking the Tensor G3 chip

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67 pointsjosephcsible30 comments

Citation needed that Google actively blocked installation of the benchmarking app. None of the links support that claim. If Google want to block benchmarking, they would have had their lawyers add that clause to the reviewers' contracts/NDAs as a condition of getting the device early. Since this is a technical issue, I'm guessing the benchmarking software didn't properly configure their Play Store account and mark the P8 or the new Android OS as compatible with the software. That would prevent it from being installed via the Play Store but not via sideloading.

Disclosure, I used to work at Google on Android so I have some familiarity with how Play Store rollouts work.

I would place my bet on this being some kind of app compatibility mishap rather than Google actively blocking Geekbench and 3DMark.

Apparently Pixel 6a owners also had this problem, but with none of the Tensor G3 performance speculation in the article: https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/wc4m3w/pixel_6...

There was no compatibility problem, Google intentionally blocked the installation to avoid reviewers testing the chip. The benchmarks worked without issues when sideloaded, but not every reviewer bothered to do that.

Sounds like a compatibility problem. I don't understand how exactly the play store works, but if your device string is unexpected (like maybe a new device? or a lineageos phone) some apps can't be installed from the play store but work fine sideloaded.

As a side note to this, Aurora store is awesome. If you sign in with your Google account, then you can install paid apps that you've purchased, but the Play store thinks are incompatible with your device. In my experience, the majority of them work perfectly fine!

Definitely not one, Play Store is known to showing apps as not supported while it actually is since years.

I think you are as blind to Google’s intentions as much as I am, but it sure seems silly for them to intentionally block it from the Play Store when side loading it is trivial, doesn’t it?

> sure seems silly for them to intentionally block it from the Play Store when side loading it is trivial, doesn’t it?

>> ... but not every reviewer bothered to do that

Apparently not?

How very Oracle of them.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12115397/is-it-against-l...

https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2018/05/the-dewitt-clause-...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14232976 (2017)

Notably, it isn't against the law to call out "Oracle forbids us from benchmarking, so we are forced to rank it last".

Can't such a block be considered as a proof against Google in an anti-trust trial?

Google abusing of is position as the provider of the android app-store to protect his sales of phone as a manufacturer. That are different activities.

I’m not so sure. They don’t sell competing benchmark software, so it might not be relevant.

I find it interesting that the Geekbench scores for the latest iPhone isn't mentioned. About the same performance as an iPhone 12. Yet, the Pixel 8 and iPhone 15 lines are price comparably.

Pixel 8 Pro: Single: 1760 Multi: 4442

iPhone 15 Pro: Single: 2894 Multi: 7192

iPhone 12: Single: 1995 Multi: 4401

With Apple and Google doing custom chips, I don't think that matters as much as people think anymore. Surely, a lot of functionality that used to be done in software is now done on chip. A generic benchmark isn't going to capture that.

Like what? What's the ML performance on this chip? Can it help with game? Or apps I'll use everyday? Does it improve the web experience? The last one depends largely on those CPU benchmark...

I want to be pragmatic here. Coprocessor were all the rage for the Amiga, then were out out of the loop, and were back for with the GPU. A bit like we're back to the mainframe experience with Kubernetes and all (don't throw tomatoes at me ;))

> Yet, the Pixel 8 and iPhone 15 lines are price comparably.

But this isn't how pricing works. Even if it did the CPU isn't the most expensive component in the bom, and it isn't the most important component for user experience.

The problem is that you can't easily and objectively factor the user experience. CPU are easy to benchmark — and do honestly factor a lot in the pricing. Android (the OS) development is payed for by other means, and the hardware line is kind of a vanity project.

People may, or may not prefer the Android experience. That's not relevant here.

I believe the parent comment was thinking about screen and camera quality, which can be benchmarked, contribute to the user experience and have significant costs.

Both of which are of high quality also on other phone in the same price range. That leave you with the CPU as a differentiator at the end, sad as it can be.

But it isn’t a differentiator if you can’t make people care about the difference.

At this point most of the reasons to buy a particular phone are inertial or emotional. A high end android phone and an iPhone both provide roughly the same functionality. I miss the times when new phones were more exciting.

Yet an iphone 12 feels significantly slower.

Pixel 8 Pro: 12Gb ram

iPhone 15 Pro: 8Gb ram

iPhone 12: 4Gb ram

And now?

FTA the performance difference isn't hugely worse from a comparable chip IMO. Maybe they did more damage by trying to suppress.

I really detest that many Google products like some of their Chromebooks just list as having something vague like "Intel Core processor" or whatnot. No model, no idea what class chip (ultra low power? Low power? Mainline?).

It feels incredibly consumer hostile, not telling people what they're getting.

It sucks, on the other hand, it hardly matters for Web pages, which is the main application on an OS juggling Chrome instances.

What exactly did they do here? X linked video is broken for me, and the article just says the performance is bad. My pixel 6 just got Android 14. Possibly just OS/new hardware related?

When people using a Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro tried to install benchmark apps from the Play Store, Google blocked the installation and falsely claimed "This app won't work for your device".

IMO that's not evidence of anything other than a bug with package manifests and the current Playstore version. I have to side load apps all the time on my kids tablets because of API incompatibilities that don't ultimately matter, and it isn't Google out to get my kids.

According to the 3DMark playstore page, the last update was Sept 21, 2023. Version 2.3.4869. Android 14 came out October 4th, making any incompatibility likely a temporary problem.

Unless there's a quote from 3DMark explaining how everything is dandy in their end, I'm not buying what you are selling.

every CPU benchmark needs to have another line drawn waaaay under all of the lines drawn for various CPUs...we shall label this line "performance you actually need and can make use of"

if all of the CPUs are above this line, then you should not use CPU performance as a determining factor

typing this happily from a 2014 Mobile Celeron laptop that is still fast enough to do all the software dev I need

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