Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsniper | Hacker News Reader

I can't understand the issue here. If you are using a benchmarking app or a game that's heavy on the cpu, these same optimizations would kick in. So you will cry for the speed of the device while crying for the battery juice draining.

What is the issue here?

View on HN

It appears, from the extracted code, to be the case that a 'special' (read: hardcoded) set of optimisations is being enabled solely for benchmarking apps.

Whilst 'smart' behaviour might enable the phone to switch on some such functionality when the SoC/CPU is put under heavy load (by something such as a game), the effect of such automated switching is unlikely to have anything like the effect of a hardcoded force-to-high-power-mode as shown here.

And you know this based on what? "hardcoded" != "faster"

It just guarantees that it will happen in that case. Unless you have some reason to believe that this mode is unattainable under any real world circumstance, I think the original point still has some credence.

If the mode were attainable in a realistic end-user scenario, there would be no point in detecting the benchmark tool in the first place. A high CPU load (like from a benchmark) would kick the CPU up into high performance mode and that would be that.

I would guess that the high-performance mode drains the battery so quickly, or creates so much heat, that it's impractical for general use.

You would guess but you're probably wrong. The logic of your response is terribly flawed. Reboot and try again.

>And you know this based on what

Based on the fact that they are Samsung. That they aren't transparent about what they are doing. That there is no evidence that these optimization kick in in other contexts.

They are doing something to fuck around with benchmark numbers, the onus is on them to explain it and be upfront about it.

It secretly 'guarantees' that the benchmarks don't run under real-world conditions. That is fraud.

Would they actually, though? If these optimizations would kick in, why does Samsung feel the need to force the optimizations to kick in for specific apps, rather than via CPU usage like any other game/app?

Because they are incapable of producing competitive products (their phone market is people who can't afford anything better or who are motivated by fanboyish prejudice) and because their corporate culture appears to emphasise cheating, deception and dishonesty above all other values.

I mean really, even if you thought Android was a better solution why would you buy Samsung?

It's not about CPU-heavy apps. The cores change their clock speeds as soon as you open the benchmarking app, before you even run the benchmark.

If that's the case, Samsung is doing direct manipulation on benchmarks and this is fraud.

Yes. That is the point of the article.

It's only triggered if it is a benchmarking app. Did you read the article at all? They look at the name of the app running and if it matches the name of a benchmarking app, they shift into a mode that only exists for benchmarking apps.

>What is the issue here?

The issue is that these 'optimizations' don't actually kick-in for non-benchmarking apps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com