OnePlus accused of manipulating OnePlus 5 benchmark scores

With OnePlus 5 global launch less than 24 hours away, reports of the OnePlus team manipulating the handset's benchmark scores are making waves on the internet. Every smartphone maker strives hard to optimise the review unit's configuration to get best results in synthetic benchmarks. However, shipped units wouldn't have the added advantage.

Reliable reports suggest OnePlus 5 review units have been tampered at the operating system level with specially optimised code that enables the execution of all benchmarks to exceed the actual potential of the handset or deliver extraordinary performance.

It is now ascertained that the retail units may not be able to replicate this extreme level of performance. This claim is further strengthened as Mario Tomas Serrafero from XDA Developers has confirmed that the cheat code is indeed activated on the review units, enabling them to run at much higher speeds than the ones in the market.

"Unfortunately, it is almost certain that every single review of the OnePlus 5 that contains a benchmark is using misleading results, as OnePlus provided reviewers a device that cheats on benchmarks," writes Serrafero.

"This is an inexcusable move, because it is ultimately an attempt to mislead not just customers, but taint the work of reviewers and journalists with misleading data that most are not able to vet or verify. As a result, every OnePlus 5 review citing benchmark scores as an accolade of the phone's success is misleading both writers and readers, and performance analyses based on synthetic benchmarks are invalidated," he adds.

Furthermore, the manipulated OnePlus 5 review units have reportedly exhibited extremely hot temperatures hovering around 50 degrees (122 degrees F) while running the GFXBench tests. This clearly suggests that such high performance is neither sustainable nor plausible in real world usage scenarios.

OnePlus cheat code has been allegedly designed to manipulate benchmark scores of the following tools by pushing the processor clock speed beyond its upper limit and hence resulting in higher operating temperatures:

• AnTuTu
• Androbench
• Geekbench 4
• GFXBench
• Quadrant
• Nenamark 2
• Vellamo

Meanwhile, here is what OnePlus had to say to justify the true performance potential of OnePlus 5:

People use benchmark apps in order to ascertain the performance of their device, and we want users to see the true performance of the OnePlus 5. Therefore, we have allowed benchmark apps to run in a state similar to daily usage, including the running of resource intensive apps and games. Additionally, when launching apps the OnePlus 5 runs at a similar state in order to increase the speed in which apps open. We are not overclocking the device, rather we are displaying the performance potential of the OnePlus 5.