Xiaomi is reportedly tweaking the performance of its phones to get the highest benchmark results and lower its performance when running certain applications aka throttling.
The allegations come from Jon Poole, founder of Geekbench which is a platform for running benchmark tests on mobile phones. In a tweet on Twitter, Poole said Xiaomi lowered the performance of the phone based on the name of the application.
Poole pointed out the inequality of the Mi 11 benchmark results when tested using the original Geekbench app and the Geekbench app disguised as popular games like Fortnite and Genshin Impact.
As a result, Mi 11 that runs the Geekbench app disguised as Fortnite has a 30% lower single-core score. While the multi-core score also dropped by 15%, as quoted from XDA Developer, Tuesday (29/3/2022).
In other words, Xiaomi's software may boost the Mi 11's performance when it detects Geekbench, or intentionally slow down the phone's performance when running Fortnite.
Here are results from a Xiaomi Mi 11 running Geekbench and Geekbench disguised as Fortnite. Single-core scores are 30% lower, and multi-core scores are 15% lower, in the Fortnite build. https://t.co/wGAnSi73gR
- John Poole (@jfpoole) March 27, 2022
Android Police also ran similar tests using the Xiaomi 12 Pro and 12X. They use Geekbench apps disguised as Netflix and Google Chrome.
As a result, phones running Geekbench disguised as Netflix and Chrome have lower benchmark scores than Geekbench apps disguised as Genshin Impact.
For example, Geekbench disguised as Chrome has a single-core score of 737 and multi-core 3071, while Geekbench disguised as Genshin Impact has a single-core score of 1119 and multi-core 3468.
It is not known what Xiaomi phones are throttling performance like the case above. Geekbench says they will remove some Xiaomi phones from the Android Benchmark list starting this week.
The case of throttling mobile phone performance is back in the spotlight after the Game Optimization Service scandal experienced by Samsung. With this software, some Samsung phones are known to slow down performance in thousands of applications and games.
The findings culminate in the withdrawal of Samsung's latest flagship phones and tablets from Geekbench. Samsung then promised to release an update with the option to prioritize performance on mobile phones.