Samsung Again Caught Inflating Benchmarking Scores, Phil Schiller Calls 'Shenanigans'

Like it did with its Galaxy S 4 smartphone, Samsung has once again been caught artificially increasing CPU speeds on its Galaxy Note 3 phone when benchmark apps are running, reports Ars Technica.

Samsung uses special code inside its operating system to identify benchmarking apps by name to boost CPU clock speeds and prevent CPU cores from entering low-power modes. As a result, Ars discovered, Galaxy Note 3 benchmarks report CPU performance roughly 20 percent faster than most apps will experience on the device.

The difference is remarkable. In Geekbench's multicore test, the Note 3's benchmark mode gives the device a 20 percent boost over its "natural" score. With the benchmark boosting logic stripped away, the Note 3 drops down to LG G2 levels, which is where we initially expected the score to be given the identical SoCs. This big of a boost means that the Note 3 is not just messing with the CPU idle levels; significantly more oomph is unlocked when the device runs a benchmark.

Apple executive Phil Schiller -- senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and the most prolific tweeter amongst Apple's senior staff -- linked to the Ars article in a tweet, saying only "shenanigans".