Asus, HTC and LG also caught boosting Android benchmark scores

The HTC One's processor speed goes up when certain benchmark programs are used.

Tuesday's report on Ars Technica that showed the processor in Samsung's Galaxy Note 3 boosted its speed when it detected a benchmark program was running was apparently just the tip of the iceberg. A follow-up investigation on AnandTech shows that devices from Asus, HTC and LG all have been found to do the same thing.

Specifically, tests on the Asus Padfone Infinity, the HTC One, the HTC One mini, and the LG G2 showed that the processor speed went up when those devices detected the AnTuTu and Vellamo benchmark programs running on their hardware. The HTC One and HTC One mini also showed increases in speed when the 3DM and GFXB 2.7 benchmarks were used.

However, the end effect of all these changes was pretty small in terms of skewing the results. The scores went up about five percent in CPU data and up to 10 percent in GPU tests. The good news? Google's phones such as the Nexus 4 and 7, and its Motorola Moto X and RAZR i showed no such increases in chip speed while running benchmarks. You can bet that reviewers that use these programs to test mobile phone performance won't take the results they generate at face value from now on.

Source: AnandTech