Cheating on benchmarks isn't anything new, but it's usually something that individual devices or brands do. However, with how much importance is placed on benchmarks to determine whether a device is good, even chipmakers have decided to cheat. Recently, MediaTek was found including software that allows its chipsets to cheat on benchmarks.
According to Android Police, devices sporting the newer Dimensity 1000 chipset were outperformed by older devices using the Helio P95 chipset. It is suggested that devices using the Helio P95 chipset can significantly increase performance throughput when a benchmark app is being used. What's alarming is that the difference in performance isn't small, And this isn't a small difference.
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Left is a device with Dimensity 1000, while the right is a device with the Helio P95
How MediaTek is doing it is by creating profiles for higher performance modes on the firmware-level. Essentially, all devices using its chipsets will be able to cheat on benchmarks, as long as it has the profiles are enabled in the firmware. MediaTek's response to being called out is to deny it being an issue as phone manufacturers can disable the profiles and that other companies do it too.
The way we see it, the newly launched Dimensity 1000 chipset should be the chipmakers chance at showing that it can do well in the high-performance chipset market. Cheating like this is just going to give the company bad publicity that it doesn't need. If you're interested in the more technical aspects of the findings, do check out the original article by Anandtech.
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