what brand slow down your phones deliberately is nothing new. Apple did it five years ago, while last month Samsung was at the center of controversy as it was found to be silently slowing down its chips in thousands of Android apps. A new well-known manufacturer is now adding to this fact: Xiaomi.
However, it is a more common practice than it seems Although this may become controversial, it is not by chance. In most cases, this is an action that manufacturers take simply and simply to prevent our mobiles from becoming a stove. And it is that power and temperature are too closely linked in bodies as small and with cooling as complicated as a mobile.
In the analysis of the Xiaomi 12 Pro and Xiaomi 12 carried out by our colleagues from Xataka, we can see how these high-end products from the Chinese brand offer some high benchmark scores
Phones with ‘steroids’, but only for benchmarks
That manufacturers like Qualcomm, Apple or Samsung offer increasingly powerful chips is something that should not worry us a priori, quite the contrary. However, there is a direct implication of potency in that temperature management and energy efficiency refers, tending these chips to offer a heating all the higher as the peak power is high.
In this context, it is understandable that manufacturers choose to reduce the power of their processors in most areas of the system, including their applications and games. Failure to do so will result in overheating. at the terminals. What already seems to take the polemic step is that it is a selective slowdown and that precisely when benchmarks are carried out, the chips are allowed to give free rein.
Changing the name of a benchmark application to that of a true high-performance game was found to reduce the benchmark score by 30% on a single core and 15% on multiple cores.
Thus, some of the Xiaomi mobiles with Qualcomm chips offered higher benchmark scores than they actually assumed in the rest of the system. There are those who could check it by renaming benchmark appslike John Poole, a Geekbench developer who explained in a Twitter thread like renaming your app to “Fortnite” experienced a significantly lower score on a Xiaomi Mi 11.
Obviously, it is a fact that gives rise to deception and even more if we take into account that the user is not aware of it. In the end, you can let yourself be guided by your own feelings, but if the brand does not signal that there is a slowdown and in the benchmarks if it is running at full speed… The controversy is served.
Xiaomi explains the reasons for this slowdown
We could already feel that what was happening in Xiaomi mobiles, like in Samsung ones, could be due to an energy problem and don’t want to lose the battle of numbers in the marks. However, only now has there been an official confirmation from Xiaomi, who released the following statements to Hardware Info:
“Xiaomi applies temperature management strategies to ensure an optimal product experience, especially with demanding apps that are often used for long periods of time. On many of our devices, we offer 3 types of performance modes, allowing users Adjust the balance between performance and power At the system level, all application performance optimizations weigh on many critical factors, such as power consumption, performance, and thermal impact.”
So we see that Xiaomi, far from throwing balls, confirms and explains why many are noticing poorer performance on their devices than they apparently should be according to their benchmark scores. However, if this slowdown is understandable, it takes nothing away from the controversy over the benchmark issue and that fight that the big brands must occupy the first position in these rankings.
Through | Gizmochina
