benchmarks

Reviews, tests, and impressions about the iPhone XS and XS Max are piling up and things aren’t exactly all sunshine and rainbows. While DisplayMate did just crown the iPhone XS Max as the best smartphone display ever and iFixit gave it a passing grade, there are also reports of poor cellular reception and other “papercuts” making early iPhone XS buyers less than amused. The latest benchmark touches on the new iPhones’ battery life and, suffice it to say, Apple’s estimates might have been way too generous.

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And so it begins. In the past, Samsung and Apple each had their own separate thrones in DisplayMate’s kingdom, with Samsung lording it over OLED smartphones while Apple reigned triumphant among LCD mobile screens. With Apple’s switch to OLED in the iPhone X last year, the narrative was destined to become a pendulum swinging back and forth between the frenemies. Now that has become reality with DisplayMate giving the title of best smartphone display ever to Apple just a month after it said the same for the Galaxy Note 9.

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Some might not think of the iPhone XS, particularly the smaller one, as a big step forward in terms of design but it’s hard to deny that it’s a massive leap in terms of the things that you don’t see. For one, there’s the new A12 Bionic processor. But there’s one more that even more invisible but palpably felt the moment you start streaming videos. Yes, the 2019 iPhones have significantly faster LTE modems, and one of the earliest benchmarks shows exactly how much faster they are.

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New flagship smartphone, new benchmark rankings. DisplayMate came out with its review of the Galaxy Note 9 early and, perhaps to no one’s surprise, crowned Samsung’s latest as the best (OLED) display ever. Somewhat surprising, the folks at DxOMark wasn’t in a rush this time. While that may sound ominous, they did end up giving the Galaxy Note 9 high scores, it wasn’t high enough to unseat DxOMark’s top-ranking smartphones.

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In the near future, a collection of Huawei smartphones will have a new "Performance Mode" enabled that makes them more powerful. This power comes at a cost, of course, as it's essentially an overclocking for a smartphone - it puts all emphasis on the processing power of which the phone is capable. This is the result of Huawei appearing to "cheat" on benchmark tests with 3D Mark - they've agreed to make their methods more accessible to all!

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Huawei’s recent misstep was like opening up a wound we thought had gone away. And while Huawei did admit to cheating benchmarking tools, its justification for doing so only serves to highlight something that was brought up half a decade ago. Mobile benchmarks, while not completely useless, are still nowhere near the maturity of their PC counterparts. Worse, they have even served to further the agenda of manufacturers instead of helping consumers make better choices.

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It really doesn’t come as a surprise that Huawei is now getting penalized for what it has more or less admitted to doing. Necroing a practice long thought dead, Huawei has been caught red-handed cheating benchmarks to boost numbers in favor of its Kirin 970 smartphones. Considering the scandal that practically endangered their business, 3DMark developers Futuremark reacted swiftly and has announced that four of Huawei’s and Honor’s smartphones are now delisted from its benchmark scores.

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Thought the whole benchmark cheating scandal was behind us? Apparently not. Some OEMs have just gotten better at hiding it. Or at least that’s the picture that Huawei is painting after it was caught red-handed using a benchmark detection feature. But unlike other manufacturers in the past, it didn’t deny the allegation but instead tried to justify why it was doing so. Bottom line: its competitors are doing it anyway and trying to cheat it out of the market.

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The Samsung Galaxy S10 had details leaked in a set of benchmark results this week, showing the device as speedier than any Galaxy before. This device was shown as speedy in its processing power, but also speedy in its adoption of the newest version of Android. If Samsung is indeed already working with Android 9 Pie and running 3rd-party benchmark tests on their smartphone this early before its release date, the Galaxy S10 might change Samsung forever.

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OnePlus has been challenging the status quo and the big players when it came to offering flagship specs for less. And while it has mostly delivered on its promise, the one thing it hasn’t exactly been good at was with the cameras. Naturally, it would boast about improved photography prowess, especially with software updates, but it hasn’t been particularly impressive. With the OnePlus 6, the company takes another stab at claiming a spot on DxOMark’s list and it may have just worked.

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If there's one thing ASUS might be known for in the smartphone market is its confusing branding strategy. Each new ZenFone generation has countless variants and it's difficult to know offhand which is which. The ZenFone 5, for example, may be the standard-bearer for this year's ASUS lineup but it is actually the "premium mid-range" model. It also happens to be the first ASUS smartphone to be reviewed under DxOMark's revamped tests. And fortunately for ASUS, the odds seem to be in its favor.

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Apple may have just stolen the spotlight in the tablet market but two Chinese companies are hogging the smartphone stage. Xiaomi just announced its “second and a half” gen bezel-less Mi Mix 2S and Huawei dropped the much-anticipated P20 and P20 Pro. While the two are almost worlds apart, especially in price, they do have one thing in common. Both are giving the bigger players reason to be worried by grabbing high scores on DxOMark’s ladder, including the Huawei P20 Pro’s top-ranking grade.

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