We all agree that it is not really wise to judge a smartphone or any other device for that matter based purely on how it performs when you run benchmarks right? However, some of us can never resist the urge to go out there and compare our devices to see how they stack up against others. I don’t know about you but I usually do it. And so do so many others. That’s why applications meant specifically for telling us how our devices fair against others as far as performance thanks to their technical specifications goes exist. One of those that is easily accepted as a standard in mobile computing and particularly where Android devices are involved is Antutu. The makers of Antutu just released a list that shows the top grossing smartphones as far as the benchmark charts go for the second quarter of the year.
The above data is from submissions made between the months of April and June and is from a wide range of devices that met a number of Antutu’s set conditions. Some of the conditions were that if a device has several versions then the one that performs much better (i.e. has the highest benchmark score) is the one considered. Also, for a device to make it to the eventual top list, it has to have had at least 200 submissions. This in essence means there’s little room for unpopular devices to make the cut or rather instances of just a few users who have tweaked their settings to game the system don’t stand a high chance of appearing.
While the above ranking is not definitive, it tells us a few things. Like that Huawei has a very powerful chip in its new Kirin 920 which has managed to battle it out with Qualcomm’s powerful and widely popular SoCs. As you can see, Samsung’s Exynos is nowhere to be seen. A victim of the infamous benchmark boost perhaps? Antutu states categorically that false entries were removed and while Samsung issued an update to the affected models to fix the boost when synthetic benchmarks were run, there’s still room for tampering in these things not only on Samsung devices but by just about anyone. In fact, the culprits found to have been boosting their benchmark scores were many with only the likes of Apple and Motorola being found not guilty.
Whichever is the case, here’s some data that may not sit well with owners of some of the newest devices in the market like the HTC One (M8) and the Samsung Galaxy S5 which had to eat humble pie as they bowed to the 10 month old Galaxy Note 3.
Antutu (Translate)
