As the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 hits the U.S., the company got caught by a reviewer with using software to inflate the phablet's benchmark score by up to 20 percent.
When the Samsung Galaxy S4 got released in the U.S. the company faced backlash from customers who purchased the 16GB Galaxy S4. Users found that their brand new 16GB smartphone only had 8.82GB of available storage. It was discovered that Samsung's TouchWiz UI, system files, built-in apps, and apps from carriers were using up to 45 percent of the 16GB smartphone. Samsung addressed the situation by telling customers to buy a microSD card to increase storage. This did not go over well, so the company then announced it would be releasing a software update to free up more space on the Galaxy S4. The company followed through and addressed the situation, but it did add some unnecessary drama to the Galaxy S4's launch.
The company is now releasing the Galaxy Note 3 in the U.S. this week and reviews of the 5.7-inch phablet have started to appear online. Just as it faced an issue with the Galaxy S4, the company is facing an even more embarrassing claim with the Galaxy Note 3. Ars Technica published its review of the Galaxy Note 3 and discovered that Samsung is boosting the Note 3's benchmark scores by using a high-power CPU mode that automatically turns on when a user runs popular benchmarking apps, thus giving it inflated scores by up to 20 percent. This benchmark-boosting issue also arose with the Galaxy S4 back at the end of July, when a report made similar claims.
The site noticed that the Galaxy Note 3 was scoring very well in benchmark tests. It notes that the scores were much higher than the similarly specced LG G2. Both smartphones use a 2.3GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, but with the special CPU boost mode enabled, the Galaxy Note 3's benchmark scores run circles around the LG G2. The site figured out a way to disable the CPU mode and when running the benchmarks again and the Note 3 did score higher than the G2, but nowhere near the results with the software enabled.
Samsung is going to have some explaining to do and this surely wasn't the way it wanted to begin the launch of the Galaxy Note 3.
