My first reaction was reaction isn't this a dupe. But then the earlier one was about Huwaei's camera cheat:
Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
101–110 of 126 posts
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you buy a Google phone you get unlimited backup storage in Google Photos. You never think again about things like that.
Unlimited backup storage for low-quality, highly-compressed photos. If you want to store photos the way they were shot, you'll quickly run out of space and will have to pay up. (That's what made me pay Google directly for the first time; extra storage for backing up photos.)
Google's phones (ie: Pixels and their XL variants) get full size photo and video backups included. Even if you don't have a Google phone, the free-of-charge backup only compresses photos over 16MP which is still pretty adequate for most people taking snapshots on their cell phones.
For the hobbyist or pro photographer backing up their full frame RAWs, sure, you want a more professional (read: paid) backup solution but that doesn't seem unfair to me. For the 95% of users who want to free up space taken up by vacation snaps and selfies, compressing photos over 16MP is often acceptable when it doesn't cost extra.
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you buy a Google phone you get unlimited backup storage in Google Photos. You never think again about things like that.
Unlimited backup storage for low-quality, highly-compressed photos. If you want to store photos the way they were shot, you'll quickly run out of space and will have to pay up. (That's what made me pay Google directly for the first time; extra storage for backing up photos.)
I personally can't tell the difference between the compressed versions and the originals (I don't take RAW photos). Here's an analysis of this: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Google-Photos-High-quality-v...
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the 9500 that could be modded into a 9700. Early versions could be softmodded, this was disabled in later revisions which could only be modded by soldering the additional rendering pipes back on. No idea why I remember this useless piece of information. Also on a completely different note, the 9700 Pro which was the flagship card of that generation, cost about $300. Times have changed.
$399 was the price on launch in 2002, which is around $550 adjusted for inflation, current flagship consumer GPU from Radeon is the Vega 64 priced at $599 RRP. Times haven't changed as much as you might think
AMD's flagship is the $700 Vega 64 LC. NVIDIA's flagship 1080 Ti is $700 and their soon-to-launch 2080 Ti is $1000 or $1200 for the Founders Edition.
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Backstory I found, I wasn't familiar with this story (2001). https://www.hardocp.com/article/2001/10/23/optimizing_or_che... TLDR: ATI did the same thing with Quake 3 Arena which was commonly used as a benchmark game for testing new video cards of that era and which many game news sites were using.
That's not an entirely accurate TLDR here as what ATI did back then is now considered standard practice for GPU drivers and is welcome. It is a bit different than the mobile space as GPU drivers are doing game-specific optimizations rather than benchmark-specific ones. The end user experience is a net win for the major titles, and as long as there's no visual cost it's considered fair game. It did go too far, even to…
> what ATI did back then is now considered standard practice for GPU drivers and is welcome.
Yep. That was the problem at he time. There were no shaders/etc so you’d just taking a demanding game and see how good it ran. No one optimized specific games in their drivers.
So what ATI did made it appear the GPU was stronger on average that it was.
If it was disclosed it would have been a feature and might have been welcomed. But it was secret.
I remember seeing discussions about whether the kind of optimizations we see today are cheating. They sort of are. But why wouldn’t I want the faster frame rates?
I forgot about the nVidia “micro optimization for a specific benchmark” one. No good excuse there because no one actually plays it.
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you buy a Google phone you get unlimited backup storage in Google Photos. You never think again about things like that.
Unlimited backup storage for low-quality, highly-compressed photos. If you want to store photos the way they were shot, you'll quickly run out of space and will have to pay up. (That's what made me pay Google directly for the first time; extra storage for backing up photos.)
The photos are neither low-quality nor highly-compressed. I personally can't tell much of a difference 95% of the time and I'm a technical person. Here´s a comparison and a closeup, left image is the original, right one compressed with the Unlimited Storage setting:
full picture https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-01-01-1451631423-7665...
cropped detail https://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-01-01-1451631515-2060...
Also, I believe Photos storage is unlimited even in Original quality if you own a Pixel phone, which may or not may be the case, but still.
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I believe ATI was the one where if you renamed quake.exe to quack.exe it suddenly performed significantly worse.
Shader replacement and fingerprinting is par for the course in the GPU industry. The ethics are arguable when it comes to applications that aren't benchmarks - is it really wrong for the vendor to apply post-facto optimization to give end-users a better experience? Certainly, though, in the case of benchmarks it's a slimy practice.
It is now, and because it improves things for gamers it’s hard to argue with.
Quack.exe was for Quake 3, Before shaders even existed. At that time drivers didn’t have special paths for certain games, which is what made it a scandal.
If ATI had said they were doing it, perhaps it would have been fine. But they hid it and looked like they were doing something underhanded (true or not).
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#108I used to work at an OEM that did this. When the VW Emissions Scandal was publicized, we removed almost every piece of code that did things like these from all our phones. Not sure if it was ever reverted eventually but performance test might not matter to HN users but it is something that typical consumers do look at when making purchasing decisions, based on our research.
Your second paragraph is completely ethically bankrupt. That a lie increases sales is at the top of the list of bad reasons to lie to customers (and they are all bad reasons).
> That a lie increases sales is at the top of the list of bad reasons to lie to customers
I think that in the society we've built it's actually one of the best reasons to lie to customers. Advertising is pretty much built on that.
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you buy a Google phone you get unlimited backup storage in Google Photos. You never think again about things like that.
Unlimited backup storage for low-quality, highly-compressed photos. If you want to store photos the way they were shot, you'll quickly run out of space and will have to pay up. (That's what made me pay Google directly for the first time; extra storage for backing up photos.)
Now that your assertions have been proved false, why don't you respond by admitting you were wrong? Do you just fall silent every time you are caught in a lie?
Re: Huawei caught cheating performance test for new phones
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Comparing processors, ram, test scores means nothing compared to the actual experience But Apple brags endlessly about their A11 "Bionic" chip and similar[0]. Arguing that Apple values experience over specs might have been a valid argument back with Steven Jobs, but Apple's presentations spend significant amounts of time talking about hardware specs these days. I don't specifically mind that Apple does, but people…
Apple has always tailored their marketing to whatever their advantage is at that moment. If they have the best tech, they'll talk about speeds and feeds - if they don't, they'll talk about the experience or some other aspect. This is almost as reliable a tick-tock cycle as Intel's.
> Apple has always tailored their marketing to whatever their advantage is at that moment.
What's Option B? Advertise based on what they're not good at? "Snapple: Made from the Fifth or Sixth Best Stuff on Earth"