Samsung has hit an all-time low. Like Lance Armstrong, they’re caught up in a cheating scandal, but unfortunately, in the tech world there’s no penalty. Anandtech found that the Galaxy S4 was specifically modified to speed up clock speeds significantly…but only when in certain benchmark applications.
An investigation found that Samsung had specifically coded the Galaxy S4 to overclock in certain specific benchmarking tests, while performing significantly slower in actual use. This little easter surprise can be classified as an attempt to please their overbearing, fanboys who pride themselves on their device’s speed and their technical acumen, as well as a move to mislead journalists and consumers.
According to their testing on multiple devices, GPU speeds are increased by around 10%, while CPU speeds improve significantly more. This is a surprising misstep/move of desparation from a company which seems to be doing remarkably well. They recently reported earnings of $7 billion for the 3rd quarter, although they warned of a potential slowing of sales to come in the quarters ahead, as their current models age, and market needs shrink.