Well, this is a turn-up for the books! We just received a heads-up from Futuremark, letting us know that they take manipulation of their Benchmark tool very seriously, to the point that any device found to be cheating the benchmark to get better results will be delisted from the 3DMark results page.

Now while they made no mention of who was delisted, a quick look at the rankings on the 3DMark site show that both HTC and Samsung have had some of their devices delisted.

Specifically the HTC One, HTC One Mini and the Samsung Galaxy Note 3!

So that’s the leading flagships now banned from having any benchmark score by 3DMark, one of the most prominent benchmark tools on Android.

We should all be thankful Futuremark are taking a stand against manipulation of results and especially when the rules for device manufacturers are very clear… cheat and your device will be banned.

We are waiting on an official response from both HTC and Samsung… more on this story as it develops!

We now have a response from Samsung they say

The Galaxy Note 3 maximizes its CPU/GPU frequencies when running features that demand substantial performance. This was not a manipulated attempt to exaggerate particular benchmarking results. We remain committed to providing our customers with the best possible user experience. – Samsung

So Samsung say they haven’t but Futuremark the benchmark creator seems to feel their rules were broken enough to invalidate and delist the Note 3 from it’s tool.

Full Email from Futuremark:

Hello Editor

People rely on Futuremark benchmarks to produce accurate and unbiased results. That’s why we have clear rules for hardware manufacturers and software developers that specify how a platform can interact with our benchmark software. In simple terms, a device must run our benchmarks without modification as if they were any other application.

When a device is suspected of breaking our rules it is delisted. 3DMark scores from delisted devices should not be used to compare devices. Delisted devices appear unranked, and without scores, at the bottom of the 3DMark Device Channel and the Best Mobile Devices list on our website.

Naturally, we take any attempt to manipulate our benchmarks seriously. New devices are launching all the time, however, and we can only test a small number of them ourselves. If you discover a device with a suspcious score, I would greatly appreciate it if you could email [email protected] and share the details with us so we can investigate further.

• Devices with suspicious benchmark scores have been delisted from the Device Channel.
• You should not use scores from delisted devices to compare devices.

Improved

• Compare your score with Windows 8 tablets in the Device Channel.
• Devices are colour-coded by OS in the Device Channel.
• You can filter scores by OS in the Device Channel.

Compatibility

• Improved compatibility with the latest NVIDIA hardware.
• Improved compatibility with some Samsung Galaxy S3 models.