The State of Cheating in Android Benchmarks ⇥ anandtech.com

Anand Lal Shimpi and Brian Klug of Anandtech:

With the exception of Apple and Motorola, literally every single OEM we’ve worked with ships (or has shipped) at least one device that runs this silly CPU optimization. It’s possible that older Motorola devices might’ve done the same thing, but none of the newer devices we have on hand exhibited the behavior. It’s a systemic problem that seems to have surfaced over the last two years, and one that extends far beyond Samsung.

I don’t understand why this is so widespread. I don’t even understand why any manufacturer is doing this. Who buys a phone based on its benchmarks?