0:00 On February 15th, during the Chinese New Year holiday, when the PR and legal teams of major Chinese phone makers had just gone on break, and when official online opinion control was not fully tightened, a Chinese tech media outlet called Geekerwan dropped a bombshell on Billy Billy. They released a video that exposed what they called systematic cheating by Chinese smartphone brands. The video is titled Mobile Gaming Performance Mega Test: Manufacturers are cheating like crazy. In the video, the host says that Chinese phone makers handpick low power, highquality chips and specially tuned devices for media testing. These are known as media units. Phones that are specially selected and specially adjusted. This way, the test results look excellent. But the phones
0:46 that regular consumers buy at retail stores show clear performance differences. To verify this, the team spent their own money to purchase 44 retail phones. They tested them by running games and measuring frame rate, power consumption, touch latency, and heat. Then they compared the results with the performance data that have been published online. Their conclusion, many manufacturers were cheating. The media units performed significantly better than the phones sold to the public. Almost all major Android brands in the test failed. Retail units from brands such as Nubia, Honor, and Xiaomi showed noticeably worse frame rates, higher power consumption, and poorer temperature control compared to the media test units seen online. For example, the Vivo X200 series equipped
1:33 with a Demenity 9500 chip could maintain full frame rate at over 900p resolution in media tests, but the retail version could not sustain that performance. It dropped to around 50 frames per second. Oppo's retail model could run close to full frame rate at over 700p resolution. However, its power consumption was 1.3 to 5 watts higher than the media unit, an unusually large difference. For the Xiaomi 15 series, the launch media units had variable rate shading forcibly turned on and it could not be disabled. This improved performance by sacrificing image quality. After the phones went on sale, VRS could finally be turned off. But when tested, the retail units performed clearly worse than the earlier media units. Performance scheduling was weaker and power consumption was higher.
2:21 The retail version of the Honor Magic 6 Pro had not only had lower frame rates, but also consumed 1 watt more power and generated noticeably more heat. The situation was also poor across four Xiaomi 15 models. The Xiaomi 15 Pro Max heated up very quickly. Unlike the K70 Pro Max, its cooling system was not as strong. As a result, it quickly throttled down. Efficiency numbers looked bad and temperatures climbed directly to 50° C. Geekerwan also pointed out that under this mirror-like test, the Apple iPhone turned out to be the honest kid. It was the only brand not found to be cheating. Test showed that the iPhone had no special tuning at all because iOS 18.1 and 18.2 continued to optimize performance. Newly tested
3:07 retail units actually performed better than the original media units in both frame rate and power consumption. The model with the best overall energy efficiency was the iPhone 16 Pro Max. It maintained stable performance throughout testing with no frame drops at all. Its total device power consumption was controlled at just 5.1 watts, far lower than the major Android models. The gaming experience could not be truly described as silky smooth with almost no stuttering. Gaming performance has become the biggest area for manufacturer cheating. Before launching new models, many brands like to make small adjustments to their media units. Gigerwan said that the problem now is that new Chinese phones are going further and further down the path of cheating. One major reason is that this generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and
3:52 Demensity 9500 chips are only marginal upgrades. It's very difficult to create a noticeable performance gap compared to the previous generations Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Demensity 9400. Geekan releases a major phone review video every Chinese New Year as a yearly tradition. The channel has over 5 million followers on Billy Billy and nearly 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. Last year, they released a similar review saying that retail units perform worse than media units on the Chinese market. The difference this year is that instead of using anonymous labels like brand A, B, and C, they directly named the manufacturers. However, just a few days later, as soon as the New Year holiday ended, the 30inut high-quality review video was taken down. Videos discussing the issue were also removed
4:38 from the platform. On February 22nd, the video was suddenly removed from Billy Billy without warning. Gigerwan then uploaded the video to BY Ducloud and authorized viewers to repost and share it, but those cloud links were blocked as well. Backup copies uploaded to the platform were gradually taken down. Even Geeker Wan's community live stream was suspended. Many viewers rushed to YouTube to watch and show their support, but on February 25th, the video on YouTube was suddenly switched to private. At present, only a few backups on smaller YouTube channels can still be found. In the YouTube comment section, many viewers voiced their support. Thumbs up. This is the kind of review consumers really want. Respect to Geekerwan. I like honest experimental testing. Why not move the entire channel to YouTube? If a video gets taken down,
5:25 that's official certification that it's real. I always thought my Vivo phone crashing during games was random. Turns out it was the phone itself. Some viewers believe the video was censored because it revealed that only the Apple iPhone did not cheat. otherwise it would have not been suppressed so severely. Others speculate that the takedown may have come from higher level pressure in Beijing. One of the brands discussed is IQ. IQ is a subbrand of Vivo focused on high performance and gaming phones. The IQ 15 Ultra is the brand's first Ultra flagship model released in early 2026. It features a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, active fan cooling, and a very large battery. It is positioned as a gaming and performance monster. One vlogger questioned the phone's
6:11 performance. Did the IQ15 Ultra cheat on the exam to get a perfect score? Did everyone watch Geeker 1's review? They tested it and said it could maintain 60 frames per second, but to the naked eye, it clearly stutters. It doesn't look like a true 60 frames at all. This phone is selling for 6,000 yen. It's a flagship, and it's the subbrand's first ultra model. If I'm paying 1 or 2,000 yen more just for a fan, and its performance is still clearly worse than Nubia, then why wouldn't I just save that money? I could spend one or 200 yen to buy an external cooler and attach it to a regular IQ15 instead. On February 26, a YouTuber named Dylan said in his program that he gives the highest respect to Geekerwan. He said this is a review team made up entirely of technical and engineering people. In
6:58 today's environment, they're one of the few groups in China that still have courage integrity principles and passion. That's truly admirable. Dylan also said that earlier in the morning, he uploaded a video discussing the takedown of Geeker 1's review. Soon after, his video was set to visible only to myself in the back end. He said, "No matter whether the problems raised by the viewers are real or not, you're simply not allowed to discuss them. It now seems that consumers this year no longer trust the performance data from the companies themselves. Some of the numbers look fake at first glance. A Chinese vlogger said that after this incident, the credibility of digital tech influencers has completely collapsed. People suddenly realized something. Not long ago, the auto industry's influencer fraud scandals were all over the news. Now, it turns
7:44 out the smartphone industry may be the same. Upstream and downstream players appear to work together, treating consumers like fools. Across the internet, people are calling for the same thing. From now on, all reviews should use retail units only. In fact, many years ago, when the well-known benchmarking app Ant22 became popular, many phone makers optimized specifically for the benchmarking software in order to cheat on performance scores. Similar cheating cases also happened with foreign benchmarking software. Some brands were even removed from rankings because of it. Later, even battery life could be manipulated through cloud control. In 2024, a well-known domestic Android system was suspected of using cloud-based optimization, specifically targeting certain Billy Billy reviewers. After the phone was launched, major
8:30 reviews showed extremely long battery life. The results looked objective with no visible signs of cheating. But when consumers actually bought the phone, they found the battery life was pretty average. Some people joked, "So, does that mean that Huawei has no problems this time?" In this year's large-scale phone test, Zigger Wan did not test any Huawei models. They only tested Honor, which used to be Huawei's subbrand. Even so, Huawei fans were still very excited. Many of them argued from different angles that Only and Huawei did not cheat. Some netizens reminded others. Right now, Huawei phones don't even qualify to sit at the table in game performance tests, so there's nothing strange about them not being included. Others said, "Most games on Huawei now have to run through emulators. There's no way to compare them properly."
9:18 However, Chinese phone makers cheating is not a new phenomenon. More than 10 years ago, Huawei phones were already caught by international review agencies for repeatedly cheating, especially in performance benchmarks. In 2014, Huawei SNP7 was removed from the rankings for violating 3D Mark evaluation standards. Huawei initially said it had optimized performance for specific testing tools. When the phone detected that such software was running, it would activate more CPU cores and increase clock speeds. In normal daily use, however, it would disable some cores or lower the frequency. From 2016 to 2022, Huawei had a long-term strategic partnership with the German high-end optics camera brand Leica. The two companies worked closely in smartphone imaging, covering optical
10:04 research, lens design, image tuning, user experience, and marketing. But in September 2018, Huawei was once again removed from 3D Mark for cheating. According to a September 2018 report by Anantech, Huawei and Honor phones would trigger a special cheat mode based on an app's package name. During the high stress slingshot extreme test in 3D Mark, this cheat code boosted Huawei's performance by as much as 47%. However, this level of performance could not be sustained in everyday use or actual gaming. UL Benchmark, the operator of 3D Mark, took issue of this notice, took notice of the issue. After confirming the investigation results, it officially removed the Huawei P20, P20 Pro, Honor Play, and Nova 3 from its
10:51 benchmark ratings. Honor was originally Huawei's subbrand. Starting in 2013, it focused on younger users and highcost performance models such as the Honor series and Magic Series. Its positioning was more affordable compared to Huawei's P and Mate flagship lines. After November 2020, Honor became fully independent and no longer belonged to the Huawei group. Antech commented in its article that Huawei wanted to win in its own game, but this was a lose-lose situation. The outlet described Huawei's actions as fragile and short-sighted. Cheating has also happened in photography. In 2016, when Huawei launched the P9, the company uploaded a stunning portrait photo to its Google+ page for a picture supposedly taken by a
11:37 phone. The backlight performance and hair detail were breathtaking. But International later checked the photo's XIF data and discovered it was not taken with a P9 at all. It was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark III DSLR camera. Very quickly, accusations of false advertising spread everywhere. Huawei later apologized and deleted the photo. In China, the P9 was again accused of using fake sample photos and this time even of using someone else's picture without permission. After repeated protests, Huawei issued an apology and paid compensation. At that time, Huawei's partnership with Leico was still in its early stages. Its technical strength was not as strong as it is today. The company may have felt pressure to prove itself. However, by
12:24 2018, the Huawei P20 series had made major improvements in camera performance. Even so, Huawei still failed to shake off its old habit of using misleading sample images. In 2018 in Gadget China reported that Huawei released a 30 secondond advertisement in Egypt for the Nova 3 and 3i. In the video, a man appeared to be taking a selfie with a phone, producing a colorful and glossy photo with a strong German Leica style. But shortly after the ad was released, actress Sarah Elshami posted a behind-the-scenes photo on her Instagram account, which was later deleted. The photo clearly showed that when the male actor was supposedly recording a selfie scene, his hand was empty. The image was actually being captured by a professional camera mounted on a tripod with studio
13:10 lighting. Huawei claimed that the sample image in the ad was indeed shot with professional equipment, but said there was a corresponding note and explanation in the video. However, the disclaimer only appeared briefly at the end and was barely noticeable. Some netizens mocked the situation. I never said it was shot with a phone and we did include a disclaimer. From a legal point of view, this might not qualify as false advertising, but consumers are not fools. They're tired of this trickery. Packaging that looks great, but the real product disappoints. Current affairs commentator Urashan said that the culture of exaggerated promotion and benchmark cheating among Chinese manufacturers did not arise out of nowhere. He argued that the roots go back to the political movements after the Chinese Communist Party came to power which damaged traditional moral
13:57 values and the culture of integrity that existed during the Republic of China period. As a result, what companies present at product launches often does not match what consumers actually receive. In reality, cheating has become a chronic problem in the smartphone market. Once one company starts doing it, others feel forced to follow. The claims become more and more inflated. In the end, it becomes a lose-lose game. Some people say that if every company is doing it, then the one company that refuses to cheat will appear weaker. Consumers might assume its performance is inferior. Others say it's simply a common phenomenon in the Chinese market and that foreigners are overreacting. Some netizens commented, "Special tuning for review samples doesn't just happen with phones. It happens in every industry. We've seen plenty of it in the
14:44 power sector. Even food can be fake. what can't be faked if conditions allow just buy products from major foreign brands. It's also worth noting that at the end of February this year, just after the phone scandal broke out, major Chinese smartphone brands began announcing price increases. The latest supply chain information shows that after hitting a low point in the second half of 2024, prices for mobile phone memory and storage chips have rebounded and continued rising for several consecutive quarters. At the beginning of 2026, the price increases have grown even larger. Several people within the industry confirmed that the procurement cost of smartphone memory chips is now more than 80% higher than the same period last year. There are still no signs of slowing down. Because of this
15:29 cost pressure, sources from distribution channels and ODM manufacturers say that major brands such as OPPO, OnePlus, Vivo, Xiaomi, Iiku, and Honor are planning to launch new rounds of price increases in early March. This is expected to be the largest and most significant price adjustment in the smartphone industry in nearly 5 years. With memory costs fluctuating so frequently, China's smartphone market in 2026 may face for the first time in history multiple price increases within a single year. Commentator D Jung believes this situation also reveals a deeper issue. He argues that under the banner of protecting its so-called national industries, the Chinese Communist Party has tolerated or even encouraged these companies to engage in fraud. In his view, they use any means
16:14 necessary to deceive customers and the international community. He says that the current appearance of prosperity is being maintained only through information control from politics to the economy and society. He believes fraud has become widespread. However, he says this cannot last forever and that one day China will suffer a comprehensive collapse because of the damage caused by the Chinese Communist Party.
