REDMAGIC 11 Pro phones have cooling fans, but they got arrested for cheating

REDMAGIA is one of the few gaming phone makers still on the market, offering devices with capacitive shoulder triggers, active cooling, and a host of other additions. Unfortunately, it appears that the brand’s latest phones have been eliminated from a number of benchmark rankings.

“Devices are delisted when the manufacturer has not complied with our benchmarking rules,” reads an excerpt from a banner seen on the REDMAGIC 11 Pro series benchmarking page.

So what exactly did REDMAGIC do that resulted in its delisting? Well, a YouTube video in Japanese published last month might have the answer. The channel apparently found a big difference between scores obtained with the standard version of the benchmark app and a disguised or stealth version. In fact, the video showed that the REDMAGIC 11 Pro series was unable to complete its stress test via the standard app, while the stealth version completed.

The YouTube channel also found that the stealth test reached maximum temperatures of about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), while the standard test reached a maximum of 55 degrees Celsius (131 degrees Fahrenheit). It is worth noting that this phone has a cooling fan and a liquid cooling system. So even these radical measures weren’t enough to prevent the phone from getting ridiculously hot.

However, this is a familiar method of benchmark manipulation, as some manufacturers recognize benchmark applications and subsequently improve device performance to achieve top scores. This usually has the side effect of much higher device temperatures, which can eventually cause the phone to turn off the reference app for security reasons. This is clearly the case with the YouTube channel test. However, these same manufacturers do not recognize a disguised version of the same reference application, so the phone defaults to a more conservative performance profile with less heating.

This type of behavior is against the rules, as UL Solutions notes on its website:

A platform must run the benchmark without modifications as if it were any other application.

There is nothing technically wrong with having a list of allowed applications and optimizing their performance accordingly. This happens all the time with games and general apps, allowing your phone to strike the right balance between performance and efficiency for a given task. After all, you don’t need maximum performance for WhatsApp or Google Keep.

However, this practice is particularly problematic for reference applications, as the performance achieved in these tests will not reflect real-world usage for most people. These inflated scores may appear in official marketing materials as brands claim their phone has the best performance. Oddly enough, some mobile gamers have taken advantage of this practice by running emulators disguised as reference applications to achieve maximum performance. But this approach comes with a huge increase in device temperature and dramatically shorter battery life.

This is not the first time we have heard about benchmark manipulation. The realme GT7 Pro previously engaged in similar behavior more than a year ago, while there have been many other cases over the years. However, I don’t think REDMAGIC is the last phone maker to be accused of cheating on benchmarks.

We have asked REDMAGIC and UL Solutions about this apparent manipulation of benchmarks and will update the article as soon as the companies respond to our queries.