If you search for the term "benchmark" in the Play Store then you're inevitably going to see the AnTuTu benchmarking application toward the top of the list. It's up there because over the years it has adapted to the times and it, along with some other great tools, can help you get a ballpark idea as to how a smartphone performs. Naturally, there's more to day to day performance than just benchmark scores but they can certainly give you an idea. AnTuTu has been popular for years within the Android community and the team has just released an open beta of its V8 update.

Even if you don't care about benchmark scores these applications are still having influence over the direction some OEMs take. We've talked about benchmark cheating in the past, but even the OEMs that have not participated tend to brag about its highest scores. Many will even use these benchmark tools to test performance and optimization tweaks to its software. AnTuTu users should be happy to hear that progress is coming along nicely with the big update to version 8. However, everyone should know that benchmark scores on this newer update should not be compared to scores from version 7 of the AnTuTu app.

This is because of adjustments done to the scoring system itself as well as the addition of some new test scenarios. Version 8.01 of AnTuTu comes with the following changelog:

  • CPU test changes: test algorithm upgrade, optimize the support of the new ARM platform large, medium and small core architecture, and adjust the pressure distribution
  • GPU test changes: Addedvulkantest scenario "Terracotta Warrior " to examine the GPU performance of the mobile phone when running the heavy pressure game developed by Vulkan technology
  • GPU test changes: The scene "Coastline" upgraded from OpenGL ES 3.1 to Vulkan technology, used to examine the Vulkan game performance of GPU under medium and high pressure
  • MEM test changes: MEMORY scenes all renewed, inspect the hardware Direct I / O performance while examining the vendor's optimization of the system
  • UX test changes: the scene all increase the load, the screen physical refresh rate is included in the scope of the investigation

Source: Antutu