When confronted, Huawei's Wang Chenglu told AnandTech that it wanted to embrace standardized benchmarks that were closer to real-world experience, and that it was fudging existing benchmark results because "others do the same testing." It was a "common practice" in China, Wang said, suggesting that Huawei would lose sales if it didn't cheat. The company also told UL that it was planning to offer a speed-boosting mode through a future update (it's not clear if this is GPU Turbo from the Honor Play and 10) so that any app could benefit from the same performance boost.

Not that the company is eliciting much sympathy. It's using the "other kids are doing it too" excuse you used in grade school -- just because it's common doesn't make it acceptable. And when Huawei is the second-largest smartphone maker on the planet, shouldn't it be setting an example instead of following the herd? If nothing else, you'd think that Huawei would realize that the long-term consequences of being discovered would outweigh the benefits. The cheating not only took Huawei's phones out of contention, it eroded trust at a time when the company is already struggling to maintain its reputation.

Update: Huawei has issued a statement both reiterating its previous points (including plans for a "Performance Mode") and saying that the two jointly delisted the phones on the 3DMark charts. The handsets will be back once "all users" of Huawei's phones have access to that higher-performance option. You can read the full response below.