Have you heard the one about the guy who got excited about the benchmark performance of the untested processor in an unconfirmed environment that is headed for an unannounced phone that couldn't possibly be ready for production and official testing just yet? It's a real knee slapper, you'll love it. It's that time of year, when we start getting that steady trickle of information regarding phones we'll hear about in an official capacity over the next month or two. For obvious reasons, the Samsung Galaxy S7 is high on the list of things people want to hear more about. That leads to a whole lot of unconfirmed reports, blurrycam leaks, and wringing of hands about what it all means. Above all that we have benchmarks, the most useless information we could get about unreleased hardware with brand new processors. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines Truth is most smartphone benchmarks are pointless, but early unfinished and unofficial benchmarks are doubly so. Here's a quick look at why. We are nowhere near seeing finished products yet

Any benchmarks we're going to see pop up over the next couple of weeks are coming from two places. We're either seeing the Samsung-made Snapdragon 820 developer boards or unfinished prototypes of the Samsung Galaxy S7. Neither of these is going to give you anywhere near the results you'll get running the benchmarking apps on your retail unit when it comes time to purchase the phone. These pre-release benchmark numbers have never matched the results off of release units, and they never will. Plain and simple, these results tell you nothing. Developer boards frequently don't have to account for being on battery power, or needing to be aware of things like temperature. These kits are built for developers to quickly optimize their software for the new processing architectures or underlying software tools Qualcomm is providing this year for things like better image handling in cameras or better audio support. Benchmarks on developer board don't even really give you a broad idea of what these chips are capable of, because often times the OS that runs on them isn't particularly well optimized to begin with. Plain and simple, these results tell you nothing. Pre-production units are also not indicative of the real-world experience. These versions of phones are frequently running unfinished software, or are missing bloaty apps like security software that slow down phones just by running in the background. Prototype benchmarks often are closer to reality than dev kits, but still far enough away from the real world experience that they aren't worth taking seriously. In short, until we see numbers on retail units, just say no. Benchmarks frequently are manipulated anyway