Realme has been caught in an embarrassing situation where the smartphone maker has been spotted cheating by using an iPhone during a game streaming event instead of what the phone was supposed to be, and that is a Narzo 30A.
During the launch event for the new Realme Narzo 30A in Bangladesh, the company made game streamers stream the gameplay through what was said to be a Narzo 30A. However, the company seems to have used an iPhone instead of the Narzo 30A.
If you fast forward to the 18:03 mark in the launch event video, you’ll see a “Guided Access” screen pop up on the display. This ‘Guided Access’ screen is known to be an iPhone-exclusive feature and the Narzo 30A couldn’t have been sporting it.
The message at the 18:03 mark reads, ‘Guided Access Started, Triple Click the Side Button to Exit’, which is exclusive to the iPhones. It is difficult to understand why Realme would even try to make the customers believe that one can experience iPhone-level gaming on a smartphone that costs mere Rs 8,999.
Realme hasn’t made any statement regarding this but the company is about to face a lot of criticism from its fans who expect transparency and fairness. This action from the brand further affects the company’s reputation as it was recently caught cheating the benchmarks as well with its Realme GT smartphone.
AnTuTu posted a note on Weibo to inform users about the removal of the Realme GT from its Benchmarking platform. The company said it decided to remove the benchmark scores of the Realme GT for three months for allegedly cheating and boosting the performance scores of the phone.
The Realme GT was initially marketed with a score of over 750,000 on the AnTuTu version 8, which is much higher than 708,000, which is Xiaomi Mi 11’s score that is a similar spec’d device as the Realme GT and comes with a Snapdragon 888.
Antutu said that the phone delayed threads when running the multithreaded test on its benchmark app, in order to obtain the fastest CPU cores. Those tactics helped the phone receive higher benchmark scores, AnTuTu has alleged.
Not only this but as per Antutu, Realme GT also modified the reference JPG image used by the benchmarking platform to reduce processing times and achieve a higher score. The phone was using mosaic colour blocks instead of processing the image verbatim genuinely, to reduce its quality and cut down on processing efforts, the company said.
Realme is already facing tough competition from other brands. Especially Xiaomi, which has revealed the Redmi Note 10 Pro Max with a 108MP sensor ahead of Realme. Realme’s desperation shows as the brand held the announcement for a 108MP camera sensor smartphone just 2 days before the Redmi Note 10 series was unveiled in India.
While everyone expected the unveiling of the Realme 8 series, it was just an event where the brand revealed the Realme 8 Pro will feature the latest generation Samsung 108MP sensor HM2 as the primary camera, featuring 12000 x 9000 pixels and a large sensor size of 1/1.52″.
The pricing of the Redmi Note 10 series has been done aggressively in India which puts further pressure on the brand to deliver on its promises.
Brands are often caught cheating when they want to attract more consumers and show they are better than the competition. Realme’s alleged unfair moves might be a result of the increasing pressure on the brand.