Despite rumors that companies can simply buy camera scores for their phones, DxOMark has denied that they sell camera smartphone scores to brands, with CEO Frederic Guichar reiterating that his company’s business model is centered around providing technical reports.
The denial comes after years of speculation from various sources that the company sells its scores to smartphone brands to help with its marketing efforts. The rumors were intensified when Lei Jun, the co-founder, and chairman of Xiaomi, announced that the brand would not send their top-end camera monster, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra, to DxOMark for benchmarks. For reference, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra currently sits at 5th place in DxOMark’s benchmark scores, failing to dethrone the Honor Magic4 Ultimate which still sits at the top spot.
“DxOMARK has more than 100 engineers to repeatedly test smartphone cameras, audio, screens, and batteries in 16 laboratories. We follow no less than 5 scientific test benchmarks. Each benchmark combines objective testing and perception test analysis,” Guichard said in the video embedded above.
The CEO also emphasized that their scores are a reflection of the quality of the device – their scores are unaffected even if a manufacturer chooses to use DxOMark to evaluate their products.
Aside from DxOMark denying that they sell smartphone scores, Guichar also said that the company does not rely on manufacturers to send products to them for testing, as they’re able to source commercial models themselves regardless of manufacturer support. When a manufacturer does tap them to do image analysis before launch, he asserts that his company re-validates their results with a commercial model to make sure a manufacturer doesn’t ship them a special model that has had “tweaks” to ensure a higher score.
