Guides

What the numbers mean, and what they cannot tell you. Written because the results screen needs these explanations anyway.

• What does the score actually mean?A DeadTier score is 0–100 against one fixed yardstick, and a CPU score is a raw count. Here is what each number is, why a phone is expected to sit low, and what the tier can and cannot tell you.
• Why is my new phone slower than my old one?A newer phone can genuinely feel worse than the one it replaced. The usual causes are background apps, a full disc, thermal state and an ageing battery — and most of them are visible in a benchmark if you know what to look at.
• What makes a device throttle?Throttling is a device deliberately slowing itself down — for heat, for power, or for the battery. Here is what causes it, how it looks in a measurement, and why a benchmark partly causes the thing it reports.