On February 26, 2026, on Chinese video platforms such as Bilibili (B station), the technology self-media “Geekerwan” released a video reviewing mobile phones, revealing that apart from iPhones, various Chinese brand phones are cheating on performance in the “media test machines” (phones provided for media reviews), resulting in a significant difference between the actual retail phones consumers receive and the ones used for testing. The video’s release faced a widespread ban on the internet, sparking intense discussions among netizens.
“Geekerwan” launched a new video titled “Comprehensive Review of Mobile Gaming Performance: Manufacturers Cheating Outrageously!” on Bilibili on the 15th, where they disclosed that Chinese phone manufacturers deliberately select high-quality chips with low power consumption, tailor the phones specifically for media testing procedures, and consequently achieve excellent results in media tests. However, the retail phones ultimately purchased by consumers show a noticeable performance gap compared to the media test machines.
The team purchased 44 retail phones with their own money and conducted performance tests by playing games to evaluate frame rates, power consumption, touch response delay, heating issues, and other performance aspects. By comparing the test results with the data of “media test machines” found online, they discovered that many manufacturers were “cheating” in comparison to retail phones, including models from Red Magic, Honor, Xiaomi, among others. The media test machines showed poorer performance in frame rates, energy consumption, temperature control, etc., while only iPhones offered performance similar to or better than the media test machines.
Each year during the Chinese New Year, “Geekerwan” traditionally releases mobile phone evaluation videos. The channel has over 5 million fans on Bilibili and nearly 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. Similar evaluation videos were also published by the channel last year, highlighting the issue of “retail phone performance inferior to media test machines” in the Chinese market. However, this year’s approach differs in that the brands of the manufacturers are directly named instead of using anonymous references like A, B, C.
A week after the release of “Geekerwan” video, it was unexpectedly taken down by Bilibili on February 22. “Geekerwan” subsequently uploaded the video to Baidu Cloud, authorizing netizens to reproduce and share it. However, the related cloud links were blocked, and backup videos that appeared on the platform were successively removed with “Geekerwan”‘s community live streams even being suspended.
Following the backlash, many netizens turned to YouTube to watch the video, expressing their support for “Geekerwan.” Nevertheless, on February 25, the video on YouTube was suddenly set to private. Currently, only a few backup YouTube channels still host the video.
In the YouTube comment section, netizens rallied behind “Geekerwan,” stating: “Thumbs up, this is the evaluation team consumers want.” “Respect to Geekerwan, I appreciate their truthful experimental tests.” “Why not transfer the entire channel to YouTube, the removed video is the officially certified one.”
Some netizens believe that the video was heavily censored because it revealed the truth that only Apple’s iPhone did not cheat, indicating that the censorship was due to exposing this fact.