If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, benchmarking service Antutu's research that found Samsung to be the most widely copied smartphone brand makes for an odd endorsement.
In a series of tweets, Antutu's Knockoff Phones Report: Top 10 Most Copied Smartphones 2017 said Samsung made up for seven of the top 10 most popular models to copy.
Those include Galaxy S7 Edge European version (4.94%), Galaxy S7 Edge Chinese version (2.94%), Galaxy S7 European version (2.81%), Samsung W2016 (2.8%), iPhone 7 Plus (2.67%), Samsung W2017 (2.23%), OnePlus 3T (2%), Xiaomi Mi 5 (1.92%), Galaxy S7 Edge US version (1.22%) and Galaxy S8+ Chinese (1.04%).
The report was based on analysis of 17,424,726 verified phones from the database of Antutu Officer app, last year.
Divided by brand, the most popular to copy were Samsung (36.23%), iPhone (7.72%), Xiaomi (4.75%), Oppo (4.46%) and Huawei (3.4%). The others brands were lumped together at (43.44%).
The report also found that most phones tested were originals at 97.36%, while knockoffs made up 2.64%.
The AnTuTu Officer app was a service that helped users verify the authenticity of their phones.
It works by having users scan a QR code on its website, which allows the service to test if the phone's security parameters was up to standards and if its hardware parameters were modified or not authentic.
Some reviewers commented that Antutu officer app could suffer a degree of inaccuracy in the event a phone is a very new model, has multiple model names in different regions or was using third party ROM.