The early promise of OnePlus phones was peak performance for a modest price. In modern years, the beloved Smartphone brand has become increasingly expensive. Furthermore, the power-per-dollar isn't too dissimilar to phones within their price range.
In the company's latest controversy, OnePlus has been found to be limiting performance on their latest devices. While absent from benchmark software, real-time usage of 300 popular Android apps has been found to be throttled in new updates.
OnePlus throttles performance and manipulates benchmarks
In a report by AnandTech, it was discovered that the OnePlus 9 dramatically throttles the performance of popular apps. For example, Google Chrome was limited to only using the phone’s Cortex-A55 cores instead of having access to the more powerful A78 and X1 cores. This saw a performance hit as hard as 85%.
The report states that the company blacklists popular applications that could use the extra horsepower. However, unknown apps are given full performance access as they aren't known to the OEM. Even worse, apps designed to measure performance, such as GeekBench, are always given full performance to cheat benchmarks.
In response, GeekBench banned the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro from ranking in the benchmark charts. Currently, all of the OEM's devices are being reviewed by the company. GeekBench said:
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They admit to cheating
In a statement to XDA developers, OnePlus admitted locking performance on certain apps. Despite the phones launching without locked performance, the company claims they've limited app access for a better user experience.
They explain:
The company's statement doesn't touch on the most pressing, ethical issue. The changes made to the company's smartphones were done without announcement, only after the review period sang their praises. In many ways, it’s the same as Apple slowing down old iPhones. However, Apple slows down phones years after the fact, not mere months.
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