The OnePlus has always been known for its fast phones, but the new OnePlus 9 series didn’t do too much in terms of device performance, which surprised many when they find out that the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro purposefully limited the performance of many popular apps.
After testing by Andrei Frumusanu of Anandtech, who discovered sluggishness in several apps from Google’s Play Store and called the situation rather perplexing, OnePlus later admitted that it’s true it had purposefully reduced the performance of many of the most popular apps to prolong the battery life of its most recent model, the OnePlus 9.
This situation isn’t quite the same, as some phone manufacturers have been found to have artificially enhanced performance in order to make their devices run excessively fast in benchmarks; benchmark apps appear to be operating within expectations, but the performance of regular apps has been negatively impacted.
In the instance of OnePlus, it blocked popular apps from using its fastest cores, which resulted in delays in routine tasks like web browsing. Nearly all popular apps in the Play Store are impacted, and given how widely throttled they are, it’s concerning that they even consume a lot of battery.
The company notes that it lowers the CPU frequency of the performance cores in situations like reading a webpage, scrolling through Twitter and Instagram feeds, etc. to save battery life and reduce heating. For apps like Google Chrome, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Discord, and numerous others have their CPU speed throttling implemented with purposeful and selective intent by the OnePlus 9 series. It released the following statement soon after people find out the throttle issue:
Our top priority is always delivering a great user experience with our products, based in part on acting quickly on important user feedback. Following the launch of the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro in March, some users told us about some areas where we could improve the devices’ battery life and heat management. As a result of this feedback, our R&D team has been working over the past few months to optimize the devices’ performance when using many of the most popular apps, including Chrome, by matching the app’s processor requirements with the most appropriate power. This has helped to provide a smooth experience while reducing power consumption. While this may impact the devices’ performance in some benchmarking apps, our focus as always is to do what we can to improve the performance of the device for our users.
In conclusion, the performance and battery life of your OnePlus device are influenced by deliberate software optimizations introduced by OnePlus. While OnePlus has been renowned for producing fast phones, the OnePlus 9 series, including the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro, did not deliver significant improvements in device performance, which surprised many users. This surprise stemmed from the revelation that OnePlus intentionally restricted the performance of numerous popular apps on these devices. Andrei Frumusanu’s testing for Anandtech uncovered sluggishness in several apps from the Google Play Store, leading to a perplexing situation. Subsequently, OnePlus admitted to implementing these limitations to extend the battery life of its latest model, the OnePlus 9. This admission highlights a departure from OnePlus’s tradition of prioritizing performance, raising concerns among users who expect seamless functionality from their devices. The deliberate reduction in app performance underscores OnePlus’s strategic shift towards optimizing battery life at the expense of overall device speed, challenging the brand’s established reputation for delivering high-performance smartphones.