OnePlus confirms slowing down popular apps on OnePlus 9, 9 Pro

• OnePlus confirms the slowdown in the performance of some popular apps.
• It says the drop in performance of apps is to optimise power consumption.
• OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro are packed with the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset.
  

OnePlus has admitted that there is a significant reduction in the performance of some “popular apps” to increase the battery performance on its latest flagship phones — the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro.

The company confirmed to XDA Developers in a statement claiming that its R&D team is working to optimise the device’s performance when using popular apps by matching the app’s processor requirement to the most appropriate power.

OnePlus said the optimisation was done to provide a smooth user 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,” the company said in its statement. OnePlus declared that the optimisation took place after some users shared their feedback with the company on where it could improve the battery life and heat management of the OnePlus 9 and Oneplus 9 Pro.

The clarification was issued after testing by Andrei Frumusanu of AnandTech found out that the OnePlus 9 Pro had reduced the performances of prominent apps that are popular on Google Play Store including all Google, Microsoft Office and popular social media apps. Through the tests, Frumusanu confirmed that OnePlus has blacklisted popular apps from its fastest cores that caused a slowdown in typical workloads like web browsing.

OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro features one of the fastest chipsets in the market — the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 — and a dip in the performance of popular apps doesn’t do justice to the users. However, these tweaks may go unnoticeable for most users. Frumusanu himself only noticed the slowdown while keeping it side-by-side with Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and Xiaomi Mi 11.

As per the tests conducted by AnandTech, the phone has standard performance for the benchmark apps. OnePlus in its statement has contradicted this by claiming that the performance is only affected in the benchmark apps.

This manipulation by OnePlus has led the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro to be delisted from the testing tool GeekBench’s Android benchmark chart. Even though OnePlus has clarified that the drop in performance of popular apps was only to optimise battery performance, we haven’t seen any such issues raised or spotted by any user, which means the dip in performance might not be visible in general usage.

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