Some of you might recall that several years ago, after years of what some chalked up to a conspiracy theory, Apple finally admitted that they were throttling the performance of its older iPhones. However, the company claims that this was done to help stabilize the performance on devices with degrading batteries.
Now it looks like OnePlus has been caught doing something similar of their own. According to an in-depth analysis by AnandTech, it has been discovered that the company’s latest OnePlus 9 phones have been throttling the performance of several popular apps running on it, like Chrome, Twitter, and WhatsApp, just to name a few. OnePlus has since acknowledged this behavior and issued a statement to XDA Developers which reads:
“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.”
So what does this mean for users? Unless you’re running two phones powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 side-by-side, chances are you might not notice the difference in real world usage. However, the fact that it was done without informing users or giving users a choice is one that we have to question.
Filed in . Read more about Apps and OnePlus. Source: anandtech