Geekbench controversy: OnePlus has new response to app throttling

OnePlus says that current SoC are overkill in certain scenarios

OnePlus found itself in hot waters last week when OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro were delisted from Geekbench following reports of app throttling. The company then gave a statement confirming that it did throttle some apps but only because it wanted to optimise the device for better battery life.

Now, it seems like it has a detailed explanation on the issue. In a forum post, OnePlus put out a lengthy statement and a particular highlight from the post says that it thinks modern processors are overkill for certain apps and scenarios:

"In recent years, the performance of smartphone SoCs has reached a point where their power is often overkill in certain scenarios for many apps including social media, browsers and even some light gaming," OnePlus says in the post.

"With this in mind, our team has shifted its attention from simply providing sheer performance to providing the performance you expect from our devices while reducing power consumption and heat dissipation. To be more precise, we want to match each app with the most appropriate performance it needs," it said.

The problem is, as many users have reported it, the actual battery gains or heat dissipation by using this technique is marginal at best. The second major issue is keeping it hidden from paying customers.

All of this could easily go away if OnePlus just gave people a toggle to disable throttling if they don't want it. Forcing unwanted software optimisations onto people and then not telling them about it is not the way to go.