OnePlus’ flagship devices have always topped benchmark tests, be it on AnTuTu or Geekbench. Even during its good old “flagship killer” days, OnePlus still delivered some of the most powerful hardware that could compete with more premium competitors. However, those flagship killer days seem to have passed with the introduction of the “Pro” models.
The most recent OnePlus 9 (Review) and OnePlus 9 Pro (Review) are among the most premium smartphones from the band and by all means, should deliver the best performance. In our reviews of both phones, this certainly seemed to be the case, but as it turns out, several apps are being held back from reaching peak performance.
Anandtech recently did a deep dive to determine whether the OnePlus 9 Pro’s benchmarks matched real-world usage. The report found discrepancies in the performance of several apps on the OnePlus 9 Pro. Anandtech found that OnePlus was blacklisting popular apps away from its fastest cores, resulting in slowdowns in typical workloads.
The report noted that while OxygenOS allows apps to reach their full benchmarking potential using the phone’s Snapdragon 888 SoC, the company blacklisted popular apps from the Play Store, preventing them from taking advantage of the phone’s power. AnandTech carried out several tests, revealing that non-benchmarking apps saw reduced performance while benchmarking and other unknown apps managed to take full advantage of the phone’s hardware.
The app’s manipulated include everything from Microsoft Office suite to Google Chrome and even social media platforms. The report speculates that the move is an attempt to improve the phone’s battery life. However, this also makes benchmarking results null and void as they are favoured with the CPUs top-performing cores.
Following the report, Geekbench removed the OnePlus 9 series from the Android Benchmark Chart. The benchmarking platform will also investigate older OnePlus to check if apps are being manipulated. In a tweet, Geekbench wrote, “It's disappointing to see OnePlus handsets making performance decisions based on application identifiers rather than application behaviour.”
OnePlus is yet to release a statement on the matter, but you should check out Anandtech’s deep dive as it provides an in-depth look into how the performance of apps has been manipulated on the OnePlus 9 Pro.
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