latest
OnePlus defends its app-throttling on the 9 Pro, Snapdragon 888 'overkill in certain scenarios'
Company claims it tests the changes to make sure the user experience isn't affected
Following the news that OnePlus was throttling the performance of 9-Series phones, the company has taken to its forum with a more detailed response, explaining in greater detail the logic behind its actions. In short, OnePlus claims that modern chipsets are "overkill," and there's no need to run at full power for simple tasks like scrolling on a webpage or social media. So, the company throttles performance to improve power consumption and heat dissipation under the argument that it extensively tests these changes for negative effects.
OnePlus confirms it throttled the performance of 300 popular apps
The fallout continues from yesterday's shocking revelations
Read update
OnePlus always used flagship specs in its devices, even when its phones were undercutting the competition's price. The days of "flagship killers" are long gone, but the company still chooses high-end processors each year. In theory, that should make the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro some of the fastest phones you can buy today — indeed, our reviews say basically the same thing — but it turns out that many applications are being held back from reaching peak performance.A new report from Anandtech dives deep into determining whether or not the OnePlus 9 Pro's benchmarks match real-world usage, and unfortunately, the answer seems to be a hard no. While OxygenOS allows benchmarking apps to reach full performance using its Snapdragon 888, OnePlus has included a blacklist of popular apps from the Play Store, all of which are prevented from taking full advantage of the phone's power. The report speculates it's an attempt to deliver improved battery life — a failure, if our review is anything to go by.
Do you enjoy knowing how fast things are? Then Qualcomm's revamped Vellamo suite is probably something you should check out. Vellamo has been the web benchmark of choice on Android for some time now, but this new update brings some major improvements.