OnePlus has admitted that the company throttles the performance of the OnePlus 9 Series when it comes to using popular apps. The throttling was discovered by AnandTech which later resulted in the devices being removed from GeekBench for manipulating benchmark scores. 

© MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

Now, OnePlus has responded to the accusations with an explanation as to why the company throttles the performance on the OnePlus 9 series and it kind of makes sense. The OnePlus 9 Series is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 chipset which can be clocked to 3 GHz when required. However, it was found that OnePlus deliberately throttles the chipset while using popular apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and more. In fact, it was found that OnePlus was limiting the performance of the OnePlus 9 series in over 300 apps. 

© MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

As to why the company limited the performance of the OnePlus 9 series on certain apps, it’s best to hear the explanation from the company itself. The company says that the chipsets have reached a point where their "power is an overkill" while using some apps. These apps include browsers, social media apps and even some games. 

"In the case of the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro, when you open apps or heavy games, the Snapdragon 888 processor, including the super powerful X1 CPU core, will run at full speed to provide the best performance. But with actions that do not require the maximum power, like reading a webpage or scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, it’s not necessary for the CPU to run at almost 3 GHz to do that smoothly. The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro reduce the CPU frequency in these scenarios to reduce power consumption and heat dissipation while maintaining a smooth experience,” OnePlus said in a blog post. 

© MensXP/Akshay Bhalla

The blog post also said that the R&D team maintains a list of applications based on the most popular Google Play Store apps. The company confirmed that apps like Chrome, Twitter, Zoom, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord, Microsoft Office and some of their own apps use only limited performance so that “the actual user experience is not negatively affected.”

OnePlus also reached out to MensXP last week when the throttling issue was discovered and provided a statement. 

"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 optimise 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” the statement read.

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