OnePlus throttling debacle: The OnePlus you don't know

 

OnePlus is caught in the middle of yet another throttling debacle. It was recently uncovered that OnePlus was throttling "normal" apps and forcing them to use the efficiency cores found in the Snapdragon 888. Although this leads to more battery life it also leads to slower, although not that noticeable, performance in many common apps. Let me explain the depth of what's happened and then share my thoughts about the entire situation. Cool? Cool.  

 
 

What's happening 

Apps like YouTube, Zoom, and discord among others are being slowed down due to certain cores in the Snapdragon 888 being disabled on those apps. AnandTech has the original scoop at this link if you want to see the evidence for yourself: AnandTech.com/show/16794/oneplus-9-performance-examination. Unlike other cases of throttling where the phone runs faster for benchmarks the OnePlus 9 series is running slower for average apps.  

 

 

Case in point, many reporters (including AnandTech) loaded up the web browser benchmark app Speedometer 2.0. In Chrome, this test produced a dreadful score around 16-18 for most. That same test ran on less popular web browsers (such as Vivaldi or Microsoft Edge) gave scores from 70-107; a much more reasonable score for a phone that was released in 2021. Is it noticeable? Some say that when compared side- by-side with other phones of the same class the lag is noticeable.  

 
 

Image Credit: Gizmodo

For more in-depth analyses on the actual quality requests in the OS kernels, benchmarks, and graphs I suggest reading in full AnandTech's article linked above. However, with this condensed version of events I have one last tidbit I want to cover. The first is that OnePlus does not give you an option to "enhance" or "max" performance and cancel out the throttle. Even Samsung, who throttle the S21 out-of-box, have an enhanced mode to turn said throttle off. I'll talk more about the lack of settings in my "thoughts" section.  

 
 

 
 

Thoughts 

The whole problem could be solved with a software switch. Tell your customers that the 888 can be more efficient if you enable this throttling in settings. Of course, they could have also done the opposite and just let the phone run at full power while having an option in settings for a more conservative mode. My idea was an adaptive performance choice that would literally does the something as this throttling by limiting performance cores to certain apps. All these options clearly tell the end-user that their phone is being throttled and all these options allow you to turn said throttling off.  

 
 

 

Image Credit Android Authority

OnePlus's tagline has always been "never settle" and for good reason as well. OnePlus phones were known for performance at all costs including battery life, cameras, and design. This helped bring premium performance at a lower cost. Since the OnePlus 8 the strategy switched to pure flagship while saving the bang-for-buck reserved for the 8T. However, OnePlus recently announced a merger of sorts with its sister company Oppo. This merger makes OnePlus a sub-brand of Oppo; the much bigger of the two companies. This move of not telling people you were throttling their phones but also not letting them turn it off is a bit unlike OnePlus isn't it.  

 

 

Image Credit: Anandtech

 

OnePlus isn't the darling of the Android community anymore and this is proof that the enthusiast isn't the prime audience anymore. OnePlus has settled for being just another phone company and I totally get why. OnePlus became too large to continue with the small-phone beats big phone mentality. OnePlus is done with "flagship killers" and apparently also done with enthusiast marketing. I wouldn't have been surprised if Samsung, Google, or even Motorola were the culprits in this throttling debacle but having OnePlus do it is ushering in a new era.  

 
 

Samsung and sometimes Apple (being honest...mostly Samsung) get free passes on issues like this because they're the market dominators. The market dominators cater to the most consumers and can therefore actually get away with these throttling or benchmark cheating shenanigans. OnePlus isn't at that level yet and is getting roasted by their enthusiast fanbase. We shouldn't ignore the fact that throttling like OnePlus's or Samsung's change the way we test phones. Throttling is always inconvenient and should also always be reversible because when the end-user buys the phone, we shouldn't have to fight to get the maximum out of that phone.  

 
 

 
 

Everyone settles eventually...even OnePlus.  

 
 

 

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