Balancing the performance, battery life and smoothness of a phone is not easy. OnePlus has learned this a little the hard way, since the Chinese manufacturer is criticized for the restraint it operates on its latest high-end mobile.
OnePlus is limiting the performance of its latest ultra high-end smartphone, the OnePlus 9 Pro. In an extremely sharp article posted on July 6, 2021, the AnandTech site noticed that the phone was slower than some of its competition in many circumstances. Yet the Chinese manufacturer’s mobiles have always focused on the debauchery of power.
There is no question here of poor system optimization here, it is a deliberate choice on the part of OnePlus.
Take a few extra minutes of battery life
As the manufacturer indicated to XDA Developers, after the release of the mobile, owners of the OnePlus 9 Pro quickly pointed out possible improvements to the autonomy and heating of the phone. In response, OnePlus engineers sought to ” optimize device performance […] by matching the application requirements with the most suitable wattage. “Translation: by limiting the performance of the phone on certain applications, OnePlus hopes to grab a few extra minutes of battery life.
This practice is quite widespread in the mobile world in reality. No need to deploy the full power of a phone when simply scrolling through a web page. But according to the Anandtech site, even if the day to day clamping is not particularly annoying, the OnePlus 9 Pro is still sometimes slower to run than a Galaxy S21 Ultra, or a Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra, despite a similar technical sheet. Among other things, this results in apps that are slower to open and run, as the processor relies on its weaker cores in order to conserve battery power.
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook are affected
However, this clamping is not implemented everywhere all the time since it is in fact only active on certain apps. According to a return of the brand obtained by our colleagues from Frandroid, there would still be 300 applications “restricted” by OnePlus, including Chrome, Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The OnePlus 9 Pro is obviously far from unusable, but the phone is still sold on promises of power and performance. OnePlus even goes so far as to indicate on its site that ” the perfectly fast and smooth experience is at the heart of the OnePlus mind “.
Protecting a phone’s battery by limiting its performance is not necessarily a bad thing, but if the controversy around the clamping of iPhones in 2017 highlighted something, it is that it is better to be the most transparent possible in these cases.
