Geekbench has delisted the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro after it was found their benchmarks were manipulated. They’re also testing other OnePlus handsets to ascertain if they also manipulate the performance in a similar fashion. If so, they’ll be delisted from the Android benchmark chart as well.
These benchmark manipulations were discovered by AnandTech’s Andrei Frumusanu while running performance tests on the OnePlus 9 Pro that features Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset. He found that the OnePlus device exhibited weird behaviour during browser benchmark tests. For example, Chrome could only use the less powerful Cortex A55 cores during a standard Speedometer 2.0 browser benchmark test.
The OnePlus 9 Pro’s performance benchmarks were abnormally low and didn’t match Snapdragon 888’s standards. When putting the phone through the initial test, it was discovered that 888’s primary Cortex X1 core wasn’t being used, and the benchmarks were instead running on Cortex A78 cores, clocking at 2GHz against a maximum of 2.41GHz. When the test was re-run, surprisingly, the workload was isolated to Cortex A55 cores.
It’s not only browsers like Chrome, Brave and Firefox that are affected by OnePlus’ throttling, but other popular apps like Twitter, Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, Zoom, Uber, VLC, Dropbox, Microsoft Office apps, among several others, were affected as well. Surprisingly, even OnePlus apps, including Forums, Weather, File Manager, Gallery, Camera and Notes, were affected.
In a statement to XDA, Oneplus said they were throttling performance to “improve the devices’ battery life and heat management” to enhance user experience and reduce power consumption. Here’s an extract from the statement:
“Our R&D team has been working over the past few months to optimize 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.”
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