Caught red-handed: OnePlus responds to benchmark manipulation claims

Caught red-handed: OnePlus responds to benchmark manipulation claims
OnePlus 9 Pro.
PHOTO: Twitter/Smartprix

A string of discoveries from the tech review community led to Geekbench delisting the OnePlus 9 and the OnePlus 9 Pro from its Android bench marking charts. According to XDA Developers, OnePlus has since responded to these claims of benchmark manipulation.

Tech and phone review website AnandTech first discovered abnormal performance issues on the OnePlus 9 Pro during standard bench marking exercises. The device posted low scores on par with entry-level phones from a generation ago when testing via a browser-based benchmark.

Upon further investigation, AnandTech learnt how the OnePlus 9 Pro ‘spoofs’ popular apps before the phone decide to post preferred CPU behaviour. This led to lower performance on ‘popular apps’ after much trial-and-error.

Throttling real-world apps instead of inflating benchmark performance

Contrary to older practices where manipulated benchmarks led to inflated scores, the OnePlus 9 Pro throttled app performance instead, which meant benchmark scores had great results while real-world usage was throttled. In this case, the browser used was a throttled app identified within the phone’s blacklist, which led to the discovery of throttling despite having great performance scores in other non-blacklisted apps.

Affected apps cut across the gamut - productivity, gaming, social media, streaming, and more, with AnandTech’s discoveries and detailed summary found here. In its entirety, the OnePlus 9 Pro tested was not delivering the performance expected from its flagship-grade chipset (Snapdragon 888) in real-world apps despite being capable of doing so.

Ban hammer by Geekbench, OnePlus responds

[embed]https://twitter.com/geekbench/status/1412433598200823810[/embed]

The owners of Geekbench, a cross-platform benchmark tool, swiftly delisted the OnePlus 9 and the OnePlus 9 Pro for benchmark manipulation. The announcement was made via Twitter. Geekbench added that they fully intend to investigate other OnePlus devices for any similar performance manipulation scenarios.

OnePlus has since responded to XDA Developers via an unnamed spokesperson:

“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.

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''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 bench marking apps, our focus as always is to do what we can to improve the performance of the device for our users.”

Despite confirming that OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro had throttled real-world performance in favour of battery life, the statement doesn’t explain why certain apps were targeted and why it was not made known to users.

Furthermore, the statement also implied that it was a newly implemented feature via an update. However, this behaviour was present and recorded via the OnePlus 9 Pro’s launch reviews ( 1 , 2 ) in March/April 2021.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.

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