OnePlus admitted to purposely decreasing the performance of popular apps to improve battery life in its phones.
First spotted by Anandtech, the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro phones were discovered to slow down 300 apps considered popular in the Google Play Store, such as Google Chrome, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Discord, and Twitter. The site found a “slowdown in typical workloads such as web browsing.”
Anandtech said that its testing showed that apps like Chrome and Twitter were three to four times slower when it came to loading and browsing times.
The company on Wednesday confirmed to XDA Developers that this was occurring, adding that it was doing so to save battery life on phones.
“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 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,” a OnePlus spokesperson told XDA Developers.
“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.”
Anandtech notes that while OnePlus’ official statement makes it seem like the decision to slow apps was part of an update, device owners have experienced a slowdown since the phone launched in March.
Many users took to social media, taking issue with the company slowing down their favorite apps.
It’s not the first time OnePlus has been in hot water with users. After a May update to Android 11, the OnePlus 7 and 7T series phones faced issues like battery draining, overheating, frame rate drops, sluggish UI, and more.
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