OnePlus issues a statement over alleged benchmark cheating issue

Recently, Geekbench announced that they are removing all OnePlus 9 benchmarks from their charts. OnePlus then gives a statement on the subject matter.

File photo: OnePlus 9 5G

Geekbench has yet to reinstate the previously removed benchmarks

OnePlus contacted Android Authority to give a statement regarding the said issue. Below is the copy of their full statement:

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. 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. This has helped to provide a smooth experience while reducing power consumption. 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.

To give you a quick background of what's going on, AnandTech related the OnePlus 9's performance to a "weird behavior" report. In its lengthy research, it shows that Oxygen OS apparently limits the performance of some Android apps—particularly the Chrome app.

Chrome seemed to be suffering from extremely weird behaviour that at worst ended up with the browser only being able to use the SoC’s little Cortex-A55 cores, according to AnandTech's report.

Geekbench took these allegations seriously and conducted its own investigation. Afterward, the popular benchmarking site announced that they have removed all OnePlus 9 benchmarks in its charts.

It's disappointing to see OnePlus handsets making performance decisions based on application identifiers rather than application behavior. We view this as a form of benchmark manipulation. We've delisted the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro from our Android Benchmark chart.

OnePlus' statement seemed in line with what AnandTech suspected—aiming at improving the battery life of the device. However, OnePlus' statement doesn't further explain why only specific apps were targeted, and why the mechanism was not transparent to users. 

OnePlus: We want to match each app with the most appropriate performance it needs

What do you guys think?

Sources: Android Authority, AnandTech, Geekbench