Sarthak Modi, 22, a resident of Ahmedabad, bought OnePlus 9 on the first day of its launch, but after using the phone for a month he says that the performance of native apps like WhatsApp and Instagram has been an absolute disaster.
"I had spent around Rs 50,000 to buy this flagship device. I also had to convince my parents. But, only a month after I bought the device, the performance of basic apps like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram has been super-slow," he said.
It is worth noting that OnePlus 9 was hailed by critics as a good phone, but it seems like the OnePlus has compromised the phone performance in a bid to increase battery life of its devices.
Disappointed with the device's poor performance, Chirag Tyagi, 27, a computer engineer, notes that when you pay Rs 60,000 for a phone and it offers poor performance, it's infuriating. "I expect bugs with all phones, but major bugs on standard features is a big miss. Standard applications like WhatsApp and even photo gallery keeps on crashing . This was really unexpected of OnePlus."
"OnePlus' plan to slow down the phone's performance is a 'planned obsolescence', so that people are forced to buy new phones"Nagesh Pattanashetti, OnePlus user alleged on Twitter
Why is This Happening?
A recent investigation by Anandtech, a tech news website, pointed out that a number of popular apps were experiencing poor performance on the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro devices.
The investigation revealed that OnePlus had planted a custom OnePlus Performance Service function that is the cause of throttling the performance of apps like Snapchat, Discord, YouTube, Twitter, Zoom, Facebook, Microsoft Office apps, and several other first-party apps.
This was done by limiting the performance of the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro’s Snapdragon 888 processor, in order to help deliver prolonged battery life.
Popular benchmark maker Geekbench, has also decided to delist scores for OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro from its database.
Apple Throttled App Performance As Well
This is not the first time a mobile phone company has been accused of throttling apps to increase battery life. Earlier, in 2016, Apple Inc updated the software that ran iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to ensure the devices don’t unexpectedly shut down.
But this update took a toll on iPhone's performance, and cases of frequent app crashes increased. As a result of which, the company had to slash prices on battery replacements for iPhone 6 to $29 from $79.
The company had to publicly apologise for causing the inconvenience. It assured to provide “truthful information” about iPhone power management across its website and software update notes.
Apple also reached a separate settlement in March 2020 to pay affected iPhone owners up to $500 million, around $25 per device.
How Did OnePlus React to This?
The Quint reached out to OnePlus, here's what the company said:
“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 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," the spokesperson said.
"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,"added the spokesperson.
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