OnePlus stirred up a lot of news in 2021 From several product announcements to a backward merger with Oppo, the company garnered a lot of attention this year However, a very recent report has brought to light some possible suspicious activity regarding the way the OnePlus 9 Pro handles applications

In the report, Anandtech noted some strange behavior while running browser benchmarks, resulting in very low results for a Snapdragon 888 As a result, Anandtech found a sort of blacklist that prevents certain apps from accessing the full power of the 888

The Office suite, Google apps, and many other popular apps were blocked from using the processor's larger cores However, benchmarking apps (such as Geekbench) appear to have been removed from this blacklist and have full access to the Snapdragon 888 For this reason, Geekbench has removed the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro from its charts You can read the statement below

It is unclear whether OnePlus did this for battery optimization purposes, but the theory is that OnePlus has done this before in the OxygenOS skin, sometimes to the detriment of the user experience, in the name of improving battery life OnePlus has done this before, sometimes to the detriment of the user experience, in the name of improving battery life

We reached out to OnePlus for comment and received the following response

"Our top priority is to always provide a great user experience with our products, including responding quickly to important feedback from our users management As a result of this feedback, our R&D team has been working over the past few months to optimize device performance when using many of the most popular apps, including Chrome, by matching the apps' processor requirements with optimal power This has allowed us to provide a smooth experience while reducing power consumption While some benchmark apps may impact device performance, our focus is on doing what we can to improve device performance for our users"