Fool me OnePlus, shame on me: Chinese phone firm fingered for fiddling with performance figures – again

Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has had the shine taken off its latest launches with tests that indicate it is once again trying to fiddle the figures on benchmark results, throttling real-world performance considerably compared to synthetic workloads. OnePlus hit the market in 2014 with the launch of the OnePlus One, under …

[Anonymous Coward]

this isn't even the first time it's been caught doing exactly the same thing.

clearly enough idiots keep buying into this 0.001 percentage 'advantage' shit, if the brand keeps doing it. On one side, I don't care, on the other hand, to see a brand lying and getting away with it...

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: 85% ≠ 0.001%

Run on A72 and X1 cores for the performance reviews then switch to a single A52 for real customers. The complaint is an "85% drop in performance". I assume the mean ⅙ of the speed.

(On the other hand if that drastic loss of performance is so difficult to spot then it may have a similar value to a 0.001% advantage)

[Chris 239]

Bugger, shattering my bubble...

I'm typing this on my 4 year old OnePlus 5 and have to say until now I've been more than happy with it.

It still pisses all over my <1 yr old Samsung A50 work mobile in performance, battery life, charging speed and reliability.

It's been updated several times and is on Android 10 so support seems ok to me.

[DF118]

Re: Bugger, shattering my bubble...

Same. Work Samsung A40 is infuriatingly slow, plus the Samsung bloatware, unwanted apps and OS overlay are all, frankly, horrible.

Personally idc if OnePlus have been fiddling the numbers, although with the prices they're at now I'll almost certainly never buy one new again. Luckily I just picked a mint 8 Pro for £250 and if that lasts me as long as my 3 did (still going strong when it got nicked) then I'll be happy.

The only thing the Sammy has going for it over both my OnePlus handsets is its size. If OnePlus made a smaller handset I'd go for that in a heartbeat. The big screen is nice for browsing and PDF manuals but the ability to have it in a pocket and not feel like I'm going to snap it in two every time I have to shoehorn myself in under some desk or the back of an equipment rack would be nicer.

[TeeCee]

Cyanogen Mod?

Cobblers, cobblers and thrice cobblers.

OnePlus originally used Cyanogen OS, Cyanogen's commercial offering based on the hobbyist Mod. Unfortunately, Cyanogen then came over all venally stupid and did an exclusive deal with some Indian mob. OnePlus were forced to change or face being shut out of the Indian market.

OnePlus had the last laugh when Cyanogen went comprehensively titsup.com when their Indian connection proved to be rather less lucrative than they'd been led to believe.

[mark l 2]

I have been considering getting a Oneplus phone as my next handset as they are pretty well supported by LineageOS so you can extend their life for quite a few years after OnePlus have stopped providing updates.

[elsergiovolador]

Spying

Are people not alarmed by how many new sensors each phone generation gets?

They get your fingerprints, your facial features, your movement, your vitals, your voice, photos of things you love and care about, 3d snapshots of spaces you live in... Then your thoughts, your wants...

These things then likely get transmitted to the communist regime and dissected.

We are then flooded with even more garbage that people think they want or need and our wealth slowly flows east, while we are busy consuming and dumbing down our society.

One or two generations and we will be no more.

[jemmyww]

So what is happening is that OnePlus have fiddled with the scheduler to add a list of apps that are denied access to the faster cores -those apps apparently being both the most popular from the store and their own apps.

What's interesting, and what this article doesn't mention, is that those apps still get boosted to the performance cores when you interact with the phone.

So you're reading a website and it stops Chrome going full pelt, but when you click or scroll it can speed up. Obviously this messes with chrome benchmarks which are hands off. But it does seem like maybe they're onto something there seeing as nobody noticed until now.

[terry 1]

I miss my OPO

I had one of the Oneplus Ones, about a year after they come out. It ticked all the boxes until 2018 when I needed an obscure android feature which it didn't have (i'm really struggling to remember what it was, but something to do with the calling side and was hidden) and went to Samsung S9+. First thing that surprised me was the S9 was no faster than the OPO, it still grinds along today.

I had been looking to go back to oneplus but the cost doesn't justify replacing a working phone that does everything I need it to do.

For the record, the OPO is still going strong, my lads get my hand me downs and I often wonder if I should do a swap with him.

[_LC_]

This is a Qualcomm thing …

This has happened in the past with Western companies shipping Qualcomm phones as well. Though not as selectively (which is less damaging, btw.).

Whenever they lose touch with the competition, Qualcomm delivers veritable toasters that only get their performance by burning enormous amounts of energy.