In context: Following an in-depth performance review of the OP9 Pro by AnandTech, OnePlus was caught throttling the performance of various popular apps like Chrome, Twitter and WhatsApp. While the company admitted to putting these measures into place for squeezing out more efficiency, it now says that an upcoming feature in the OxygenOS 12 update will let users disable these 'optimizations' for better control over their devices' performance.
The OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro were taken off Geekbench's benchmark list a couple of weeks ago for their dodgy performance, brought to light by AnandTech's review of the OP 9 Pro. They discovered that most mainstream apps weren't able to properly utilize the Snapdragon 888's powerful Cortex-X1 core and were being assigned power-saving cores instead.
Following the controversy, OnePlus admitted to putting 'performance optimizations' in the devices for reduced power consumption. However, the company now says it'll include a new feature in the upcoming OxygenOS 12 update that will let users disable these optimizations, as noted in the following statement to Android Police:
Since different chips perform differently and we want to make sure to get the best performance and efficiency out of each one, we've implemented performance optimizations to varying degrees on the OnePlus 9R and Nord 2. However, given the clear feedback from users and media, our R&D team is currently working to add an option to let users turn on/off this optimized mode and have better control over the performance of their phones. We're targeting to have this solution ready with one of the first builds of OxygenOS 12.
It's also interesting to see that these optimizations aren't limited to OnePlus' flagship devices but are also present on the OP 9R and the upcoming MediaTek-powered OP Nord 2 to 'varying degrees.'
OxygenOS 12 is expected to arrive later this year, and OnePlus can expect most of its users to take advantage of this new feature immediately.