After Samsung was caught throttling down the performance of its smartphones, it seems that even Xiaomi is also following the trend.
The unusual activity was spotted by Geekbench co-founder Jon Poole who says that some Xiaomi phones are able to throttle down their performance based on the application you run on them. It was identified that Xiaomi’s Mi 11 was able to perform normally when the Geekbench app was run normally.
However, the same app, when disguised as Fortnite or Genshin Impact showed signs of throttling. The benchmark app recorded a considerable 30 per cent dip in single-core and 15 per cent dip in multi-core performance.
This also happens when Geekbench is disguised as other games such as Genshin Impact.March 27, 2022
Though the Mi 11 is over a year old, hence it’s not clear if the phone was designed to behave differently based on the applications out of the box or was it forced to do so via a software update that landed later on.
However, folks at AndroidPolice have noticed a peculiar issue with Xiaomi’s latest flagship phones Xiaomi 12x and Xiaomi 12 Pro. Their test seems to suggest that these phones are programmed to perform better with benchmarking apps and some known games but were found to be throttling regular apps.
The publication used the Geekbench app disguised as a popular game, a browser, a streaming application etc apart from the regular Geekbench app. The difference between the performances was noticeable as the phones performed better when they recognized the Geekbench app and the game which resulted in higher benchmark scores compared to the regular applications.
AndroidPolice’s test showed that the Geekbench or Genshin Impact resulted in 50 per cent better single-core scores on the flagship phone. The report also suggests that the phone powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC showed more variance compared to the Snapdragon 888 powered phone.
Xiaomi was accused of throttling performance on the Xiaomi 11T Pro last year as well, which suggests that the company has been involved in activities that offer different performances based on the applications that you use.
Apart from Xiaomi and Samsung, various brands have been found doing this. OnePlus last year was also found doing so which resulted in its flagship phones getting removed from the benchmark platform.
While brands, in their defence have time and again stated that, throttling is done to control the heat generated by the SoC and to help extend the battery life, however, lack of transparency has been one of the major concerns here.
Since Xiaomi is currently spotted following similar tactics, there is a chance that it will be meted out with similar penalties that Samsung faced recently or OnePlus in the past.
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