Xiaomi Might Be Throttling Some Apps

Geekbench’s co-founder John Poole, via a recent tweet, suggested that Xiaomi is the latest candidate to have throttled app performance. Poole found out about this on a Mi 11 model, which had both the original Geekbench app and a fake one too. Here are results from a Xiaomi Mi 11 running Geekbench and Geekbench disguised as Fortnite. Single-core scores are 30% lower, and multi-core scores are 15% lower, in the Fortnite build. https://t.co/wGAnSi73gR— John Poole (@jfpoole) March 27, 2022
The fake one, which is Geekbench disguised as Fortnite, showed a 30% lower single-core score, while the multi-core score was 15% lower. It is revealed that similar behavior has been observed with the Genshin Impact, which was disguised by the Geekbench app.
Hence, there are chances that Xiaomi is specifically throttling the performance of gaming apps, mainly to avoid heating issues and improve the battery life of their devices. It is also assumed that the throttling on Xiaomi phones only happens when Geekbench disguises itself as a gaming app and doesn’t have performance issues when not. Although, we do not have anything concrete to prove this. There’s a possibility that other apps might be throttled too. Moreover, it remains unknown if this is the case for just Mi 11 phones or has been extended to other models (maybe Redmi too) as well. To get a better idea, we need to wait for a word from Xiaomi, and we will update you with the details.
This is not the first time Xiaomi was accused of such a thing. A report by AnandTech last year suggested that the Xiaomi 11T Pro was also found doing the same thing. Maybe, Xiaomi finally needs to address this!
As for what happened in the recent past, Samsung’s app throttling was due to a system app called Game Optimization Service (GOS). Following the issue going viral, Samsung admitted to its deed and released an update that focused on better CPU and GPU performances. And a year ago, OnePlus was also in the news for a similar thing, wherein it throttled the performance of nearly 300 apps on the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro.