Much like Samsung, Xiaomi was also caught slowing its phones down in certain apps recently. This was originally reported by Geekbench co-founder John Poole, who claimed that Xiaomi is limiting performance based on app names.
It was observed that the Xiaomi Mi 11 was reducing performance by up to 30% once Geekbench was renamed for Fornite.
Xiaomi has now officially responded to this controversy. Here is what the official statement says:
Xiaomi applies temperature management strategies to ensure an optimal product experience, especially with demanding apps that are often used for extended periods of time. On many of our devices, we offer 3 types of performance modes, allowing users to adjust the balance between performance and energy efficiency at the system level. All optimizations related to application performance weigh many essential factors, such as power consumption, performance, and thermal impact.
This confirms that Xiaomi is, in fact, throttling performance on its smartphones since the allegations were not denied. Just like Samsung, Xiaomi says the “temperature management strategies” exist to adjust power consumption and performance order to “ensure an optimal product experience.”
Xiaomi is also implying that the performance limitations can be bypassed to an extent with the built-in performance modes. Switching to performance mode should resolve the issue to a certain degree, but at the cost of battery life and heat management.
It is worth mentioning that these performance modes only exist in high-end Xiaomi phones, so the app-based throttling is likely just a premium phone affair, but there is no confirmation yet.