OnePlus 10 Pro has a severe scrolling issue and makes the phone border unusable.
To put it simply, the phone exhibits huge stuttering and lags when scrolling through some apps. My understanding is that this is determined by how OnePlus has configured the dynamic refresh rate system on the display.
Before we go any further, here’s a demonstration of how it works. First, I’d like to try scrolling through an average Instagram timeline, which over time has been populated with more videos than photos. The meaning of this will be explained later.
Now here’s scrolling through Flamingo, a third-party Twitter app. Although Flamingo is no longer for sale on the Play Store, it continues to be updated.
Scrolling in the two apps is different but noteworthy in both cases. The important thing to note, however, is the small refresh rate counter in the top left corner of the phone screen.
To understand what’s going on, you need to know how the display is configured to work. The maximum refresh rate of 120Hz is not permanent and the display can drop to many other values depending on what is happening on the screen. Some of the values I’ve noticed include 90Hz, 60Hz, 30Hz, 5Hz, and even 1Hz. The reason for reducing the refresh rate is simply to save energy.
Compared to previous OnePlus phones, OnePlus 10 Pro is extremely aggressive when it comes to lowering the refresh rate. Unfortunately, it also tends to do this even when it shouldn’t.
One of the examples we have provided in our review is when you have Apple Music open and the lyrics scroll automatically across the screen. You’re not manually interacting with the screen, so it never hits the full 120Hz refresh rate. However, as the phone drops to aggressive 30Hz, automatic text scrolling feels remarkably unstable. The phone seems somewhat aware of motion on the screen and can go as high as 60Hz as text scrolls up, but it doesn’t every time and even if it does, 60Hz still feels noticeably worse than 120Hz.
However, the worst offenders are apps you actively interact with. Instagram is perhaps the best example of this; the app has static images and video elements. The software is designed to reduce the refresh rate when it detects an on-screen video at 30Hz or 60Hz depending on the video (OnePlus is not aware of 24/48 fps and 25/50 fps video, but that’s a discussion. for another day).
Now, every time you scroll through the timeline and a video appears, the display instantly drops to 60Hz or even 30Hz in an instinctive reaction. This happens while you are still actively interacting with the device, which makes the whole scrolling experience comically disastrous.
The 60fps video above should give you an idea of this, but it fails to capture what it feels like to be whipped between 120Hz, 60Hz, and even 30Hz back and forth with a single swipe of your finger. And it is the change that causes the most problems; while 60Hz by itself is not ideal, a constant 60Hz is perfectly usable. But being ping ponged between 60Hz and 120Hz as you swipe is really terrible and just not usable.
The example with Flamingo is particularly bad. Here, there are no video elements on the screen. There are videos, but they are not set to play automatically. However, the phone exhibits a strange springy effect when scrolling, where it clicks back and forth with a delayed response that’s hard to explain. It’s so bad that you can even see it in a 30fps video. The screen is in such a hurry to go down to 1Hz that it forgets that the user is still scrolling and also can’t go back fast enough.
While Instagram and Flamingo are two of the worst offenders I’ve ever encountered, scrolling is bad in other apps as well. The display will randomly stick to 60Hz mode for long periods of time while scrolling through apps, only to correct itself after a bit of scrolling. It’s often hard to tell what prompted the display to lower the refresh rate while in use, and it seems to have a mind of its own.
I won’t go into the point further as the two videos above are all you need to see. The problem is that the phone has experienced this problem since we first received it before its launch and the problem has persisted through two subsequent software updates (the phone is currently on A.13). The second update actually made things worse, especially in Flamingo, which was mostly usable before. As is often the case, we’ve raised the issue with OnePlus in the past, not to mention inclusion in our day one review.
This is an expensive phone and we expect a lot better. A problem like this wouldn’t be acceptable even on a budget device, so there’s no reason you should keep ignoring it on a flagship device.
At this point, all we can do is issue a PSA and advise against buying the phone until the problem is resolved. The purpose of this is to ensure that the company recognizes this and works on a solution. We will provide an update when that happens. Until then, caveat emptor.
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