Samsung is embroiled in another scandal, this time involving the artificial slowdown of app performance on several of its phones, including the brand new Galaxy S22 series flagships. Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS), which comes pre-installed on select Samsung phones, is the main culprit here. The program lets you fine-tune system performance when gaming, and it claims to reduce and optimize heat generation to help you get more battery life out of your device.
The issue is that the service could be “optimizing” non-game apps, resulting in substantial performance decreases. Users are also not given the opportunity to turn off the app’s behavior, which exacerbates the problem.
Users on the South Korean tech site Meeco have collected a list of over 10,000 apps that are affected by Samsung’s GOS, including most Samsung and Google apps as well as some of the most popular apps like Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, and Microsoft Office. Benchmarking apps, on the other hand, appear to be immune to this power-saving strategy and run without throttling.
A South Korean tech YouTuber produced a video in which he runs the 3DMark benchmark on his Galaxy S22 Ultra with and without Samsung’s GOS, and the results show a considerable difference in scores. Surprisingly, the customer altered 3DMark’s software package name to Genshin Impact, which is on the list of 10,000 impacted apps, and his device immediately received worse results. With the service turned off, the phone scored 2,618 points and averaged 15.7 frames per second, whereas with it on, it scored only 1,141 points and averaged 6.8 frames per second.
In South Korea, Samsung acknowledged GOS “optimizes CPU and GPU performance on its Galaxy S22 series phones to reduce excessive heat during continuous games” in an official statement on its Members app.
The Game Launcher and Game Booster apps on the S22 series will also have a performance priority mode, according to Samsung. The fix should be available for older models as well. Surprisingly, the message makes no mention of the fact that benchmarking apps were not throttled by the CPU or GPU.
