South Korean smartphone giant Samsung was recently in the news for its flagship Galaxy S22 series launch. Now, several Korean netizens have pointed out that the company’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS) hamstrings CPU performance in the better interest of battery life.
Over the years, we have seen several Android smartphone OEMs throttle CPU performance and exclude benchmarking apps from the list, creating a potentially misleading picture of their phone’s real-world performance. OnePlus was caught “optimizing” popular apps with the OnePlus 9 Pro last year.
This year, several Samsung device owners and people on Twitter have called out GOS to let benchmarks run unhindered but optimize other apps to use fewer CPU resources and preserve battery life. The smartphone maker’s Korean Community forum is also flooded with several pages of complaints pointing to the same issue.
Samsung created an app called GOS and used the app to limit game performance, making the gaming experience worse. However, according to what the Korean community found out today, Samsung confirmed that it has put performance limits on more than 10,000 apps… pic.twitter.com/U58AreZZoo
— 한가련 (@GaryeonHan) March 2, 2022
The netizens allege that GOS handicaps around 10,000 apps because it doesn’t let them utilize the smartphone’s resources to the fullest. The list includes several popular social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft’s Office apps, TikTok. Even Samsung’s apps and some others are not spared. Google Keep, Netflix, Samsung Cloud, Samsung Pay, Samsung Pass, Bixby, and the Dialer app have also made it to the list.
Meanwhile, Samsung’s system ensures benchmarks apps like 3DMark, PCMark, and GeekBench 5 paint an accurate picture of the phones’ performance because they don’t feature on the list. However, there seems to be no way to switch off or disable GOS.
Korean YouTuber Square Dream tested the hypothesis as well. They changed the package name for the 3DMark benchmark app to reflect Genshin Impact (a popular videogame restricted by GOS) and ran the benchmark. The modified benchmark app returned a score significantly lower than the original 3DMark score.
AndroidAuthority reports that Samsung is investigating the issue and an internal investigation is underway to approach the matter seriously. Samsung could make an official announcement to clear the air soon.
What are your thoughts on “optimization” to preserve battery life? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
