Samsung Allegedly Throttling Performance of Over 10,000 Apps Likely To Preserve Battery Life
- Kyle Chua
- Mar 4, 2022
- 2 min read
Samsung is allegedly throttling the performance of certain apps on Galaxy smartphones likely to preserve battery life.
The South Korean tech company is apparently using its Game Optimizing Service (GOS) to set performance limits on up to 10,000 apps (see the full list here), a number that’s not limited to games, with the likes of Netflix, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook similarly being affected. Samsung’s own apps, such as Secure Folder, Samsung Cloud and Samsung Pay, among others, are also being throttled, Android Authority reports.
Not affected, however, are benchmark apps like 3DMark, GeekBench 5 and PCMark, which seemingly suggest that Samsung is cheating benchmark scores and misrepresenting the capabilities of its products.
What’s interesting is that changing the package name of a benchmark app tricks GOS into thinking that it’s a normal app. A Korean YouTuber demonstrated this by renaming the 3DMark package to Genshin Impact, a popular game that is included among the list of apps affected by the issue. The package was indeed throttled and posed dramatically lower benchmark scores.
The performance metrics could reportedly drop as low as 45% on some apps, as observed on different Galaxy devices, including the S20, S21 and the newly released S22.
The issue was spotted by Korean users, who flooded various online forums, including Samsung’s own community pages, with complaints about wildly varying benchmark scores. One user compared the issue to buying a sports car and not being able to take it beyond a certain speed limit.
While there are benefits to throttling the performance of apps, manufacturers usually give users the option to choose between prioritizing performance or battery life. And when customers are paying for flagship devices, they, of course, expect flagship performance. OnePlus recently admitted to throttling the performance of its smartphones to preserve battery life. It later tweaked the setting in response to the complaints it received.
Samsung is said to be already investigating the issue and is expected to officially address the matter soon.
Samsung is allegedly throttling the performance of over 10,000 apps on Galaxy phones likely to save battery life.
The company's Game Optimizing Service (GOS) can cap performance by up to 45% on some apps and the issue is not limited to games.
Samsung is reportedly already investigating the issue and is expected to officially address it soon.
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