Samsung says an update is coming to address throttling issue

Samsung officially addressed reports that its ‘Game Optimizing Service’ (GOS) software was throttling performance in thousands of apps. The company says an update with an option to disable GOS is on the way.

In a statement to The Verge, Samsung spokesperson Kelly Yeo said:

“We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps. Our priority is to deliver the best mobile experience for consumers. The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve a [sic] great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps.”

The response comes after reports claimed several Samsung phones throttled the performance of some 10,000 apps, which included social media services like Instagram and TikTok, games such as Genshin Impact, and more.

GeekBench delisted Galaxy S devices impacted by GOS throttling

The throttling did not apply to benchmarking apps, which meant results from those apps didn’t reflect real-world performance. That led GeekBench, one of the more popular benchmarking services, to delist Galaxy S devices ranging back to the S10 series for “benchmark manipulation.” It’s worth noting that Galaxy Note and Galaxy A series phones are not included in this and don’t seem to have the same GOS throttling.

Moreover, Android Police analyzed the GOS code and noted that the throttling is quite sophisticated. GOS appears to balance various parameters, including temperature, expected battery level, CPU speed, and predicted FPS benefits when determining what resources a game gets. In other words, the tuning happening with GOS likely varies between different games and apps, as well as devices.

Along with the statement offered to The Verge, Samsung confirmed the authenticity of a statement shared to the Samsung Members app that was translated to English and shared widely on Twitter.

An official announcement from Samsung regarding the GOS issue: pic.twitter.com/BWT8Z6jcEB

— Dohyun Kim (@dohyun854) March 3, 2022

As for when users can expect an update, Samsung hasn’t yet shared a timeline.

Several publications have drawn parallels to OnePlus, which was caught in a similar situation last year. OnePlus tried to explain away the throttling as a battery life optimization feature before ultimately adding an option to let users turn it off.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of this is the lack of transparency. In both cases, I think if OnePlus and Samsung had been upfront with users, said the phones included a throttling mechanic to extend battery life, and provided an option to enable it or not, there wouldn’t have been a big debacle. The secrecy, however, soured people on the feature.

Source: The Verge