It was discovered earlier this week that Samsung’s GOS (Games Optimization Service) was artificially slowing down apps. The service throttles both CPU and GPU performance for over 10,000 apps that even include the likes of TikTok and Instagram.
What stood out was that GOS wasn't slowing down benchmark apps. This shady behavior has already made fans furious. Popular smartphone benchmarking service Geekbench has now confirmed that its banning select Samsung phones over this app throttling.
Geekbench is booting Samsung devices from its browser
GOS slows down GPU and CPU performance on Samsung smartphones for games and apps. Despite running powerful hardware, these devices thus prevent users from extracting the best performance from them. Benchmark apps like 3D Mark and Geekbench remain untouched. So when the user runs a benchmark, the CPU and GPU are allowed to run at peak performance.
Geekbench has confirmed that it's going to delist the new Galaxy S22 series from the Geekbench Browser in addition to the entire Galaxy S10, Galaxy S20 and S21 series. It's not banning the Galaxy Note and A series since they don't appear to be impacted by GOS. A statement explained further:
GOS decides to throttle (or not to throttle) applications using application identifiers and not application behavior. We view this as a form of benchmark manipulation as major benchmark applications, including Geekbench, are not throttled by this service.
Samsung has responded to the controversy by saying that GOS is used to prevent its devices from overheating. It did confirm that a software update will be released in the future to add a Performance Priority button. If enabled, the option will force GOS to prioritize peak performance over everything else.
What it didn't explain is whether this button will apply the setting side-wide or will users have to manually select the option for every app that they don't want to be throttled. It also begs the question, would Samsung have committed to providing this update if users hadn't discovered what GOS was doing?
Be that as it may, Samsung joins others like OnePlus who have had devices delisted from Geekbench for also throttling apps.
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