Samsung has issued a new FAQ on the recent app throttling controversy that’s affecting some Galaxy S22 models.
Last week it was discovered that Samsung was throttling the performance of some of its flagship phones for thousands of apps. Twitter detectives uncovered a list of some 10,000 non-gaming apps that were subject to performance limits by Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS), including some of Samsung’s own.
One of the big sticking points was that none of the usual benchmarking apps were on this throttling list.
Samsung quickly moved to assure its users that it was preparing a software update that would grant more control over a Samsung phone’s performance.
Now Samsung has issued a follow-up FAQ in its native South Korea that addresses some of the terms and apparent misconceptions surrounding the controversy.
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It defines GOS (via Google Translate) as “a service that monitors the state of the phone and provides the optimal state to prevent stuttering, excessive performance degradation, and power consumption when running game apps.”
Samsung says that GOS doesn’t adversely affect non-gaming gaming apps, and that the list of 10,000 apps at the heart of the controversy “is for the purpose of quickly determining whether a newly installed app is a game or not, and has nothing to do with GOS.”
On the slippery topic of why benchmarking apps aren’t included in this list, Samsung states that benchmarking tools aren’t gaming apps, so weren’t covered by GOS.
The company’s new Game Launcher toggle will apparently boost game frame rates by around 10fps.
Samsung also claims that there used to be a way to bypass GOS, but that the company blocked this off in One UI 4.0 released in November 2021, before strengthening these countermeasures in One UI 4.1 when it landed in February.
Samsung also confirmed that it would “update the optimization software” for older models too.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
