After users finally started getting their hands on the Galaxy S22 series phones, complaints surfaced showing that these phones were not delivering the maximum performance their hardware would allow, due to Samsung's practices against some apps.
Some Samsung smartphones include a pre-installed app called Game Optimizing Service (GOS), whose function is to control the phone's resources (processor, GPU, screen refresh rate...) so that the phone does not overheat while playing games for a long time, according to Samsung. However, some users have discovered that this app limits the performance of many apps other than games as well.
Some sources say the number of apps that have been throttled by GOS is more than 10,000 apps, including some core Samsung apps (like the launcher, camera, contacts, and messaging app), Google apps like YouTube, Maps, and Chrome, as well as other popular apps like Snapchat, Microsoft Office, Netflix, TikTok, and others. In contrast, Game Optimizing Service does not throttle benchmarking apps like Geekbench and 3Dmark, which users saw as cheating on the part of Samsung.
GOS significantly throttles the games and applications it manages, resulting in a lower performance compared to the actual capabilities of the device on which those applications are installed.
Of course, this is not new in the smartphones universe, as companies such OnePlus and Apple have previously worked to deliberately reduce the performance of some of their devices, to help save and extend battery life, but some users do not seem to agree with that, as they believe that they have the right to benefit from the full capabilities of the device they purchased, especially if it is expensive, without any restrictions.
In response, Samsung released an official statement confirming that the Game Optimizing Service is designed to help gaming apps achieve great performance while effectively managing device temperature, and that GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps. Moreover, the company promises that it will release a software update soon so that users can control performance while running gaming applications.