Our smartphones have become incredibly powerful over the past few years, to the point where, in many cases, we don’t really take full advantage of the raw horsepower of these devices in everyday use. However, it appears that Samsung has been throttling the performance of thousands of apps in the name of improving game performance.
Samsung phones ship with the Game Optimizing Service app preinstalled as a system app – we’ve confirmed it’s installed on the Galaxy S22+, as shown below. It cannot be disabled. The exact purpose of the app is not well described anywhere, but its name definitely means that the app is used to improve gaming performance.
But as One Twitter user points outwith long support route From frustrated Samsung Galaxy device owners in Korea (via Android salad), Samsung appears to be using this app to “improve” the performance of thousands of non-gaming apps. When the application is in the Game Optimizing Service list, its performance is limited, such as Featured by YouTuber Who changed the 3DMark performance test app’s package name to trick Samsung into restricting it, and Results Beautiful tell us.
The list includes very popular apps like Instagram, Netflix, TikTok and even some Google apps. Samsung has also included some of its own apps including Pay, Secure Folder, and others. In all, the list of apps affected by Game Optimizing Service appears to be around 10,000, but it excludes benchmarking apps like 3DMark, GeekBench, and others.
Update 3/3: On the Samsung Members app in Korea, Samsung has responded to this situation. A rough translation of the notice from Dohyun Kim on Twitter reads:
Welcome. It’s Samsung. We are constantly trying to expand the choice for our users and deliver the best performance that approximates customer reviews. GOS (Game Optimization Service) for Samsung Galaxy S22 series is pre-installed to optimize CPU and GPU performance to prevent overheating when playing the game for a long time.
To meet the modern needs of various customers, it is planned to update the Game Booster lab to provide an option to prioritize performance, as soon as possible.
Then, we will do our best for customers’ satisfaction and safety by listening to their opinions. Thanks
While this rough translation doesn’t provide much context as to why Samsung does this, the company hints at this part of why it prevents “overheating” during gaming. The response does not address why other Android apps are affected.
It has also been claimed by Max Weinbach since then Twitter Performance Mode disables most of these improvements.
The the reason This hasn’t been officially specified by Samsung, but it’s very easy to assume that it’s about improving battery life. Limiting the performance of an application that doesn’t really need the full CPU or GPU power of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor or other chips will result in better endurance. OnePlus gave this excuse when he was arrested He did the exact same thing last yearwhile promising to make the behavior optional in future updates.
samsung has not yet commented on these results.
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