HIGHLIGHTS
- A new Samsung Korea FAQ provides a full reaction to GOS.
- The business also explained why it has a list of 10,000 applications.
- It also provided a sad reason for the absence of benchmark applications from GOS.
Last week, Samsung made news for all the wrong reasons when it was revealed that the firm was restricting games via its Game Optimizing Service (GOS) but not benchmark applications. Furthermore, a list of 10,000 applications that were purportedly throttled emerged online, with the majority of them not being games to begin with.
Samsung has now posted a FAQ on the GOS fiasco on its Korean-language support website. The company reiterates in the machine-translated FAQ that GOS "optimises" CPU and GPU performance to reduce excessive heat.
Samsung clarifies list of apps
It also confirms that a software upgrade for the Game Launcher is on the way, which will add a performance priority toggle to the Game Booster settings suite, with customers expecting a 10-frame-per-second gain in at least one game.
Surprisingly, Samsung said that a list of 10,000 applications that appeared online was not a list of GOS-threatened apps. Instead, it said that the list was created "so that a newly installed software may easily determine if it is a game or not."
Samsung GOS and benchmark apps
The fact that benchmark applications were not subjected to the same throttling methods was a disheartening turn of events, but the business addressed its position here:
That's not exactly sound logic, given that benchmark results are frequently used to assess smartphone performance. As a result, these benchmarks would not accurately reflect real-world performance.
It's worth recalling that OnePlus faced similar criticism for the OnePlus 9 Pro after it was revealed that it was not just slowing applications but also excluding numerous benchmark apps. In fact, an Android Authority poll conducted at the time revealed that almost three-quarters of respondents would not buy a phone that throttled performance for longer battery life.
Circumventing GOS and warranties
Samsung also acknowledged that it began blocking GOS circumvention in One UI 4.0 last year and increased its vigilance with One UI 4.1 last month. The business stated in the FAQ that it is currently contemplating removing these protections so that consumers may easily disable GOS again.
Furthermore, the business tried to allay worries that it would not provide free repairs due to overheating if customers picked the impending performance priority option. It was highlighted that free servicing would still be provided if the phone was still under warranty.
Finally, Samsung stated that additional Galaxy phones running GOS (other than the S22 series) will receive updated optimization software. This presumably suggests that these phones will have a performance priority option.
