Samsung found itself in the midst of heated controversy last week when reports of alleged throttling began circulating on Korean technology forums. Dozens of users complained that Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS) limited performance within selected apps and games on their smartphones, some going back several generations. The company responded predictably, stating that the feature is intended to keep the CPU and GPU from overheating. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen phones artificially limit apps and games, OnePlus was caught out “optimizing” performance back in 2021.
It’s easy to see why so many Android enthusiasts are so outraged — you’re essentially paying for premium hardware performance that’s mostly inaccessible. In the case of a 3DMark benchmark, for example, the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s score supposedly drops nearly 50% with the optimization service force-enabled. While Samsung does deserve criticism for not disclosing this behavior, let’s try to understand why it went down this path in the first place.
