Samsung has found itself in a spot of fan uproar regarding its phones, particularly the Galaxy S22 series, as it has been slowing down apps on its phones without telling anyone.
This isn't just wild fan speculation though, as a major player has weighed in. Benchmarking test Geekbench, which TechRadar uses for testing mobiles, and is one of the big players in the benchmarking scene, apparently agrees.
In a tweet, Geekbench announced that it had delisted all the recent Samsung Galaxy S phones from its charts, where it lists scores for phones to compare how powerful they are. That includes the Galaxy S10, S20, S21 and S22 phones.
After extensive internal testing we have determined the following Samsung Galaxy handsets use GOS:- Samsung Galaxy S22 (all models)- Samsung Galaxy S21 (all models)- Samsung Galaxy S20 (all models)- Samsung Galaxy S10 (all models)March 4, 2022
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This is a major vote of no confidence in Samsung, from a big player, and it's indicative of the growing uproar from phone fans regarding the company's throttling of its phones.
Samsung itself has commented on the issue, saying it plans to add a toggle for this feature so people can turn it off and on, but we're waiting on an update to bring this feature.
It's worth pointing out that, in a separate tweet, Geekbench confirmed that it hadn't found any issues in the last generations of Galaxy Note phones, so the issue seems tied just to the flagship Galaxy S devices.
TechRadar reached out to Samsung for comment when news first broke, and hasn't heard back so far.
The story so far
The throttling debacle began when fans realized that Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service app was reducing the processing power used by certain apps. This included loads of big games, but not benchmarking apps, so doing a benchmark test would provide you an inaccurate measure of how much power you were getting when gaming.
Sure, most people wouldn't notice this slight reduction in power, as most mobile games are optimized to require minimal power. But if you're paying lots of money for a phone with a top chipset, you want to enjoy it.
Samsung has commented on the matter, but it didn't say why the throttling took place – it's likely to conserve battery life though.
We say that because OnePlus was accused of doing the exact same thing in 2021 – it explained that this was to reduce battery drain from intensive apps, though after the backlash it coalesced and offered an option to switch this off.
The ball is in Samsung's court now to introduce the ability to switch off this throttling to its phones, and we're hoping for an update in a timely manner to bring it.
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