The IT Nerd

Android Authority is reporting that Korean Twitter users have compiled a list of 10,000 apps that are marked as subject to “performance limits” imposed by Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service. But if you go through the list, you’ll note that apps like Microsoft Office apps, Netflix, Google Keep and TikTok are on the list. And those aren’t games. And what makes this worse is that Samsung own apps such as Samsung Cloud, and even the default phone dialer preloaded on Samsung phones are affected. But benchmark apps such as Geekbench aren’t affected.

I can see three possibilities for this:

• Samsung could use the list to keep battery drain down on some of the world’s most popular apps, artificially inflating battery runtime tests performed by users and themselves for marketing purposes.
• Samsung could also be attempting to game the benchmarking tests commonly performed on tests and not delivering that speed to all apps evenly.
• This could be a coding mistake that Samsung somehow needs to fix assure customers that they aren’t trying to cheat.

It isn’t clear which this is. But when Samsung was approached about this issue, this happened:

Samsung is apparently investigating the GOS issue pointed out below. According to information circulation on Naver, the company is conducting an internal investigation and approaching the issue as seriously as the Galaxy Note 7 debacle. Samsung is also expected to make an official announcement regarding the matter soon.

Clearly Samsung is aware how bad this looks. And I for one will be very interested in what they have to say on this as this is not a good look for Samsung.

This entry was posted on March 3, 2022 at 8:30 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Samsung. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.