So Samsung has found itself in the midst of controversy here. The Galaxy S22 Ultra is their latest and greatest phone that packs the fastest processor available in Android today. But it looks like Samsung is not letting you use the device at its full potential. In other words, Samsung is throttling the performance of their phones.
And not just the Galaxy S22 Ultra, they are doing it to every Samsung phone since the Galaxy S7 which was launched in 2016. You heard that right, Samsung has an app called Game Optimization Service that comes preinstalled on Galaxy phones. And unlike the name, the app actually limits the performance of gaming apps.
And not just games, Users on the Korean tech forum have discovered that this game optimization service app limits as many as 10,000 popular apps, including Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoft Office, Spotify, and more. And interestingly, there are no benchmark apps are included in the list. Samsung does this to keep the temperatures of the handset low and also to increase the battery life. If you remember, this sounds similar to what OnePlus did with the OnePlus 9 Pro last year where they also throttled popular apps to increase the battery life.
But in reality, this is not the usual throttling, it’s way more sophisticated than that. Max Winebach from Android police mentions that this game optimization service app balances multiple parameters like temperature, expected battery level at different times, CPU speed, and predicted FPS benefits when determining what sorts of resources a given game gets. In simple terms, he calls this optimization to improve the user experience.
Every smart company does this. The only difference is that people figured out exactly how Samsung is pulling this off. Samsung actually responded to this saying that this app optimizes CPU and GPU performance to prevent heating issues during extended gaming sessions. While Samsung’s statement makes no mention of the app throttling issue, it does state that the firm is working on a software upgrade for the Game Launcher app that will include a performance priority mode toggle which you can turn it on or off.
You’ll be able to access this toggle in the game booster lab. With that being said, Do I think Samsung is wrong here? Well, you see Samsung is trying to find a balance between performance and battery life, and its strategy makes sense when you think about how people use smartphones. I mean apps like Instagram, Spotify, and more don’t need that insane power the latest Snapdragon and Exynos chips possess.
If these normal apps used all the power of the chipset, the battery life would be horrendous. So Samsung is totally right here in reducing system performance to increase battery life. But Samsung is totally wrong in throttling the performance in those high intensive games like genshin impact. Because these games are indeed resource hungry and they do need all the power to run smoothly.
You see what Samsung should have done is a) educate the consumers that they are doing this to improve the battery life and manage thermals. And B) Provide controls that override this behavior. Thankfully, they will enable the second option and will provide a performance priority mode in a setting that unlocks all the power of the chipset who needs it but will come with the cost of battery life.
Anyway, let me know what do you think about this? Do you think Samsung’s approach is the right one? And will you turn this toggle on when it’s being made available for faster performance but get slightly worse battery life? Let me know in the comments and as always I’ll see you tomorrow…peace out
