What you need to know
- Apps and games on many of Samsung's best phones are seeing reduced performance because of the Game Optimizing Service.
- Samsung says it's working to tweak the service and offer users more control over this process.
- Optimization occurs when phones get hot, so it's not clear how much control users will have.
When you buy a brand new smartphone — especially a premium one like the Galaxy S22 Ultra — you expect the best performance out of your apps and games. While that's certainly the case most of the time, the Game Optimization Service on these phones ensures that the phone's performance takes a back seat when the phone heats up.
Samsung is reportedly throttling the Galaxy S22 and many of the other best Samsung phones with this service. A list of over 10,000 apps and games was found to be throttled, even though Samsung claims the service is only supposed to throttle games.
Thankfully, a Samsung representative told Android Central that this issue should be a temporary one and that reprieve is coming soon.
“Our priority is to deliver the best mobile experience for consumers. The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps. We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps.”
That means Galaxy smartphone users will soon have greater control over their device's performance, adding yet another feather in Samsung's proverbial cap of its highly-customizable OS. Throttling means that the processor speed drops in order to help lower the temperature of the device, so it's not clear what software options Samsung would offer to help alleviate any possible thermal issues.
While GOS has been on other Samsung phones, the throttling issue seems to be more noticeable on the Galaxy S22 line for two main reasons. First, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor inside many Galaxy S22 models can perform up to 30% faster than the previous generation, so any drop in performance is immediately noticeable.
Second, that same processor seems to have some thermal issues that cause the phone to heat up a bit more than previous models. While throttling is likely something unnoticeable most of the time, the possibility that apps or games could see up to a 50% performance degradation when used over a long period of time is certainly something any user would notice. Samsung's new solution will, hopefully, clear this up.
