Samsung Galaxy S22 Throttling Issue Has Been Fixed (Sort Of)

The Galaxy S22 series has some of the most powerful smartphones launched this year, with top-of-the-line specifications including the mighty Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset. A number of buyers of the flagship smartphone series, however, have reported an undue weakening in its vigor over the last few weeks. The culprit behind this weakening in performance was a Samsung-installed service called Game Optimization Service (GOS) that was found to be potentially throttling over 10,000 popular apps on Galaxy smartphones.

It was also suggested that Samsung effectively throttled performance of a variety of apps – not just games. Users found evidence of performance dips when running entertainment apps like YouTube and Netflix, social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, and some true oddities, like Microsoft Office.

Last week, Samsung acknowledged the lapse and promised to roll out a fix. Staying true to its word, the company has now begun rolling out a fix for the issue. Several Korean users on the Samsung community forums have confirmed their Galaxy S22 devices are now receiving a new software update to fix problems related to thermal throttling on the flagship smartphones.

As per the changelog in the screenshots shared by the users on the Samsung forums, the Galaxy S22 series gets improvements in the performance of the CPU and the GPU. Along with the boosted performance, the software update also brings a new mode in Game Optimization Service (GOS), giving users more control. The new "Game Performance Management Mode" (translated from Korean using Google Lens) allows users to disable power-saving features on various apps for steady and unswervingly solid performance.

Although the update is currently rolling out only in South Korea, i.e., Samsung's home country, we can expect global models (both Snapdragon and Exynos variants) to also get the same because the issue appears to plague all models alike.

This isn't the first instance that a company is found intentionally throttling the performance of their smartphones. In late 2017, Apple's infamous throttling of old iPhone models (via Geekbench) sparked a huge controversy when the company tried to defend its actions in favor of lengthening the battery life. The uproar forced Apple to add manual controls to turn throttling on or off starting iOS 11.3.

Last year, OnePlus found itself facing a similar situation when it was caught secretly throttling the performance on the OnePlus 9 series devices. Although the company initially reasoned its actions by attributing them to efforts towards longer battery backup and higher efficiency, the flak it received from the community of users forced it to include an option to disable the optimization feature in settings.

Samsung sails the same boat but the update is a spark of joy for those who have bought the Galaxy S22 for its sheer performance capabilities. 

Notably, popular benchmarking platform Geekbench also barred flagship Samsung Galaxy smartphones (Galaxy S10 and newer) from its database after findings about Samsung distorting the performance of various apps using its Game Optimization Service (GOS) service. It remains to be seen if Geekbench reverts the ban following Samsung's efforts to give users the choice between better battery and better performance.