Samsung benchmark cheating Archives - Gizmochina

Samsung CEO apologizes to users over GOS controversy

Sudhanshu — Fri, 18 Mar 2022 19:15:14 +0000

Earlier this month, Samsung got into hot waters over the GOS performance throttling fiasco. The company was basically found to be artificially limiting the performance of over 10,000 apps through GOS (Game Optimizing Service) including system apps, Google apps, and numerous third-party apps by over 56%. The GOS comes pre-installed in many Samsung smartphones including their latest flagship line, the Galaxy S22 series.

The kicker was that these limitations excluded benchmarking apps, which meant that the devices were showing performance that was actually not representative of real-world performance. As a result, Samsung’s last four flagship smartphones were kicked off the popular benchmarking site, Geekbench.

After being caught, Samsung quickly acknowledged the issue stating that the GOS is meant to optimize CPU and GPU performance to prevent excessive heating and increase the battery life of smartphones. Following this, the company started rolling out software patches to smartphones affected by the GOS limitations essentially undoing the limitations imposed before.

Now, at the recent annual Samsung shareholders meeting, the company’s VC and CEO Jong-Hee Han has issued an official apology to Samsung users over the GOS controversy. The chief executive admitted Samsung did not appreciate customer concerns and said Samsung will “listen to customers more closely to prevent such an issue from happening again”.

The update has still not reached all regions but when it does, it’ll be interesting to see how the Samsung Galaxy S22 series, especially the Galaxy S22 Ultra‘s battery performance is impacted, which has previously been praised for offering extraordinary battery life.

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Samsung rolls out GOS update in South Korea to undo performance throttling

Sudhanshu — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 15:54:59 +0000

Last week, Samsung was found to be artificially limiting the performance of over 10,000 apps through GOS (Game Optimizing Service) including system apps, Google apps, and numerous third-party apps which the company later came out and confirmed.

The Korean giant stated that the GOS is meant to optimize CPU and GPU performance to prevent excessive heating and increase the battery life of smartphones. These limitations however do not apply to benchmarking apps, which led Geekbench to delist the last four generations of Samsung flagships from its rankings.

South Korea has launched the GOS firmware for the S22 series, and the game performance is unblocked. pic.twitter.com/NOc5bAZ1gW

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) March 10, 2022

Now, as promised before, Samsung has started pushing out a patch that sees these artificial limitations completely removed. The patch is currently going live in South Korea in waves via an OTA update. So it’s only a matter of time before the update hits the devices of users around the globe.

As we know, the latest Samsung flagship offered an exceptional battery life through normal use and long gaming scenarios. So enthusiasts, as well as normal users would be interested to see how much of a difference does removal of the GOS limitations makes on the battery life.

Heating will also be something to take note of now that the Galaxy S22 Ultra won’t be as strictly throttled while performing demanding workloads.

Geekbench kicks multiple Galaxy flagships off its benchmark charts following throttling debacle

Zohaib Ahmed — Sat, 05 Mar 2022 08:32:38 +0000

Amid record-breaking Galaxy S22 sales, Samsung now finds itself in the midst of a scandal-like situation involving benchmark cheating, threatening the so far excellent response for its new flagships. The company was recently found to be artificially limiting system performance of its Galaxy phones on a list of 10,000 apps. And as if the resultant outrage wasn’t enough, benchmarking utility Geekbench has now announced the removal of several Galaxy flagships from its Android Benchmark charts.

The performance throttling, or ‘optimization’ as Samsung puts it, is managed by the GOS service. This service has been cited by Geekbench in a tweet that stated that throttling was discovered to be done on the basis of application identifiers and not application behavior.

Following extensive internal testing, Geekbench determined that the following models use GOS:

Samsung Galaxy S22 (all models)
Samsung Galaxy S21 (all models)
Samsung Galaxy S20 (all models)
Samsung Galaxy S10 (all models)

Consequently, all of these handsets were removed from the Android Benchmark chart on the Geekbench Browser. This has likely been done because their scores did not reflect the performance one expects and because the entire thing is rather unfair.

Another interesting bit to note here is that the list excludes the Galaxy S22 series despite Samsung confirming that the lineup comes with GOS, at least in South Korea. The reason for this is unclear at the moment.

Regardless, Samsung has issued a statement saying that it’s planning to update the Game Booster Lab as soon as possible to offer an option to prioritize performance.

Samsung confirms smartphone performance throttling, patch in works

Sudhanshu — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 15:22:26 +0000

A couple of days ago, Samsung was found to be artificially limiting the performance of over 10,000 apps including system apps, Google apps, and numerous third-party apps with their Game Optimizing Service (GOS) which is often pre-installed on Galaxy smartphones.

The GOS is claimed to improve performance in games by preventing overheating and throttling issues, however, it appears to be more of a solution catered towards extending the battery life by restricting app performance. In tests conducted by a Korean Youtube, it was revealed that the GOS cuts down the performance of apps by over 56%. The Youtuber was able to achieve these results by changing the package name of the popular benchmarking app 3DMark (which GOS does not limit the performance of) to Genshin Impact, which is mentioned in the list of apps that get their performance throttled.

Now, Samsung has released a statement (translated by known tipster Dohyun Kim) for its Korean users who uncovered the app throttling issue. The statement reads ” GOS (Game Optimizing Service) of the Samsung Galaxy S22 series is pre-installed to optimize CPU and GPU performance and prevent excessive heating when you play a game for a long time. To meet the current needs of different customers, we are planning to update the Game Booster Lab as soon as possible to offer an option to prioritize performance.”

So it appears that Samsung is working hard to quickly resolve this issue and will soon be pushing an update that will optimize the GOS to focus more on performance rather than saving battery.

It is still unclear as to how many devices are affected by this performance limitation of the GOS, however, it is confirmed to be preinstalled on the Samsung Galaxy S22 series devices along with the Galaxy S21 Plus and the Galaxy S20 FE.

Samsung found to be artificially limiting performance on 10,000 apps

Zohaib Ahmed — Thu, 03 Mar 2022 08:26:18 +0000

Samsung has been found to be putting performance limits on over 10,000 apps — a list that includes system apps, Google apps, and numerous third-party apps. The company says that this is to ensure the safety of consumers.

The limits are imposed through the Game Optimizing Service (GOS), which is supposed to prevent overheating and throttling issues by optimizing system performance. However, as Twitter user @GaryeonHan has discovered, the scope of the service extends far beyond games and meddles with apps too.

Samsung created an app called GOS and used the app to limit game performance, making the gaming experience worse. However, according to what the Korean community found out today, Samsung confirmed that it has put performance limits on more than 10,000 apps… pic.twitter.com/U58AreZZoo

— 한가련 (@GaryeonHan) March 2, 2022

GOS has been pointed out to be imposing performance limits even when a device’s temperature is within a reasonable range. And as if that isn’t enough, the service actually goes soft on benchmarking apps like Geekbench, omitting them from the throttle list. This is a clear indication of trickery, as scores through such apps wouldn’t be representative of the actual experience.

In short, as long as the GOS continues its imposition in its current form, users will not be getting the performance they paid for. If you are one of the customers brandishing a brand new Galaxy S22 model, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1/Exynos 2200 under the hood may not be outputting at its maximum.

Regardless, Samsung is investigating the GOS issue and approaching it as seriously as the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, according to information from Naver, so we should be getting a response from them soon.

Report: Huawei and OPPO phones cheat by detecting benchmark apps by name for higher scores

Jed John Ikoba — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:49:36 +0000

Benchmark apps are supposed to be reference points for comparison of smartphones which fall in the same category. Although there has always been the caveat that the result doesn’t always depict how the smartphones would perform in daily use but they are often relied upon by intending buyers who seek models that offer better performance based on benchmark score.

Quite unfortunately, benchmark apps have been the target of most Chinese phone manufacturers who have been accused and even confirmed to cheat. Huawei was earlier accused by Anandtech of cheating and once again further evidence has been adduced to show that Huawei and OPPO target benchmark apps by name. The team of analysts at First Post claimed to have subjected a couple of Huawei phones, including Honor phones and OPPO phones alongside the Realme models to benchmark test using public and private benchmark apps. The data obtained invariably confirmed what had been known before, that Huawei and OPPO tend to cheat benchmark apps. This they do by optimising their phone’s software to recognise benchmark apps by their names and thus run at optimal performance. This, in turn, results in the phones achieving higher scores in benchmark apps. For the avoidance of doubt, the public apps are those that can be downloaded on Google Play Store. On the other hand, the private apps were provided by the app creations and usually carry different names from their real names.

The most likely explanation for this is that when a known benchmark app is recognised as running, CPU throttling which is supposed to idle the cores to their minimum frequency when there’s no workload seems not to function. Thus, the phone’s CPU runs at its maximum clock speed. In one of the tests, one of the phones even got too hot to continue working while running the public benchmark app.

Well, except a superior argument is adduced by the phone makers, this looks to be the true situation. But is this really cheating? Sure, it is but smartphone manufacturers have argued that the act can’t really be called cheating since they all want their models to be at their best when tested. In addition, the maximum clock frequency of the chipset onboard the smartphones are not in anyway increased more than their stated maximums. Huawei and OPPO also claimed that the AI engine on their phones automatically puts the phone in the high-performance mode when it detects tough loads.

Hot Topic: Don’t You Judge A Smartphone By Its Benchmark, Be Better

Our verdict

This issue of cheating on benchmark app has been in the front burner for quite some time now. Last year, popular brand OnePlus as well as Meizu were accused of cheating on benchmarks to achieve higher results. This accusation doesn’t take away the fact that Huawei has got innovative models and that its Kirin 980 is one of the most powerful chipsets around. The Kirin 970-powered P20 Pro flagship still ranks as the best model in terms of camera performance on DXOMark. Perhaps that is because Apple’s latest iPhones are yet to be reviewed by DXO. Talking of Apple, we recall the company was embroiled in a controversial “Batterygate” scandal last year. Apple updated their software last year to slow down phones with weaker batteries since the powerful CPU could shut down phones with weak batteries. That isn’t exactly the same scenario but it still is deceit. Most owners of old iPhones would go get a new one instead of just swapping the old battery for a new one. Even market leader, Samsung was also caught in the web of benchmark cheating way back in 2013 alongside HTC. What this tells us is that we really shouldn’t rely so much on benchmark as they don’t indicate real-world performance.

(source)

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