Samsung GOS Archives - Gizmochina

Samsung escapes penalties in Galaxy S22 GOS lawsuit without paying a cent

Debasish — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:16:02 +0000

Samsung just dodged a major legal blow over its Galaxy S22 lineup. A Seoul court has ruled on a class-action lawsuit filed by nearly 1,900 users who accused the company of hiding performance throttling tied to its Game Optimizing Service (GOS). The verdict is in, but it’s not what plaintiffs hoped for.

On June 12, 2025, the Seoul Central District Court dismissed the claims of 1,882 Galaxy S22 owners, each seeking 300,000 won (roughly $221) in damages. The plaintiffs alleged that Samsung misled buyers by promoting the S22’s gaming power, all while secretly capping performance through GOS.

For those unfamiliar, GOS is a software layer that throttles frame rates and responsiveness in high-performance games to control power consumption and overheating—especially critical for the S22’s Exynos variants, which were less power-efficient. Although GOS has been around since the Galaxy S7, Samsung made it mandatory in the S22 series, removing previous workarounds. That move triggered a backlash, as many felt the phone didn’t deliver the compute Samsung had advertised.

After more than three years in court, the judge acknowledged Samsung’s ads may have given users the impression of limitless performance, even though GOS placed real limits on certain demanding tasks. Still, the court ultimately sided with Samsung, ruling that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove financial loss or real impact.

One key point: the court said GOS only affects a small number of high-performance games and doesn’t interfere with most apps or daily usage. Without proof that users regularly relied on affected apps—or that they would have chosen a different phone if they’d known about GOS—the case didn’t hold up.

The court also rejected the idea that Samsung broke consumer protection laws by failing to disclose GOS, concluding that the feature likely wasn’t critical enough to influence the average buyer’s decision. In a final blow, the plaintiffs were ordered to cover all litigation costs, adding insult to injury. Samsung did eventually respond to the controversy back in 2022 with a software update that allowed users to adjust GOS settings.

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Samsung Galaxy S23 Series Can Run at Full Power While Gaming Thanks to GOS Toggle

Sudhanshu — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 14:31:16 +0000

Last year, Samsung got into hot waters with its users and the tech community as it was secretly throttling the performance of nearly 10,000 apps using its Game Optimizing Service (GOS). However, the kicker was that benchmarking apps were not being throttled by GOS, which can be seen as a blatant breach of trust. Worse yet, there was no way of disabling it manually.

Although a service like GOS made sense if you want to game for extended periods without burning your fingers on your smartphone or draining the battery too quickly, the app should never have interfered with non-gaming apps and should have allowed users to choose if they wanted to implement this low-performance mode.

Ever since this issue was brought to light, Samsung has made amends and has enabled a toggle within One UI that allows users to turn off GOS manually. By turning off Game Optimizing Service, users are able to access the full power of their chipsets in scenarios like gaming.

With Samsung launching the Galaxy S23 series last week, GOS has made a return of the device along with a toggle to turn it off. This means that users of the new Samsung flagships have the option to push their devices to the limit while gaming. This means that users can take full advantage of the supposedly more powerful custom Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipsets especially made for the Galaxy S23 series. We already know that these custom chips have an overclocked applied to their CPU as well as GPU. We recently reported that the Galaxy S23 Ultra’s GPU outperforms the one on the Apple A16 Bionic, which the current iPhones are using.

So should you try letting the beast loose? Well, Samsung does claim that they have made major improvements with cooling on their flagships. Specifically, the Galaxy S23 has 1.6 times better cooling than the Galaxy S22, the Galaxy S23+ has 2.8 times better cooling than its predecessor, and the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a 2.3 times better cooling system than the one found on the Galaxy S22 Ultra. So yes, the device will be able to handle the heat. That however doesn’t mean that your fingers won’t feel the heat as all that extra heat will likely be dissipated through the back panel.

Galaxy S22 series sales see decline in Korea following GOS-throttling debacle

Zohaib Ahmed — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 09:51:28 +0000

Samsung was caught red-handed last month limiting performance on the Galaxy S22 series through an application identifier-based list containing over 10,000 apps. Following the news, Geekbench kicked not just the latest flagship series but multiple older flagship models from the company off its benchmark charts.

As if that wasn’t enough bad news for Sammy, a new Korea Times report now shows that the controversy is taking its toll on the sales of the Galaxy S22 series in South Korea, leading to the company’s carrier partners sharply raising subsidies in order to raise demand.

Carriers KT and LG Uplus say they’ve increased subsidies for the Galaxy S22 and S22+ by up to 500,000 won (around $410), while subsidies for the Ultra model have already been raised. The subsidies now are more than triple the 150,000 won worth of subsidies offered previously.

Customers didn’t like what Samsung was doing here for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the workings of GOS were kept rather hush-hush, and it wasn’t possible to disable the service even if users wanted to. Samsung did roll out updates to address the thing but it clearly hasn’t been enough, as the home country sales figures suggest.

After all, the measure was rather devious as the 10,000 apps list included all but benchmarking apps, meaning benchmark scores weren’t representative of the actual performance. A local mobile carrier official is quoted as saying that “There is a view that the GOS issue adversely affects the sales of the S22.

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.