Samsung caught throttling 10,000 phone apps—and its own home screen

Samsung is once again in hot water over how it treats benchmark apps. This time, the company is accused of throttling 10,000 Android apps—but not benchmark apps. It sounds like the scheme OnePlus was caught running last year. Instead of boosting the SoC speeds when a benchmark app is running, Android OEMs are now turning down phone performance any time a benchmark app isn't running. It's like benchmark cheating but in reverse.

Samsung's throttling app is called the "Game Optimizing Service." Users of the Korean message board Clen.net found wildly different benchmark scores depending on whether benchmark apps had their original names or not. By changing the package names of popular benchmark apps—thereby making the "Game Optimizing Service" treat a benchmark app like a normal app—scores dropped anywhere from 13 to 45 percent on the Galaxy S10, S20, S21, and the new S22. Normally, the throttling behavior is not user-controllable, but the users are tricking the service by modifying apps.

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https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/03 ... dA5x_1Tge8

Samsung has addressed reports that it is throttling the performance of thousands of popular apps, saying a software update will return control to users.

“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,” said Samsung spokesperson Kelly Yeo in a statement to The Verge.

Samsung’s response follows reports that its phones are throttling the performance of around 10,000 apps, including social media services like Instagram and TikTok, as well as games like Genshin Impact. But the software didn’t appear to affect popular benchmarking apps like 3DMark, which means benchmarks may not accurately reflect the real-world performance of the phones.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/4/22961 ... te-disable