Geekbench bans four generations of Galaxy devices due to benchmark manipulation
bottom line: Earlier this week, users discovered that Samsung was restricting thousands of apps on its flagship Galaxy S series phones, including the latest Galaxy S22, while conveniently excluding popular benchmarking tools like Geekbench. In response, Geekbench developers have banned the last four generations of Samsung Galaxy devices from using their services for manipulating benchmark results.
Thermal throttling on phones is nothing new. Most modern devices shut down when their processor gets dangerously hot, which helps prevent overheating and prolongs battery life. However, after the recent launch of the Samsung Galaxy S22 series, we reported that several users on Twitter and YouTube have noticed that the built-in Game Optimization Service (GOS) is proactively slowing down common applications without the ability to disable performance. decline.
This was confirmed by S22 owners on Korean social media and forums, who noticed that apps were loading slower than expected.
Despite ostensibly being a “games” optimization service, users have noticed that only a third of the titles on the list are games, and the rest are standard applications. There are about 10,000 affected apps, including popular streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, social media tools like TikTok, and even Samsung’s own home launcher. The list does not include standard benchmarking tools such as Geekbench, Antutu, 3DMark and GFXBench.
Geekbench developers responded: ban the last four generations of Samsung’s flagship phones from the comparison table to manipulate benchmarks, and further research showed that GOS has been active since the Galaxy S10.
“Earlier this week, we became aware of the Samsung Game Optimization Service (GOS) and how it limits the performance of games and apps. GOS decides to restrict (or not restrict) applications using application identifiers, not their behavior. – Geekbench. tweeted comes out on Friday. The company added that it views the practice as “a form of test manipulation.”
After extensive internal testing, we have determined that the following Samsung Galaxy phones use GOS:
– Samsung Galaxy S22 (all models)
– Samsung Galaxy S21 (all models)
– Samsung Galaxy S20 (all models)
– Samsung Galaxy S10 (all models)— Geekbench (@geekbench) March 4, 2022
Geekbench notes that devices typically use behavior to throttle while GOS reduces performance depending on the application itself. Most of the benchmarks are for comparative use, giving consumers an idea of how different devices compare to each other in terms of performance. However, when a manufacturer proactively restricts general temperature applications, these numbers can no longer accurately reflect performance differences between devices.
According to edge, Samsung has promised to publish an update to the GOS that will allow users to directly tune application performance. “We value the feedback we receive on our products, and after careful consideration, we plan to release a software update soon to allow users to control performance when running gaming applications,” said Samsung’s Kelly Yeoh.
Geekbench policy prevents devices from being re-enabled in their services even after the issue is fixed, so Galaxy devices likely won’t be back in the benchmarks anytime soon.
This isn’t the first time a phone manufacturer has tried to manipulate benchmarks with this method. In July 2021, OnePlus was also found to slow down the performance of regular apps on the OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro. These devices were also subsequently delisted from Geekbench.
