GOS saga: Samsung may face probe over misleading Galaxy S22 advertisement
It recently emerged that the last four Galaxy S flagships, including the Galaxy S22, are being held back by Samsung's Game Optimizing Service (GOS) app, which is only supposed to be activated during gaming sessions to prevent overheating issues but has been found to be limiting the performance of commonly used non-gaming apps as well. Some disgruntled owners are planning to sue the South Korean giant for this and it may also have to answer to Korean authorities.
GOS is not a new app but what's behind the uproar is that with the One UI 4.0 update, Samsung made it impossible for customers to disable it. GOS was said to be meddling with over 10,000 apps, more than 6,800 of which were apparently non-gaming apps such as YouTube and Microsoft Office.
What's worse, benchmarking apps which are used to test the processors and graphic systems in a device were not impacted by GOS and may have been overestimating the real performance of Samsung's phones by a wide margin.
Samsung has denied that GOS impacted non-gaming apps as well and has promised an update that will let users toggle the service off. This was not enough to appease everyone. Earlier, benchmarking platform Geekbench banned some Galaxy S phones and now South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports that some affected Galaxy S22 owners are preparing to sue the company (via Engadget).
They will be demanding 300,000 won (~$242) per person in damages. One of those people said that they are taking legal action against the company because they feel the over-the-top ads were misleading and made them buy a product with a price tag of over 1 million won (~$810).
Samsung had claimed that the Galaxy S22 would offer the "best performance ever" and a refresh rate up to 120Hz and even though it is one of the best phones around, the fact stands that consumers did not get what they paid for. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) is now expected to launch an investigation into the matter.
Samsung had previously argued that GOS couldn't be switched off because of safety reasons but has now done an about-face and is saying it will 'optimize the temperature control algorithm to ensure safety even if the CPU/GPU performance clock limit is lifted.' (via Ice Universe)
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