Samsung forced to compensate some Galaxy S22 owners after throttling the flagship line in secret
A court orders Samsung to pay some Galaxy S22 series owners an undisclosed amount after secretly throttling the phone.
Samsung settles Galaxy S22 throttling suit. | Image by PhoneArena
Approximately four years ago, in March 2022, we told you that some South Koreans were planning to sue Samsung over the company's Game Optimizing Service (GOS) app. This app was developed to be used during mobile game play on the Galaxy S22 series, which was released in February 2022. The GOS app was supposed to prevent the phones from overheating. Unfortunately, tools that stop overheating often result in the throttling of the processor used to power that device.
Samsung tried to prevent its flagship phones from overheating during gaming and other complex tasks
During tasks that require the phone's processor to power up, the GOS app would reduce the performance of the processor's graphic processing unit (GPU) and screen resolution. However, some Galaxy S22 series users were not expecting their handsets to have the performance of their phones reduced even when not playing processor-intensive games. So some South Korea-based Samsung customers did the American thing. They sued Samsung claiming that the manufacturer failed to inform them that the GOS app was included in the Galaxy S22 line.
Additionally, when rolled out the feature could not be turned off and disabled. It wasn't until years later that Samsung disseminated an update that included a way to turn off the GOS app. By the way, the Galaxy S22 series was powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 application processor. The throttled GPU was Qualcomm's homegrown Adreno 730.
The plaintiffs were seeking 300,000 Korean won ($201.75 USD) each in compensation
After a trial that lasted four years, the Seoul High Court Civil Division 12-1, under Presiding Judge Jang Seok-jo, reached a forced decision on March 18th in an appeal trial that forces Samsung to pay an undisclosed amount to the plaintiffs. The decision was finalized when nether side filed an objection to the ruling by the deadline. The court ruling is considered a forced mediation decision. The latter is an impartial solution that ends a difficult civil lawsuit. There were 1,882 consumers who were involved in filing the damages claim lawsuit against Samsung.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor powered the Galaxy S22 series. | Image by Qualcomm
The original class action lawsuit, filed in 2022, asked for compensation of 300,000 Korean won ($201.75 USD) for each person involved with the suit. In the first trial, the court ruled that Samsung did make representations to customers that could be considered misleading. However, that ruling said that Samsung, a South Korean registered corporation, was not liable for any compensation. The consumers appealed and mediation was recommended. After the first three mediation sessions came to no agreement between the parties, the court finally issued a forced mediation ruling. The ruling is limited to South Korea and compensation will be paid to those plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit all those years ago.
In many ways, what happened is similar to Apple's Batterygate controversy
In some ways this suit is similar to the iPhone's Batterygate fiasco. Similar to Samsung, Apple failed to tell users of certain iPhone models that the iOS 10.2.1 update included a feature that throttled the CPU on iPhone models with batteries so weak that complex tasks were causing affected iPhone models to shut down. If you were a loyal PhoneArena reader back then, you probably remember the whole sordid affair.
Apple ended up offering a discount on new iPhone batteries for certain models during 2018. In a class action settlement over Batterygate, the tech giant agreed to pay U.S. iPhone users $500 million, or $65-$90 per claim. It also paid out $113 million to cover a multi-state investigation.
Samsung and Apple both throttled the processors powering some of their phones without informing its customers. I'm no legal scholar, but I do feel as though this is something that judges probably do not like. While Samsung's GOSgate will probably be forgotten in a year or so, Batterygate is one of those iPhone controversies, like Bendgate, and the iPhone 4's "left-handed death grip" that are all part of the lore of iPhone history.
The GOS app is still pre-installed on Galaxy S models including the new Galaxy S26 series. However, users can now choose between power saving and maximum performance.
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