The Samsung Galaxy S22 series is clearly a hit, with pre-order sales through the roof. However, that hasn’t stopped it from facing its own set of controversies. The most recent of which surrounds the company’s Game Optimization Service, which reportedly throttles approximately 10,000 applications. Samsung has since said that it will give users the choice to prioritize performance in an upcoming update, but it’s too little, too late, as Geekbench has now delisted the last four years of Galaxy flagships from its benchmark browser.
Today we delisted these handsets from the Android Benchmark chart on the Geekbench Browser.
— Geekbench (@geekbench) March 4, 2022
Currently, Geekbench policy is that once a device is delisted from its device browser, there’s no coming back. Even when Samsung releases the update that will allow users to prioritize performance to have a “normal” experience, all of the Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10 devices will still remain delisted. This includes the Galaxy S20 FE and Galaxy S21 FE. Furthermore, Samsung hasn’t even said when it will release the update that will give users the ability to prioritize performance.
In a statement provided to Android Police, Geekbench said the following:
Earlier this week, we were made aware of Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS) and how it throttles the performance of games and applications. GOS decides to throttle (or not to throttle) applications using application identifiers and not application behavior. We view this as a form of benchmark manipulation as major benchmark applications, including Geekbench, are not throttled by this service.
Geekbench has previously delisted devices from its results browser before, the most famous example of which is the OnePlus 9 series. It was discovered that when OxygenOS detected certain apps running, it would disable the Cortex-X1 primary core in order to conserve power. This did not affect benchmarking apps, and therefore, Geekbench considered it to be benchmark manipulation. Other companies that have had devices delisted in the past include Huawei and Xiaomi.
Of course, this won’t stop you from running Geekbench on your Samsung smartphone. Instead, it just means that the publicly traversable directory of benchmarking results will not be available for affected device models. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye on this situation for any further developments.
Source: Android Police
