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Android Cellphones

Samsung Is Reportedly Throttling the Performance of 10,000 Popular Apps (xda-developers.com) 69

Posted by BeauHD from the all-in-an-effort-to-save-battery-life dept.
A new finding suggests Samsung is throttling the performance of thousands of Android apps on Galaxy smartphones, including Google and Samsung's first-party apps. XDA Developers reports: Samsung has an app called Game Optimization Service that comes preinstalled on many Galaxy phones. Although the name suggests the app helps improve gaming performance, it's apparently being used to limit the performance of non-gaming apps. Users on the Korean tech forum Meeco have posted a list of affected apps that are subject to performance throttling. The list includes 10,000 popular apps, including Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, Microsoft Office, Google Keep, Spotify, Snapchat, YouTube Music, and more. Samsung's own apps such as Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, Bixby, and others are also on the list. Notably, there are no benchmark apps on this blacklist.

A video posted by Korean YouTuber shows how blacklisted apps are subject to inferior performance while benchmark apps are given a free hand. In his test, the YouTuber changed the package name of the 3DMark benchmark app to Genshin Impact, one of the apps on the blacklist. The unmodified version of 3D Mark scored 2618 points in the Wild Life Extreme test. When he ran the same test with the spoofed version, there was a significant drop in the score -- 1141 points. In other words, the spoofed version performed 56% worse than the unmodified version. It's not immediately clear if the Game Optimization Service app is installed on every Galaxy phone. Samsung is reportedly aware of the issue and conducting an internal investigation. "While Samsung hasn't clarified why it's throttling Android apps, it's likely in an attempt to improve battery life," notes XDA.
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Samsung Is Reportedly Throttling the Performance of 10,000 Popular Apps More

Samsung Is Reportedly Throttling the Performance of 10,000 Popular Apps

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  • Remember the Apple slowdown of phones with old batteries when these were near empty? This looks like a super rudimentary variant of it.
    In both cases this is not necessarily a bad thing, if only the companies would have been upfront and made it opt in.

    • Not just phones. When Apple released their first macbooks with i9 they were getting so hot that Apple had to start throttling all apps to prevent overheating.

      • Not just phones. When Apple released their first macbooks with i9 they were getting so hot that Apple had to start throttling all apps to prevent overheating.

        Good thing they fixed that issue once and for all!

    • In both cases this is not necessarily a bad thing, if only the companies would have been upfront and made it opt in.

      Yep. Maybe those apps are needlessly guzzling battery and need throttling.

    • I don't know if opt-in would be a great idea. The choice was throttle or risk fire, in that case, throttling is the least lawsuit inducing action. Where they screwed up was in not explaining why they were doing it, and being open about it.

  • So what? (Score:4, Informative)

    by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Thursday March 03, 2022 @08:58PM (#62324089)
    I'm not sure why this is a surprise. That's what it's supposed to do... throttle other apps to maximize performance in specific games. You don't want Office to run in the background and start lagging your game. Very bizarre that anyone even thinks an issue. My ageing Galaxy S8 has this and I used it for a little bit, it has some nice features especially around disabling notifications and allowing you to lock the touch controls while leaving the screen on.
    • its almost certainly to improve battery life

      none of the apps listed require the full weight of the silicon to be snappy

      just a numbers game

      • Yep. This is probably a non-issue, a storm in a teacup.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megane ( 129182 )

        its almost certainly to improve battery life

        Then why are games whitelisted? Those tend to be the most battery-hungry apps of all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )
          TFS was worded badly, I now see that it was a blacklist to make games run slower, not a whitelist to make everything else run slower.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by LKM ( 227954 )

      throttle other apps to maximize performance in specific games

      But that's not actually what it does. It slows down games, not Office. The reason for this is that games tax both GPU and CPU for prolonged amounts of time, which causes the phone to overheat, and drains the battery rapidly. That's literally how Samsung explains what it does: it "optimizes CPU and GPU performance to prevent excessive heat during long game play." In other words, they allow the phone to go full tilt in benchmarking tools, in order t

      • Games are notorious for not self throttling - burning 100% of a subset of CPU/GPU features resulting in 1000+fps in menus. It could simply be that samsung's engineers looked at Genshin's SoC usage and came to the conclusion that throttling selected API call rates results in the same 60fps but 50% better battery life. For Genshin this throttling just stops a runaway pointless loop but in a benchmark that is trying to do as many of them as it can in a second it will greatly impact the aggregate score even if

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      People need to stop worrying about benchmarks and just look at how well the phone works. If you look at the MKBHD review of the latest Galaxy devices he talks about how smooth and responsive it is, how long the battery lasts, how good the camera is. He never bothers benchmarking it, he only cares how well it works in real world use.

    • That's what it's supposed to do... throttle other apps to maximize performance in specific games.

      No. What it's supposed to do is absolutely nothing when games aren't running. It seems to run all the time which is the issue at hand.

      • No. What it's supposed to do is absolutely nothing when games aren't running. It seems to run all the time which is the issue at hand.

        What if it's actually saving battery on apps that don't need all the CPU but are using it anyway?

        I'd want that.

  • As long as an application interface manages to hit 60 fps on a mobile app any clockspeed to go faster is wasted power. Presumably Netflix and Youtube aren't dropping frames, is Genshin Impact?

    The OS should probably try to learn app fps on the fly and change clockspeed accordingly rather than with some pre-programmed list of clock scaling factors, but ehh.

  • It's the turbo button [wikipedia.org] all over again. I was doing desktop support in the early 90's, and I can't even count how many "slow computer" problems I fixed by pushing the turbo button.

  • Sometimes I'd like to throttle Bixby, but it's easier to essentially choke him to death by using a non-Samsung phone.

  • Some highlights from this poorly-written, poorly-reasoned outrage fishing trip:

    1. Throttles non-gaming apps to promote power for gaming, as designed. It may be to preserve battery life!

    2. Doesn't throttle benchmark apps. Why would it? You'd want to see performance with the optimizer running. Disable it if you want non-gaming apps to run a little faster. Most aren't number crunchers anyway and would be fine on a calculator from 1981.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      From TFS:

      In his test, the YouTuber changed the package name of the 3DMark benchmark app to Genshin Impact, one of the apps on the blacklist.

      Would it surprise you to learn that "Genshin Impact" is the name of a game? How does throttling a game promote power for gaming?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Maybe they tested "Genshin Impact" and noticed that it runs at 60 fps with the phone underclocked a little, so decided that there was no point wasting battery power running at full speed when it wouldn't make the game play any better.

        • I haven't played Genshin on mobile, I did play it for a while on PC and the frame rate is extremely variable like it is in most mobile games. So the question is, what's the minimum frame rate while throttled? You don't want the game going all postcard-y while you're in the middle of a big battle.

  • Android apparently has no way to prioritize foreground apps, so manufacturers have to resort to hacks like this.

    • Android apparently has no way to prioritize foreground apps, so manufacturers have to resort to hacks like this.

      Doesn't Android have nice, or some variation thereof?

      Serious question

  • I tested here (Score:3)

    by TheDarkMaster ( 1292526 ) on Thursday March 03, 2022 @09:36PM (#62324203)
    On my phone after finding out that they do indeed have this game optimization service. My phone is rooted so I was able to actually disable the app, and the result... No more small delays I had in doing any operation on the phone. It's as if I had released the "handbrake" of the device. I will definitely leave this junk app permanently turned off.

    • Keep an eye on the battery life. That's undoubtedly the entire point of throttling non-gaming apps. Definitely seems like you shouldn't need to root your phone to turn stuff like that off, though.

      • I used the root method because I have seen that these apps have a history of not actually being disabled even when they say they are turned off in the normal interface. And for the issue of battery consumption I can just use the phone's normal option for that (battery save mode) which I can actually turn it on and off when I need it.

      • How does this affect battery life? Does it restrict a process to lower power CPU cores? Otherwise, isn't it a case that any operation takes has the same requirements, over different periods of time, or is it that throttling prevents either extra usage or limits inefficient code from running too many excess ops?

  • You can disable it (Score:3)

    by daten ( 575013 ) on Thursday March 03, 2022 @09:38PM (#62324213)
    While the Game Optimization Service is installed as a system app that can't be removed on a non-rooted device, you can mitigate its effects by going to:
    1. System settings
    2. Apps
    3. Samsung App Settings
    4. Game Booster
    5. Game Optimization

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No you can not disable it (on Android 10 anyway). On top of this the app constantly tries and calls home which I block with NoRoot Firewall.
      Even if you force stop it loads again and tries to call home.

  • I concur with all other comments here. This is the dumbest article ever.
    Seems to be working 100% as designed. This isn't a big expose uncovering a hidden truth or objectionable nefarious plot.

    • I concur with all other comments here. This is the dumbest article ever.
      Seems to be working 100% as designed. This isn't a big expose uncovering a hidden truth or objectionable nefarious plot.

      Neither was Apple's user communications faux-pas regarding their aging battery compensation; but that didn't stop the Forum Hate and Class-Actions and Spanish Inquisitions, ALL alleging nefarious intent, now, did it?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skogs ( 628589 )

        I'd say apple's move was very different.

        • I'd say apple's move was very different.

          Of course; it was from Apple.

        • Yup. Apple at least had a reason - your old battery was dying faster, and reducing clock speed gave you more usage time. Samsung is doing this on new phones.

          • More than dying faster, it could cause a fire due to the voltage dropping requiring higher amperage which was more than the battery leads could handle.

            • Lmfao, if you designed your battery this badly, no wonder why you wanted to keep it hush hush. I'm still using phones with massively distended batteries due to drops and age [almost twice as thick]... and worst is does it turn off. Also, samsung isn't hiding it. "Game optimization service" seems pretty clear as to what it does.
              • It slows everything else down, and you call it "optimizing games"? And you think it is a good name? Seriously?

  • I was going into this expecting that Samsung's apps would all magically be exempted, but looks like they didn't do that, so this is (probably) not the result of any sort of nefarious plot.

  • Assuming that this is solving the problem of apps wasting power, are these just poorly written apps doing things they donâ(TM)t need to? The summarized list contains big name apps, who you would think have a vested interest to not have their apps known as a battery hog. So why is there anything for Samsung to even try to fix here?

  • FTA: "Although the name suggests the app helps improve gaming performance, it's apparently being used to limit the performance of non-gaming apps."

    Did someone write this with a straight face? "How could maximizing resources available to gaming apps possibly help them?!"
  • If Android is supposed to be so much better with what you can install/uninstall, then just uninstall it.
  • Found out that my AMD processor was throttling to avoid overheating. You can actually find a setting in the bios to disable this. Wow, my machine goes faster no

  • How is this not false advertising or the VW emissions scandal of phones?
    After all Samgsung advertise their phone by stating the CPU, it's core count and the speed of the cores. The stats also give expected battery life.

    In what part of that material does it state that the the expected battery life can only be achieved by intentionally limiting the performance of apps that are not on Samgsung's approved list ?

  • Samsung always striving to make sure that their software sucks to high heaven. It would be great if one could have a brand-new Samsung phone without any Samsung software.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megane ( 129182 )
      They're at the top of my no-buy list because apparently all their own crapware is built on Tizen, which is built on Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, [thedailywtf.com] which is built on using void pointers everywhere. The hardware problems (with batteries and folding) don't help. My current phone is from Motorola, and has relatively low suckage, though it is stuck on Android 9. (it was on 8 out of the box) (and now I hear that what's left of Motorola got bought out by Lenovo...)

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