Samsung caught choking 10,000 phone apps — and its own home screen

Samsung one more time in hot water on how it handles standard applications. This time around, the company is accused of throttling 10,000 Android apps — but not benchmarking apps. This looks like chart OnePlus was caught running last year. Instead of increasing SoC speeds when running a benchmark app, OEM Android device manufacturers are now starting lowest Phone performance anytime a benchmark app isn’t running. It’s like standard cheating but in reverse.

Samsung’s throttling app is called Game Enhancement Service. Korean message board users Clean.net I found completely different degrees of standards depending on whether or not the standard implementations had their original names. By changing the names of popular modular app packages — and thus making the Game Optimizing Service handle a standard app like a regular one — scores dropped anywhere from 13 to 45 percent on the new Galaxy S10, S20, S21 and S22. Normally, the user does not control the behavior of the restriction, but the users deceive the service by modifying the applications.

John Poole, lead developer of Geekbench, was able to reproduce the runaway performance changes based on whether the S22 thought it was running a benchmark or a game. Poole changed the Geekbench package name to a package name Jinshin effect, which is a popular game, and has seen record scores plummet. The Snapdragon Galaxy S22 His single-core score fell by 46 percent, while his multi-core score fell by 35 percent. Poole confirmed that this behavior is also present on the Exynos S10.

Clen.net forum user “squiny” was kind enough to post a file complete database One of Samsung’s target apps is the throttling app, and we checked it out quickly. Game Optimization applies to more than just games. The database actually identifies apps under the “games” and “non-games” categories, with only 3,200 out of 10,000 apps classified as games. The rest are regular daily applications.

There are 233 lists of Samsung apps on the list, including pretty much all of the Samsung’s packaged apps, such as the text messaging app, contacts app, calendar, notes app, Phone app, Bixby, Samsung Pay, and Camera. Samsung even throttles its home screen. There are 169 Google apps on the list, including YouTube, Google Maps, Play Store, Chrome, Gmail, and Google Play Services. Google has only 143 apps It’s in the Play Store, so this is almost every app that Google makes.

The list also includes every popular third-party application that you can consider – Netflix, Disney +, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, among others. The only apps you can count on wont In this list you will find performance measurement applications. Geekbench, 3D Mark, PCMark, GFXBench, Antutu, CPDT, Androbench are all missing from the list.

Throttle the game isn’t necessarily a bad thing; If users are in control of the feature, letting them choose between performance or a longer battery life is reasonable. Games require sustained use and need to constantly refresh the screen, so throttling can save battery life. However, throttling an ordinary 2D app is a tough sell. Most mobile power conservations are based on a “rush to sleep” policy. If you are only reading an email or a web page and not touching the screen, the phone does its best to go into a low power state automatically. When a command comes in to open an app or navigate a webpage, the phone tries to do the action as quickly as possible so it can go back to sleep mode and start saving power again.

It is completely unwarranted to throttle the home screen, app store, browser and other basic 2D applications. If there’s anything you want to be fast, it’s the basic phone interface. At the moment, it seems that the only apps that get the full power are the modular ones. What good is a quick SoC if you’ve never used it?

We will update this article if Samsung makes a statement.