Not only Samsung phones were affected
A couple of weeks ago, Samsung was throttled in the performance of some apps and games on its phones, including the all-new Galaxy S22 series, and back with the Galaxy S10. As a result of this action, the phones have been deleted from the device library on Geekbench, seemingly permanently in accordance with current company policies. Amid the threat of a class action, Samsung has started rolling out an update that changes this behaviour, but Android Police has confirmed that the company’s latest generation Galaxy Tab S8 devices have also been affected.
Testing recent generations of Samsung tablets, we found that both the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and S8+ throttled performance when running a version of the Geekbench app called the Genshin Impact package (in essence, convincing the system that it was playing a game and not a benchmark app), affecting on the resulting result of the standard. Single-threaded CPU performance decreased by 18-24% and multi-core performance decreased by 6-11%.
| Jinshin package dozens | Standard Geekbench Scores | |
|---|---|---|
| Tab S8 Ultra | 925/2709 | 1127/2889 |
| Tab S8 + | 920/3000 | 1221/3372 |
| Tab S7 | 969/3266 | 952/3291 |
| Tab S7 FE | 641/1936 | 638/1919 |
| Tab S5e | 328/1413 | 340/1455 |
Exam schedule available via Samsung Tab devices
Although previous testing noted throttling on previous generations of Samsung phones, we didn’t see any similar behavior on previous generation tablets, as the Tab S7 series and Tab S5e appeared to be unaffected in our tests. Any differences on those devices are within the expected margin of error.
Some have claimed that Samsung has been throttling the performance of more than 10,000 apps due to a list that it claimed are related to a game optimization service or GOS, but that’s not entirely true. Both our research into the actual code that governs this throttling behavior and Samsung data confirmed that not all apps are affected, and the degree to which it throttles performance can vary. Samsung also previously claimed that “GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming applications”.
Our own examination of the logic indicates that GOS is a very complex system that takes into account multiple variables when throttling performance to varying degrees, including temperature, expected FPS, power consumption, temperature, and more. This might also help explain why the tablets we tested didn’t throttle as aggressively as the Galaxy S22 series phones — more space inside will likely mean better heat dissipation, and the system can take details like this into account.
Samsung did not immediately respond to questions regarding the observed throttling behavior on the Tab S8 series.
Although the Galaxy Tab S8 series has yet to be added to the list of Geekbench devices and has yet to appear in the search, the company tells us that it plans to delist the device, just as it has done with the affected Galaxy S phones. Geekbench’s policy, as previously reported to Android Police during the original throttling saga, says the tablets won’t return even if the behavior is addressed in a future update – although that policy may be subject to change.
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