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
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.