Beleaguered Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S22 iPhone wannabe has taken a battering from reports of hobbled performance and has seen carriers quickly rush to halve its price at home in South Korea just weeks after launch.
Consumers have complained – and even filed a class-action lawsuit – about the handset maker advertising what it called its most powerful smartphone yet with scant detail about performance management software that they say drastically slows the premium device when using processor-intensive applications.
Such are the complaints that the Korea Fair Trade Commission last month began investigating… At the heart of complaints is Samsung’s Game Optimising Service (GOS) which manages device performance during gaming to prevent overheating and preserve battery life. The manufacturer introduced the software in 2016, just months before it pulled its premium Galaxy Note 7 following a series of battery fires.
GOS automatically limits handset performance during gaming but also during use of other processor-intensive applications, said Geekbench, a widely used performance scorer, which found the software slowed the S22’s processor by as much as 46%…
South Korea’s three major telecom providers have nearly doubled subsidies for the S22, pushing its price as low as 549,000 won ($451) from a launch of 999,000 won. Apple Inc’s iPhone 13, released in October, starts at 1,090,000 won [$867] with carriers offering smaller subsidies of around 150,000 won [$122].
“When subsidies go up simultaneously at all three telcos, it’s typically the manufacturer making up the contributions,” said an official at carrier LG Uplus Corp, declining to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
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