Samsung Electronics: It's Different from Apple’s Case
Consumers of Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S22 series have filed a compensation lawsuit claiming that the Game Optimizing Service (GOS) installed in the product series degraded device performance. Samsung Electronics countered, stating, “There is a significant difference from the incident related to performance throttling by Apple.”
On Feb. 23, the 21st Civil Agreement Division of the Seoul Central District Court held the first preparatory hearing for the damage compensation lawsuit filed by 1,882 Galaxy smartphone consumers against Samsung Electronics in March 2022.
The consumer side argued, “Samsung Electronics promoted the latest processors without explaining their operating principles, so consumers purchased smartphones without realizing that GOS uniformly limits smartphone performance. This deceptive marketing and advertising practice violated consumer rights to choose their smartphone.”
GOS is designed to reduce the performance by adjusting the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance and lowering screen resolution, among other measures, to prevent smartphones from overheating when running games that require high-performance computations.
With the launch of the Galaxy S22 series in 2022, Samsung Electronics forced the installation of GOS, different from previous smartphones, and prevented its removal, leading to consumer lawsuits.
Samsung Electronics defended its actions, stating, “The plaintiffs’ claim that GOS degrades smartphone performance is baseless. The GOS feature was introduced to optimize performance when using certain game apps [applications].”
The company also emphasized that this case significantly differs from recent court rulings partially in favor of compensation lawsuits related to device performance degradation following Apple’s iPhone operating system (iOS) updates.
Samsung Electronics requested the court to consider, “This case significantly differs as it only presents issues when running specific game apps under certain conditions.”