Samsung is paying customers back over its Galaxy S22 throttling feature

Demanding tasks, like playing certain games, can cause your smartphone to get hot. To avoid the possibility of overheating, Samsung preinstalled a feature called Game Optimizing Service (GOS) on the Galaxy S22. While the goal was to prevent overheating, the way the feature worked led to a fiasco that the tech giant is now paying for.

As reported by The Chosun Daily, Samsung has been ordered by a South Korean court to pay an undisclosed amount to complainants in a class-action lawsuit. The lawsuit in question was filed by 1,882 consumers in 2022. In the suit, the plaintiffs argued that the phone maker failed to inform customers about the inclusion of GOS in the Galaxy S22 series.

In case you’re unaware of GOS, it’s a software feature on the Galaxy S22 series that reduces computational burden and prevents overheating. It does this by lowering GPU performance and screen resolution during intensive tasks, like gaming.

According to the report, owners felt that Samsung was not explicit about GOS degrading performance. It also didn’t help that you initially couldn’t disable the feature. However, after the backlash, Samsung eventually rolled out an update that allowed users to turn it off.

Don’t get your hopes up for any of this money to come your way. The decision is limited to South Korea and only affects the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. Still, it’s good to see that customers were able to hold Samsung accountable for its mistake.