Photo: Samsung Electronics' shareholder meeting. Credit: Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Electronics 삼성전자, South Korea’s most important company that manufacturers cutting-edge smartphones and semiconductors, has faced embarrassment with the GOS Crisis GOS사태.
For its new flagship smartphone Galaxy S22, Samsung installed a so-called “game optimizing service” (GOS) - a software that throttled the phone’s performance to 60% of its peak, in order to prevent the phone from heating up. The GOS was not disclosed to the customers, and did not kick in when benchmark apps attempted to measure the phone’s performance, giving a misleading picture of Galaxy S22’s actual performance. Han Jong-hee 한종희, Co-CEO of Samsung Electronics, made a public apology at the shareholder meeting on March 16.
The analysis by KBS News was unsparing: “the essence of the GOS Crisis means that Samsung’s technological advantage is over.” Noting that the chipsets used for Apple’s iPhone 12 and 13 have superior performance while using less electricity (and thus cause less heat), the article concluded: “Once upon a time, Samsung had a clear advantage over Apple in hardware; that is no longer true.” The KBS News analysis also found that the GOS Crisis means Samsung’s semiconductor manufacturing business is falling behind its chief competitor, TSMC of Taiwan.
