Geekbench bans multiple Samsung flagships for 'benchmark manipulation'

Samsung was in the news all of last week for reportedly throttling the performance of thousands of apps using its Game Optimizing Service (GOS). After the company confirmed that it indeed uses GOS to “optimize” CPU and GPU performance, Geekbench has delisted the last four generations of Galaxy flagships from its benchmarking platform.

Over the weekend, Geekbench tweeted the following statement:

Earlier this week, we were made aware of Samsung’s Game Optimizing Service (GOS) and how it throttles the performance of games and applications. GOS decides to throttle (or not to throttle) applications using application identifiers and not application behavior. We view this as a form of benchmark manipulation as major benchmark applications, including Geekbench, are not throttled by this service.

The platform found that all Samsung Galaxy S10, S20, S21, and S22 models use GOS. It further stated that it has delisted all these handsets from the Android Benchmark chart on its browser.

According to Geekbench’s current policy, once a device is delisted from the platform, it’s removed permanently. So even though Samsung will be issuing an update that will let users control performance, all the aforementioned Galaxy phones will remain delisted from Geekbench.

The platform previously delisted the OnePlus 9 and 9 Pro for tweaking CPU and GPU performance. Few apps were deliberately not allowed to access the Cortex X1 core on the phones to save on power. Geekbench viewed this as benchmark manipulation and removed the devices from its browser.