Samsung's Galaxy GOS Issue Final Conclusion and Samsung's Action

In February 2022, consumers' antipathy to GOS intensified due to the strengthened clock-down policy and benchmark cheating issues, as well as Samsung Electronics' initial criticism and controversy over its flagship lineup that maintained its loyalty for three consecutive years.

Customer and Community response to the GOS crisis

In the IT community, Volkswagen's diesel gate, which was software-operated to produce less exhaust gas in test runs and Apple's battery gate, which secretly reduced performance by measuring battery consumption rates, is one of the most common corporate crimes. On March 11, a class action suit was filed against Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electronics America in a federal court in New Jersey, USA ([Asia Today] Samsung Electronics' "GOS" was filed first in the U.S.), and a cafe was opened in Korea to prepare class action suits earlier. 

As shown in the case of certain mobile games in the store discrimination items above, it has already been revealed that Samsung was able to limit performance by app at its disposal, and controversy has been raised over whether Samsung can limit performance to all apps. Because of this, public opinion in the company seems to have deteriorated so much that Samsung Electronics, affiliates, and users turn their heads, as shown by blind communities.

Did Samsung clearly resolve GOS?

Although the problem has become public, it is presumed that it will not be easy to completely remove the GOS function for smartphones equipped with GOS so far. As already mentioned several times above, Samsung President Roh Tae-moon's Galaxy smartphones are presumed to have poor hardware cooling solutions compared to other smartphones equipped with the same chipset. In this case, it is not an easy card to choose because it is inevitable that the Galaxy S22 series, which has just been released, will suffer a fatal blow and the financial loss will be very large.

As a result, the GOS crisis may have started as a technical issue at first, but as a result, it has become an issue that has destroyed trust in consumers, including loyal customers. It was branded as "Samsung deceived consumers." No matter how technical the explanation is, it explains that "general apps can't be controlled in principle" or, in fact, everything in this paper is false and doesn't make sense in principle. From a position that has already been deceived once, there is no choice but to say, "So how do we trust you?" Moreover, Apple, which is so thick that its loyal customers are notorious, has yet to fully recover from the damage to its corporate image caused by Battery Gate, making it no different from Samsung. 

Not only Samsung Members but also various communities are overflowing with reactions that they will hand over existing products or already purchased S22 series to the used market and transfer to Apple as soon as possible, and there are self-help reactions such as "Tal Samsung is intelligent" or "Shy to use Samsung phones." In particular, this reaction itself reveals how much Samsung's name value has been damaged even for bone marrow users who say they have only used Samsung phones all their lives. The responses of the YouTube community, which introduces the Galaxy A event 2022 held by Samsung on March 17, show how much the brand value of the Galaxy series and Samsung's credibility have been ruined. In the meantime, Samsung is on the decline in its image in the tablet market, including the Galaxy Tab S8 series followed by benchmark cheating. With the release of the Galaxy Tab S7 and Galaxy Tab S7+, Samsung was evaluated as a new possibility in the Android tablet market, which was expected by many consumers' expectations.

Is Samsung's sales not affected by GOS issues?

Nevertheless, it is widely believed that although the GOS incident can lead to a long-term drop in brand value and a drop in sales, it will be difficult to hit Samsung immediately. In the domestic market of Hingeuk, Android devices are virtually wiped out except for Samsung, and Samsung's market share is unlikely to decrease considering that Samsung, which had virtually ignored the situation even though the battery exploded during the Galaxy Note 7 explosion. In the end, the only option is for Samsung and Apple to move from the monopoly domestic market to Apple, which also has a record of Battery Gate and it is not easy to abandon Samsung Pay + Call Recording, commonly called the core function of Galaxy. Overseas, the response is not bad, but there are opinions that favor it, but it is presumed to be a phenomenon that occurs because Samsung's flagship user pool is smaller than that of Korea. 

In other words, in Korea, no matter what kind of joke you made, you're not going to buy it?It is possible to demonstrate ' and overseas is mainly selling low-end products that are not significantly affected by GOS anyway, so both domestic and overseas sides can have courage.

Roh Tae-moon, president of Samsung, is still supported.

In fact, at the shareholders' meeting held on March 16, Roh Tae-moon's appointment as an in-house director was approved by 97.96 percent, indicating that both shareholders and Samsung thought it was nothing. Flagship products that will be released in the future are also more likely to be free from cost reduction issues.

In the end, users who were greatly disappointed by Samsung's response faced an extreme situation in which LG withdrew their smartphones and continued to use Android phones = Samsung Galaxy in tears or move to Apple. No matter how much there is a second best way to buy a third-party Android smartphone directly from overseas and use it as a self-sufficiency system, it is a rather burdensome choice considering the relatively expensive air system price and A/S that has to go through overseas. Among them, there are many Chinese manufacturers, so they are often worried about backdoor, but as the issue raises the possibility of backdoor through GOS, there are several people who self-help, saying, "Isn't that what it is?"

Solution: How to combine Android smartphones and iPhones

For users who need to record calls for business purposes, more and more people are opening one more line, using the Galaxy A52s or the Galaxy they currently have for work, and using the iPhone for personal activities. Loyal people who used so-called Samsung Pay + Call Recording function at high frequency often already have a terminal equivalent to the previous generation's flagship, and if they use this method, they no longer have to hang on to Samsung's new device.

Samsung's Measures to Overcome GOS Issues

Since March 18, the three mobile carriers have been moving to recover their sales rates by raising public subsidies from 150,000 won to about 500,000 won based on Ultra. As 70% of about 1 million pre-bookers, who can be considered loyal customers, chose Ultra, about 700,000 people were betrayed by Samsung again. Considering that sales volume usually falls six to seven months after the release of new mobile phones, Samsung seems to be trying to absorb the upcoming iPhone 14 buyers by expanding its sales volume by shaking off loyal customers.

Due to this incident, memes in which Samsung's response team uses a mixture of English words such as Needs and Heavy, and remarks that something suddenly decreases in performance or does not work properly in daily life are in vogue. In addition, there is a joke that the Galaxy S was entry-level and the Galaxy A series was a real flagship.

★How to disable Game Optimizing Service (GOS) on Samsung Galaxy phones