Two weeks ago, Samsung was caught throttling performance for some apps and games on its phones, including the brand-new Galaxy S22 series, and going back as far as the Galaxy S10. As a result of that action, the phones were delisted from the library of devices on Geekbench, seemingly permanently according to the company's current policies. Amid the threat of a class-action suit, Samsung has started rolling out an update that changes this behavior, but Android Police has confirmed that the company's latest Galaxy Tab S8 generation of tablets is also affected.

Testing recent generations of Samsung's tablets, we found that the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra and S8+ both throttled performance when a version of the Geekbench app with the Genshin Impact package name was running (in essence, convincing the system that it was playing a game and not the benchmarking application), affecting the benchmark's resulting score. Single-threaded CPU performance fell 18-24% and multi-core performance fell 6-11%.

Genshin package scores

Standard Geekbench scores

Tab S8 Ultra

925/2709

1127/2889

Tab S8+

920/3000

1221/3372

Tab S7

969/3266

952/3291

Tab S7 FE

641/1936

638/1919

Tab S5e

328/1413

340/1455

Table of testing across Samsung Tab devices available

Although prior testing observed throttling on earlier generations of Samsung phones, we didn't see any similar behavior on prior generation tablets, with the Tab S7 series and a Tab S5e seemingly unaffected in our testing. Any differences on those devices within the expected margin of error.

Some have claimed that Samsung was throttling performance for over 10,000 apps due to a list that claimed to be associated with the Game Optimization Service or GOS, but that's not quite correct. Both our own digging into the actual code governing this throttling behavior and Samsung's statements have confirmed that not all apps are affected, and the degree to which it throttles performance can and will vary. Samsung also previously claimed, "GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps."

Our own examination of the logic indicates that GOS is a very sophisticated system that takes into account multiple variables when throttling performance to varying degrees, including temperature, expected FPS, power consumption, temperature, and more. This may also help to explain why the tablets tested did not throttle as hard as the Galaxy S22 series phones — more space inside likely means better heat dissipation, and the system can take details like these into account.

Samsung did not immediately respond to questions regarding the observed throttling behavior on the Tab S8 series.

Although the Galaxy Tab S8 series has not yet been added to Geekbench's list of devices and doesn't yet appear in search, the company tells us that it plans to delist the device, much as it did with the affected Galaxy S phones. Geekbench's policy, as previously communicated to Android Police during the original throttling saga, indicates the tablets won't return even if the behavior is addressed in a future update — though that policy is potentially subject to change.