Samsung DVFS cripples phone performance, is it an issue for you?

How do you feel about DVFS?

  • I didn't knew about it and it bothers me.

    Votes: 4 18.2%
  • I didn't knew about it but I don't care.

    Votes: 4 18.2%
  • I knew about it and disabled it.

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • I knew about it but I don't care.

    Votes: 4 18.2%

  • Total voters
    22
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MarkMRL

Senior Member
Jul 1, 2011
547
109
Did you know that Samsung has a system called DVFS that basically does nothing other than cripping your phone's performance with aggressive underclocking? There's a big thread about it here, but other than that, it seems that this issue is not very well known, which is surprising considering the SGS4 is a very mainstream phone. When I discovered about it I was shocked because this system does literally nothing useful, but it makes gaming or other high end smartphone activities (heavy browsing, 3D games, heavy multitasking, etc) lag like crazy.

It shocks me that Samsung has implemented such a thing and that you cannot disable without rooting (and obviously voiding the warranty and your Knox flag), and nobody except a few XDA users noticed.
 
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s14sh3r

Senior Member
Jul 21, 2008
266
88
Oklahoma
Did you know that Samsung has a system called DVFS that basically does nothing other than cripping your phone's performance with aggressive underclocking? There's a big thread about it here, but other than that, it seems that this issue is not very well known, which is surprising considering the SGS4 is a very mainstream phone. When I discovered about it I was shocked because this system does literally nothing useful, but it makes gaming or other high end smartphone activities (heavy browsing, 3D games, heavy multitasking, etc) lag like crazy.

It shocks me that Samsung has implemented such a thing and that you cannot disable without rooting (and obviously voiding the warranty and your Knox flag), and nobody except a few XDA users noticed.

You say it does nothing useful, but what does it do for battery life?
 

MarkMRL

Senior Member
Jul 1, 2011
547
109
You say it does nothing useful, but what does it do for battery life?

Nothing? The phone already has extensive battery saving options, and it already has an underclocking option right there. Not to mention, swappable battery. Why is this thing enforced on everyone? If you use your flagship tier phone like it was an old Nokia from the nineties then it might not affect you. Since I use my phone for browsing internet, multimedia, and games, it does affect me a lot. I don't give a flying **** about one hour of additional battery when my phone slows down to a crawl. If I wanted to enable crawl mode I should have the option, the phone shouldn't decide arbitrarily when to slow down.

Also, if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, what makes you think this isn't a marketing ploy by samsung? To force users to get the S5 because the old one has such poor performance in games and stuff like that? The average smartphone user is so dumb he wouldn't realize it's all planned right in the system itself, they'd go ":eek: hurr, my phone can't run games well anymore, better go out and buy the S5, that will surely play games better, with it's multiple megapixels and cores and newer stuff I have no clue about".
 
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s14sh3r

Senior Member
Jul 21, 2008
266
88
Oklahoma
Nothing? The phone already has extensive battery saving options, and it already has an underclocking option right there. Not to mention, swappable battery. Why is this thing enforced on everyone? If you use your flagship tier phone like it was an old Nokia from the nineties then it might not affect you. Since I use my phone for browsing internet, multimedia, and games, it does affect me a lot. I don't give a flying **** about one hour of additional battery when my phone slows down to a crawl. If I wanted to enable crawl mode I should have the option, the phone shouldn't decide arbitrarily when to slow down.

Also, if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, what makes you think this isn't a marketing ploy by samsung? To force users to get the S5 because the old one has such poor performance in games and stuff like that? The average smartphone user is so dumb he wouldn't realize it's all planned right in the system itself, they'd go ":eek: hurr, my phone can't run games well anymore, better go out and buy the S5, that will surely play games better, with it's multiple megapixels and cores and newer stuff I have no clue about".

Good points. I'm not arguing against you, btw, I'm not even sure how to tell if my phone is using it since I'm using Omega ROM.
 

MarkMRL

Senior Member
Jul 1, 2011
547
109
Good points. I'm not arguing against you, btw, I'm not even sure how to tell if my phone is using it since I'm using Omega ROM.

Well, if you play any game or if you browse a lot you'd probably notice because performance drops a lot and lag increases. I don't know what Omega Rom is, this is an issue in stock rom. Of course it doesn't affect me anymore because I have the knowledge to research this stuff and eventually find a solution (even though I obviously have no idea how the solution is made), but for the average user this should be an issue, I mean everyone should know about it, it's too shady to be ignored, this is planned obsolescence at its finest.
 
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MarkMRL

Senior Member
Jul 1, 2011
547
109
Also, if this was introduced to save battery, how come so many people are complaining about battery drain on Kitkat?

It's obviously a marketing strategy, and I will spread the word about it.
 

MarkMRL

Senior Member
Jul 1, 2011
547
109
There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf

Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk

I don't care and I don't have the knowledge to understand anything in that document.

What I care about is:

Galaxy S4 on 4.3 and under: great performance, no issues.
Galaxy S4 on 4.4: awful performance, issues.
Other phones on 4.4: great performance, no issues.

It's no coincidence this happened only a few months before the S5 is released.

Either Samsung did something wrong with this implementation, or they did indeed do it to force users to upgrade because the older model is no longer viable for high end smartphone use.
 

S1LENT_

Senior Member
Feb 4, 2013
187
209
Mumbai
Will deleting the twDVFS.apk be sufficient to disable this frequency scaling on my S4? Or is using the Xposed module necessary?
 

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    Did you know that Samsung has a system called DVFS that basically does nothing other than cripping your phone's performance with aggressive underclocking? There's a big thread about it here, but other than that, it seems that this issue is not very well known, which is surprising considering the SGS4 is a very mainstream phone. When I discovered about it I was shocked because this system does literally nothing useful, but it makes gaming or other high end smartphone activities (heavy browsing, 3D games, heavy multitasking, etc) lag like crazy.

    It shocks me that Samsung has implemented such a thing and that you cannot disable without rooting (and obviously voiding the warranty and your Knox flag), and nobody except a few XDA users noticed.
    1
    You say it does nothing useful, but what does it do for battery life?

    Nothing? The phone already has extensive battery saving options, and it already has an underclocking option right there. Not to mention, swappable battery. Why is this thing enforced on everyone? If you use your flagship tier phone like it was an old Nokia from the nineties then it might not affect you. Since I use my phone for browsing internet, multimedia, and games, it does affect me a lot. I don't give a flying **** about one hour of additional battery when my phone slows down to a crawl. If I wanted to enable crawl mode I should have the option, the phone shouldn't decide arbitrarily when to slow down.

    Also, if you really want to get into conspiracy theories, what makes you think this isn't a marketing ploy by samsung? To force users to get the S5 because the old one has such poor performance in games and stuff like that? The average smartphone user is so dumb he wouldn't realize it's all planned right in the system itself, they'd go ":eek: hurr, my phone can't run games well anymore, better go out and buy the S5, that will surely play games better, with it's multiple megapixels and cores and newer stuff I have no clue about".
    1
    There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf

    Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk
    1
    There's a technical paper on dvfs around which goes through some of the techniques samsung uses to optimise performance and battery use. https://events.linuxfoundation.org/images/stories/pdf/lcjp2012_ham.pdf

    Sent from my unknown using Tapatalk

    This has nothing to do with the user-space policies which you're complaining about.