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Help Battery Drain due to Software Bug w/GPS?

Are you able to replicate this same issue?

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So not directly related but i was getting high awake times and it always said display. How many are using the soft 1piece skin case from verison? I was, took it off and my phone is charging twice as fast. Any chance this is holding a button down? My awake time is now 5% with case off. Only took 3 battery pulls to get sick of taking the case off lol
 
The Nooner said:
So not directly related but i was getting high awake times and it always said display. How many are using the soft 1piece skin case from verison? I was, took it off and my phone is charging twice as fast. Any chance this is holding a button down? My awake time is now 5% with case off. Only took 3 battery pulls to get sick of taking the case off lol
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That's an interesting idea, but why does turning the GPS off help? Who knows?

I was also wondering if the Motorola widgets were somehow causing the problem, but I kinda doubt it.

Again, you don't need software to test this. Just dial *#*#4636#*#* and check Battery Usage. If "Running" is high even though the phone has been sitting idly, you know you're experiencing this bug and you should use the workarounds mentioned earlier.
 
I am using the work around, but until i took the case off it wasn't cutting down the awake time. I was getting 4hours avg battery life no matter how much or little I used it. I'm going to see how it does today with case off today and then put it on omorrow. I typed my post on the case yesterday in a hurry, I didn't think the case had anything to do with the bug but maybe the fix wasn't working for some people like it wasn't for me.
 
I got it figured out, a guy came into my work today same phone same case. I looked at it Apparently the machine got a little too happy with the part that covered the buttons on my case. An exacto knife cut and it seems to be back to normal.
 
I was having issues with my recently purchased Droid X and its battery life. Went searching on the internet to try to diagnose the problem and stumbled across this thread and registered for the forum.

Lex, I was able to duplicate the scenario that you described in your original post.
 
Hi guys, new poster here...

I think this is a more general android issue as I have an HTC Incredible and get the same "100% running" bug.

The Spare Parts app, I believe, just ripped the code from the testing mode (which another poster pointed out is accessed by typing "*#*#4636#*#*" in to the phone).
malek9696 said:
Geolocalisation fix (aka no-sleep bug) | drakaz

Not sure how relevant it will be to the DX, but it's a start.
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While the link to the fix is not so helpful in and of itself, the page links to another thread on these very forums which seem to contain some info:

http://androidforums.com/samsung-i7500/61168-no-sleep-has-nothing-do-anything.html

The relevant info (I believe) is in post #78:

roa said:
From what I learned, it is the network location. If you just turn it on, the phone will sleep just fine - until you trigger it (by using maps, for example, which will first try to get network location while trying to get satellite data). Network location service will never release the lock, and you won't see anything in logcat, because nothing is happening: noone is requesting anything from location service, it is not doing anything - excepting holding the lock until you reboot the phone. First use of location services after reboot => no sleep again.
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I disabled "network location" on my phone and it seems to be behaving itself again. Hope this is helpful to others!
 
Can anyone confirm that disabling GPS has actually helped them get better battery life? I'm on my third day of "moderate" (read: I can't put the thing down most times, but I'm actually doing other stuff from time to time as well) use, with 13-15 hours between charges, with GPS on all the time and the usage meter pegged at 100%. Disabling GPS before didn't seem to help at all - there's no difference in actual battery usage with my phone.

Lots of people have said "battery life sucks" and "i can repeat the bug", but - and I admit I may have missed it - I haven't seen anyone actually confirm that they turned off GPS and suddenly they have pristine battery use?

isorashi said:
The Spare Parts app, I believe, just ripped the code from the testing mode (which another poster pointed out is accessed by typing "*#*#4636#*#*" in to the phone).
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Yeah, spare parts is "borrowed" from the spare parts example in the SDK - the guy just compiled it and shoved some ads in it, probably making a fortune from all the X users checking their battery usage with big goofy fingers. I uninstalled it and just use "info" (4636) instead. :P
 
fwaggle said:
Can anyone confirm that disabling GPS has actually helped them get better battery life? I'm on my third day of "moderate" (read: I can't put the thing down most times, but I'm actually doing other stuff from time to time as well) use, with 13-15 hours between charges, with GPS on all the time and the usage meter pegged at 100%. Disabling GPS before didn't seem to help at all - there's no difference in actual battery usage with my phone.

Lots of people have said "battery life sucks" and "i can repeat the bug", but - and I admit I may have missed it - I haven't seen anyone actually confirm that they turned off GPS and suddenly they have pristine battery use?



Yeah, spare parts is "borrowed" from the spare parts example in the SDK - the guy just compiled it and shoved some ads in it, probably making a fortune from all the X users checking their battery usage with big goofy fingers. I uninstalled it and just use "info" (4636) instead. :P
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I've noticed a difference for sure. If you're using your phone a lot you're not going to notice as big of a difference. When you're using your phone your phone isn't sleeping. You should notice a pretty decent difference or extended time when not using the phone. Hopefully that's understandable. Basically you should be several more hours out of the phone in stan-by time like if you're working or whatever and not really using your phone.
 
Ive noticed a huge difference too...Previously I was at 60% battery life after 5 hours off charger. Now, Im anywhere between 50-70% after 17 hours with the same usage
 
Like several others - I joined the site just for this thread. Misery loves company. I have a few more data points to add:

1. The 100% "Running" issue did not occur for the first few days I owned the phone.
2. Turning the "middle" GPS option OFF from ON does NOT solve the issue for me.
3. No applications explicitly show that they're causing the system to run while the screen is off.
4. It's "Android System" that is causing the partial wake scenario. So, it's anyone's guess as to what within the system is causing this.
5. It is entirely possible for my Droid X to run through its battery in 5 hours.

I'm going to perform some more tests on the many permutations of things that seem to affect this bug, and report back. I think we need to keep this thread clean of any offtopic posts and people saying "I don't have this." out of hand without testing. I just tried it on THREE random Droid X's in the office and they all have the issue.
 
More data:

6. The GPS radio itself is likely NOT the source of the battery drain, as I have kept it off completely, rebooted, left it off, and still have 100% running since boot.
7. It's not likely data usage either, as total data sent and recieved during this test session is around 10kbyte.
8. Sensor usage is not likely either, as it seems to be tracking with the "screen on" time.
9. CPU usage isn't showing any proccess using time on the processor anywhere close to what would be needed to peg the system at 100% all the time.
10. Partial wakelock is reporting "Media" and "Android System" for small percentages of the total time since boot. (in this case 1m45s for media, 44s for System, yet the phone's been on for 12 minutes)
11. With only WiFi on, it tracks at around 90-98% under "other usage."
12. Airplane mode on or off seems to have no effect. (Problem is not cellular? hmm)
 
I believe Spare Parts uses the Android OS battery information you can see it without Spare Parts by dialing *#*#4646#*#* from the dialer so it shouldn't be reporting incorrectly.

Edit - Sorry, I didn't see someone point this out earlier in the thread.
 
Ok, I just noticed that if you use *#*#INFO#*#* you don't get new info unless you back out all the way to the main INFO menu and hit "Battery History" again.
 
I found a simple work around for me. I have Locale installed, and I downloaded the GPS plugin. Then I set a condition so that every time my phone is face up the GPS turns off. When I pick up my phone and it's not face up anymore so the GPS turns back on. It keeps my phone sleeping while still keeping my GPS enabled whenever I'm using my phone.
 
Brian_83 said:
I've noticed a difference for sure. If you're using your phone a lot you're not going to notice as big of a difference. When you're using your phone your phone isn't sleeping. You should notice a pretty decent difference or extended time when not using the phone. Hopefully that's understandable. Basically you should be several more hours out of the phone in stan-by time like if you're working or whatever and not really using your phone.
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Sure, but what I mean is that I can reproduce the issue (100% "running" in the INFO debug screen AKA "spare parts"), and I still have pretty great battery life compared to others. Some users are complaining about 5 hours on their phones with it idle - idle at "100% running" with the screen off should not use more battery than with the screen on, which leads me to believe that while this may indeed be an issue, anyone who's only getting 5 hours or so out of their phone should probably send it back instead of sitting around waiting for Motorola to fix this particular issue.

Is there an issue? I'm sure. Is it to blame for people only getting 5~6 hours out of their phone? I personally don't think so. I think if you wait for Moto to fix the "GPS bug", you're still gonna have garbage battery life if 5~6 hours is the best you can get out of your phone right now. Unless of course someone else comes along and says "I was getting 5~6 hours idle time, turned off GPS and now i get 13~15" - but I haven't seen any of that yet.

I'd test how long my standby time is with/without GPS enabled if I could put the thing down long enough - I just discovered all the free classics on Kindle so it's gonna be a while. :(
 
fwaggle said:
Unless of course someone else comes along and says "I was getting 5~6 hours idle time, turned off GPS and now i get 13~15" - but I haven't seen any of that yet.
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Seriously? Everyone is saying that turning off GPS improves battery life like this.
 
aminaked said:
Seriously? Everyone is saying that turning off GPS improves battery life like this.
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Who's "everyone"? Can you quote some of them? I took a quick sweep through the thread and saw no such thing - OP is getting ~12 hours of idle time out of his phone like I do, and most of the other comments are like this:

bumpylemon said:
i got 100% percent running too. my battery last literally 5 hours....with little use...little as in maybe a 5 min phone call...a few emails...and a map or 2....im not joking.
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gvegastiger said:
That explains my battery problem. I was getting terrible battery performance. It basically was lasting about 3/4 of the day. I hardly used it at all yesterday (made 0 calls, watched youtube for about 10 mins, did some browsing (which uses GPS) and my batter was at 40% at the end of the day. I just repeated your test and it went from 100% even though most of the morning it was "sleeping" and now its down to 40%.
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They're complaining that they get terrible battery life, and then confirming that they get the same behavior in INFO/spare parts, but not that turning off the GPS suddenly made everything all better. Without that second part, there's absolutely no indication that they're related - particularly when folks like me can reproduce the "bug" and our phones last longer than 4-5 hours.

For me, turning off GPS makes no discernible difference. In the absence of anyone saying emphatically "I got 4~5 hours between charges, I turned GPS off, I get 10~12 hours, then I go the next day with GPS on (to eliminate any other anomalies in battery life) and it's back to 4~5 hours"... I would seriously recommend sending your phone back if you only get 4-5 hours between charges.

Edit: For the record, confirming that your "running time" goes down as expected after disabling GPS is not the same thing as confirming your phone is actually going longer between charges. I get the same battery life between charges whether my "running" is at 21% or 100% all day.
 
These are from droidforums.net. I left out my own experience with this bug.

***

Yes, after some testing on my wife's phone I found the same issue that this thread is referring to. Unless you manually toggle the GPS off it eats your battery even though the icon on the task bar shows it's not in use.

***

Figured I'd jump on the bandwagon and say I'm extremely impressed by this battery now that I used it for a day with gps off...my battery would be down to 70% after 5 hours with the phone on sleep the entire time. After toggling a couple widgets based on the results of my old thread I got a significant and ample increase in battery life.

***

Yeah I am going on 1 Day 5 Hours and 47 Min Display is 45% Cell Standby is 25% Voice Calls 23% and Phone Idle is 8%. Wifi has beenon the whole time and Gps off the whole time. Done a good number of texts, many emails, and played Nesnoid with the Wii controller hooked up over bluetooth for around 20 or 30 min. I am still at 30% battery, so am pretty sure leaving Gps is better for it cause I never got that good before when I had Gps on.

***

I think you have something here. Ive tried a number of other things on this thread with no real results. UnChecking my location has made a difference.

***

uh yeah. this un checking use my location totally fixed my battery issues. my phone idle and standbye use to kill between 25-40% of my battery and now bothare below 10%. im at 5 hours and of moderate use and still at 80%. before my phone would be at 30% after 8 hours or so and at this rate after 10 hours ill be at 60% left. i dont know... it's worked for me so far.
 
I was barely breaking 10 hours before finding this thread. After setting up Tasker to kill GPS after exiting a handful of apps my battery was around 20 hours. However, I recently underclocked my CPU at idle using SetCPU and my phone just died after 36 hours of being unplugged. I've got the CPU underclocked from 1000 MHz to 300 MHz at screen off idle. The CPU steps down incrementally from 1000 MHz a few times as battery left goes below 30%. Really impressed with the battery now that I have full control over what is running and how much usage the phone has.
 
fwaggle said:
Thanks, that's helpful. Now I know I'm - for certain - an exception. :D
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Maybe your phone is the exception but I tend to think that every X has this problem. The bug may be somewhat sporadic. This is what seemed to cause the bug for me if you want to be a guinea pig for some reason:

0)charge the phone all the way up and unplug it

1)turn on gps settings. check all 3 boxes under location & security, especially "use network location" or whatever that middle one is called. Turn them all ON.

2)use an app that turns on gps. for example, open maps. make sure you see the gps icon come on in the task bar. you can then exit out of maps. note that the gps icon goes away. This will cause the software lock that's causing the battery drain.

3)turn off the screen and let it sit overnight off of the charger.

In the morning, most of the time for me, the battery will have drained to about 70% or less. This is not normal. It may not happen every night this way, but it seemed to happen every time for me. If it doesn't for you, you may need to try again. If you can't reproduce the bug, I wonder if there's some app you've installed or setting you've set or something that's making the difference. For example, if you have the phone's GPS setting on but never use GPS, you may not see the battery drain. Or if you reboot after using GPS. Maybe a task killer would do the trick, although I think people shouldn't use task killers. Juice Defender, who knows? I don't think it's a hardware issue.

As far as I know at this point, unchecking the top location setting is the workaround.

If that doesn't seem to work for you:
-turn off GPS when done using
-turn off WIFI when done using
-reboot after charging
 
Great news all!

I installed the leaked Froyo 2.2 and this bug does NOT exist.

I run the exact same test and my phone does indeed go to sleep after the GPS is activated.

Now I can leave my GPS always on again!
 
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