• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Battery Drain due to Software Bug w/GPS?

Are you able to replicate this same issue?

  • Total voters
    112
If I use maps, foursquare, or yelp I don't see this issue with sleep times. Something makes the Android System use a bit more of the sensor than normal on certain days but nothing really shows up in GPS and maps tend to stay fairly low.
 
Ekyle,

Could you kindly follow the exact procedure noted at the end of my first post and report back.

I'm almost convinced this is a fairly major and widespread issue that Motorola needs to know about.

The only other thing I can see is maybe spare parts is reporting wrong, but I don't think that's it.
 
lexluthor said:
Ekyle,

Could you kindly follow the exact procedure noted at the end of my first post and report back.

I'm almost convinced this is a fairly major and widespread issue that Motorola needs to know about.

The only other thing I can see is maybe spare parts is reporting wrong, but I don't think that's it.
Click to expand...
I'll give it a shot tomorrow. I fell asleep while my fiancee was playing with yelp and she drained the battery haha.
 
I was able to replicate the problem as well. GPS ON>reboot>charge for 2 minutes>off charger>sleep>100% usage. GPS Off>reboot>charge for 2 minutes>off charger>sleep>28% usage. I am also using Fancy Widget and just disabled the GPS option. I think I will set up Tasker to turn on GPS with Maps, Foursquare, etc. then turn cycle GPS off when the program exits.
 
Add another test confirming that it is defintely the GPS staying active when it shouldnt...

I got an app last night called "timerrific". It will adjust your volume settings based on time of day (vibrate when going to bed, ring when wake up). For some reason when installing, it said that the program has access to the gps for some reason. There is no gps option in the program settings so I don't know why it needs it, but whatever. So this morning the program does exactly what it should (turns the ringer on at 7am) and all was good. Until an hour later I checked spare parts and I was at 100% usage and android system had been running the whole time (no other programs were running). I went and disabled, then re-enabled gps and the usage and android system started dropping. I started thinking about what other programs access the gps....

Maps & Navigation (obviously)
Timeriffic
Camera (if geotagging is enabled)
Browser (if you have google set to find your location)
any weather widget that you have set up for gps location

Im sure there are TONS of people out there with this phone that run one if not all of these during the course of the day....which may explain why some people have complaints about such bad battery life....
 
Also check your battery voltage, while making sure your gps is off. It should be between 3-ish and 4-ish volts. I've returned 2 batterys with high voltage, symptoms were bad usb charging and 3/4's to 1/2 day battery life.
 
I have added a poll to this thread to keep a better tally on how many people can and cannot replicate this very same issue. Please answer the poll truthfully as this data may be presented to Motorola, Verizon, or both.

Also, I have stickied this thread.. for now.
 
Trident said:
I have added a poll to this thread to keep a better tally on how many people can and cannot replicate this very same issue. Please answer the poll truthfully as this data may be presented to Motorola, Verizon, or both.

Also, I have stickied this thread.. for now.
Click to expand...

In addition to answering truthfully, I'd say run the exact test at the end of my first post so that you create the same conditions and there's no confusion about whether you have this issue or not. Please make sure you've tested correctly before voting.

Also, just to rule out that spare parts is reading the information wrong, is there another program that can read sleep time? We should make sure that it's not that the phone really is sleeping and spare parts is reporting it incorrectly.
 
I just tried with Google Maps and the Geolocation setting in Beautiful Widgets.

Both times I could reproduce it. Even if it wasnt at 100% I could see it climbing. Only toggling the GPS off and leaving it off helped me at first. It took a few toggles for mine to stick. GPS is on now, and its finally declining.

I noticed Google Maps and Beautiful Widgets showed up in Battery Use in Battery Manager. When u click on both there is a recommendation to turn off GPS when not in use. Even tho they kinda acknowledge something with the GPS, when closing an app that uses it or turning off the GPS settings in an app GPS still seems to be running...

Nice find Lex. The wild thing is I was getting what I thought was good battery life. I wonder if this will make it even better.

There is another app, Battery Left that can show it too. But it looks the same as Spare Parts. In Battery Left, look under History.
 
lexluthor said:
In addition to answering truthfully, I'd say run the exact test at the end of my first post so that you create the same conditions and there's no confusion about whether you have this issue or not. Please make sure you've tested correctly before voting.

Also, just to rule out that spare parts is reading the information wrong, is there another program that can read sleep time? We should make sure that it's not that the phone really is sleeping and spare parts is reporting it incorrectly.
Click to expand...

I really, really doubt spare parts would be recording incorrectly. The reason i say this is because spare parts is simply reporting info from the android info system...if you want to see what i am talking about, dial *#*#4636#*#*

It will take you to a menu, click on battery history :)
 
Ohh. THATS why it looks the same when using Battery Left....lol

Thanks for pointing that out.
 
Ok. I posted in the motorola thread and I also shot an email off to Motorola support with links to both threads.

Hopefully, maybe Trident or someone has more direct access to someone who can look into this and respond.
 
VERY cool! Thanks for looking into this! One of our main smartphone functions for us here, was being able to use the Dx for geocaching. My wife's DX drained very quickly however, and we ended up using my for the rest of the day, since hers was nigh dead.

Could you pop over into the dead camera pixel issue thread and poke around as well? A lot of DXs are being returned with people thinking it is a hardware issue. (Also, apparantly the update also ate the self timer function in the camera app as well.)

Good to know Motorola is snooping about, fixing issues they are finding!
 
Just replicated exactly as in the first post. Although I do not use gps all that much so I usually toggle it on and off.
 
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%.
 
murdoc158 said:
I was able to replicate the problem as well. GPS ON>reboot>charge for 2 minutes>off charger>sleep>100% usage. GPS Off>reboot>charge for 2 minutes>off charger>sleep>28% usage. I am also using Fancy Widget and just disabled the GPS option. I think I will set up Tasker to turn on GPS with Maps, Foursquare, etc. then turn cycle GPS off when the program exits.
Click to expand...

Confirmed here using this method. I was wondering what was sucking the battery down so fast. I figured it was something not shutting down. TAG for updates.

WOW, running at 5.1%.

Big bug, rofl.
 
I followed your directions and was not able to replicate it. But let me make sure that I understand the directions properly. When you say, "then read the Running % in Spare Parts", I took that to mean:
Run Spare Parts
Go into Battery History
Select "Other Usage"
Select "GPS Usage"

If that is the correct process, then I could not replicate the 100% GPS usage. If that is not correct, could you explain it a little more?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom