garryknight
Well-Known Member
Recently my phone started getting quite hot and the battery went from lasting all day with moderate use, ending up with about 30-40% left at the end of the day, to going down to 15% or less within about half a day. So I did some research and found that lots of people had the same problem, and not just with the SGS2 but also with the SGS3 and SGS4.
Various fixes were put forward, both from people who had solved their problem and from people who didn't appear to know what they were talking about. I tried the more sensible fixes and nothing worked.
When I checked my Battery stats in Settings, I found that the media scanner was hogging the battery and keeping the phone awake all day, so I was one step nearer solving the problem. I killed the media scanner process and my battery life improved. But each time I restarted the phone, the problem came back.
I unmounted my 32GB micro-SD card (an absolute requisite in my use case) and waited. Interestingly, the problem continued, even though that's where the vast majority of my media files reside. So I went hunting.
I noticed that even though I'd unmounted the SD card, the /storage/extSdCard folder showed that it had one item inside it. If you know about Linux file systems, which Android uses, you'll know that external storage is mounted onto an existing directory - in the case of my SD card it's mounted on /storage/extSdCard. And if the external storage is unmounted, that directory reverts to being an ordinary directory.
When I looked inside that directory using ES File Explorer, I found a folder that had been created by an app called FlickFolio. It's a great app as it allows you to look at your Flickr stream, sets, etc, on your phone or tablet, and it keeps thumbnails of all your photos on the device to make viewing them very quick.
Now, my current Flickr stream has 9,263 photos in it, taken over the last 6 years. And this directory had over 55,000 subdirectories and files in it, taking up 3.02 GB. I had no idea that they were there because when my SD card is mounted, the FlickFolio directory disappears. It's still there but the mounted SD card covers it up.
So, I deleted the FlickFolio directory. It took nearly 10 minutes for ES File Explorer to do the job but not only did I retrieve a 'missing' 3.02 GB of internal phone storage space, I found that the media scanner is now behaving, and not sucking my battery to death. And my phone isn't overheating. And I'm a happy bunny again.
Various fixes were put forward, both from people who had solved their problem and from people who didn't appear to know what they were talking about. I tried the more sensible fixes and nothing worked.
When I checked my Battery stats in Settings, I found that the media scanner was hogging the battery and keeping the phone awake all day, so I was one step nearer solving the problem. I killed the media scanner process and my battery life improved. But each time I restarted the phone, the problem came back.
I unmounted my 32GB micro-SD card (an absolute requisite in my use case) and waited. Interestingly, the problem continued, even though that's where the vast majority of my media files reside. So I went hunting.
I noticed that even though I'd unmounted the SD card, the /storage/extSdCard folder showed that it had one item inside it. If you know about Linux file systems, which Android uses, you'll know that external storage is mounted onto an existing directory - in the case of my SD card it's mounted on /storage/extSdCard. And if the external storage is unmounted, that directory reverts to being an ordinary directory.
When I looked inside that directory using ES File Explorer, I found a folder that had been created by an app called FlickFolio. It's a great app as it allows you to look at your Flickr stream, sets, etc, on your phone or tablet, and it keeps thumbnails of all your photos on the device to make viewing them very quick.
Now, my current Flickr stream has 9,263 photos in it, taken over the last 6 years. And this directory had over 55,000 subdirectories and files in it, taking up 3.02 GB. I had no idea that they were there because when my SD card is mounted, the FlickFolio directory disappears. It's still there but the mounted SD card covers it up.
So, I deleted the FlickFolio directory. It took nearly 10 minutes for ES File Explorer to do the job but not only did I retrieve a 'missing' 3.02 GB of internal phone storage space, I found that the media scanner is now behaving, and not sucking my battery to death. And my phone isn't overheating. And I'm a happy bunny again.