Help Please test this (reproducable) Droid X issue: battery stops charging when USB service dies.

[tliebeck]

Hello all,

I'm the author of SystemPanel, which includes task management (killing) features. I've recently noticed a problem with my Droid X where it suddenly will stop accepting a charge.

For example, the screenshot below shows that the phone plugged in overnight, yet battery continues to drain:

With a bit of testing, it appears that killing the app "usb" results in this behavior occurring. Once it has been killed, the phone will never accept a charge until it the phone is rebooted.

I would greatly appreciate if a fellow Droid X owner could verify this for me. To do this, use SystemPanel (Lite version will work fine, as will ANY task killer, or the OS' own task killer) to terminate the "usb" program. The full name of the process is "com.motorola.usb". Any task manager should also reproduce the behavior if you perform a "end all" or "kill all" operation. Then unplug the device from USB/AC power (if it was plugged in) and then reconnect it. You should see no indication of a USB connection and/or charging if your device suffers the same problem. The issue can then be corrected by rebooting the phone.

Here is the process as shown by SystemPanel:

It appears that Motorola has incorrectly allowed this process to be user-killable and/or has failed to automatically restart it in the event that it terminates or otherwise fails.

Would greatly appreciate feedback on this problem, if this is not unique to my device, I'll be modifying SytemPanel immediately to avoid ever killing this process.

Best regards
--Tod Liebeck / NextApp, Inc.

 

[prerunnerseth]

Testing this now. I had a two days friday and saturday night where my phone did not charge at all. I had to do a restart to get it to charge, But I do not use a task killer of any kind including the internal one. My co-worked had the same issue with the same results. Had to reboot to get it to charge. He has not had a problem since and I have not had a problem for the past two nights of charging. so, if this was my issue I have no idea how that process got stopped. Maybe it gets randomly booted out by the OS because of the lack of protection.

EDIT:

Looks like mine is charging. I checked and the process has not restarted. My phone has indicated that I have gone from %60-%70. Unplug and plug back in and it is still at %70

 

[Bassman21]

Hello all,

I'm the author of SystemPanel, which includes task management (killing) features. I've recently noticed a problem with my Droid X where it suddenly will stop accepting a charge.

For example, the screenshot below shows that the phone plugged in overnight, yet battery continues to drain:


With a bit of testing, it appears that killing the app "usb" results in this behavior occurring. Once it has been killed, the phone will never accept a charge until it the phone is rebooted.

I would greatly appreciate if a fellow Droid X owner could verify this for me. To do this, use SystemPanel (Lite version will work fine, as will ANY task killer, or the OS' own task killer) to terminate the "usb" program. The full name of the process is "com.motorola.usb". Any task manager should also reproduce the behavior if you perform a "end all" or "kill all" operation. Then unplug the device from USB/AC power (if it was plugged in) and then reconnect it. You should see no indication of a USB connection and/or charging if your device suffers the same problem. The issue can then be corrected by rebooting the phone.

Here is the process as shown by SystemPanel:


It appears that Motorola has incorrectly allowed this process to be user-killable and/or has failed to automatically restart it in the event that it terminates or otherwise fails.

Would greatly appreciate feedback on this problem, if this is not unique to my device, I'll be modifying SytemPanel immediately to avoid ever killing this process.

Best regards
--Tod Liebeck / NextApp, Inc.

Sweeet Looking app, i'll def look into it when i get my X will def! Do you think if this is the case it will have any realworld negative repercussions? The only thing negative i can think of is if an application uses the USB service and causes it to crash, though some type of Monitoring service should exist within the android kernel(or somewhere within the system lol) that monitors critical processes and to re-start them automatically if they die without any manual intervention... I'm jus a Windows tech guy...not a Android guy by any means

 

[mruno]

how about a discount for a limited time for the full version

 

[tliebeck]

Sweeet Looking app, i'll def look into it when i get my X will def! Do you think if this is the case it will have any realworld negative repercussions? The only thing negative i can think of is if an application uses the USB service and causes it to crash, though some type of Monitoring service should exist within the android kernel(or somewhere within the system lol) that monitors critical processes and to re-start them automatically if they die without any manual intervention... I'm jus a Windows tech guy...not a Android guy by any means

Thanks, yes, it should auto-restart if killed, which it is not doing. This shouldn't have too many terrible repercussions, just check to make sure the battery indicator shows a "charging" icon when the device is plugged in.

It will be very bad if you use an "automatic" task killer and don't have this process excluded. SystemPanel is not an automatic task killer though. I generally think such things are a bad idea: Why Automatic Task Killing is a Bad Idea | android.nextapp.com

That said, if you do use SystemPanel and ever need to hit "end all" (typically this should only be done if your phone is experiencing significant performance issues and you can't find another way to solve it) it will terminate this process by default. To avoid this, you can exclude it in SystemPanel. If this is a problem for more people than myself, I'll be releasing an updated version which does so automatically.

 

[tliebeck]

Testing this now. I had a two days friday and saturday night where my phone did not charge at all. I had to do a restart to get it to charge, But I do not use a task killer of any kind including the internal one. My co-worked had the same issue with the same results. Had to reboot to get it to charge. He has not had a problem since and I have not had a problem for the past two nights of charging. so, if this was my issue I have no idea how that process got stopped. Maybe it gets randomly booted out by the OS because of the lack of protection.

EDIT:

Looks like mine is charging. I checked and the process has not restarted. My phone has indicated that I have gone from %60-%70. Unplug and plug back in and it is still at %70

Does it restart if you kill it though? (It likely will not, and you'll likely have to reboot to resolve the problem afterward, so please don't do this if you don't have time/feel comfortable doing so).

 

[prerunnerseth]

Does it restart if you kill it though? (It likely will not, and you'll likely have to reboot to resolve the problem afterward, so please don't do this if you don't have time/feel comfortable doing so).

No It did not restart, but My phone did charge just fine with it not running.

 

[CriticalMass]

I actually had a problem just last night. hooked it up to charge and when i took it off the charger today it was at 40% and within a few seconds the phone just spontaneously rebooted. :/

I had ATK installed but removed it in favor of automatic taskkiller today.

I can check on this when I get home if you'd like.

 

[Norsk]

Happened to me today by using BB storm USB cable onto my work pc. It would stay at 60%. So I tried to charge my phone with DX wall charger, it works fine. Werid.

 

[BuTbKa]

OK. Killed USB, as you asked. Plug to my loptop, charging status not showing in notification bar, however in System Panel Lite in monitor tab under battery status its says charging.

edit: it says charging, but phone not charging.

 

[tliebeck]

OK. Killed USB, as you asked. Plug to my loptop, charging status not showing in notification bar, however in System Panel Lite in monitor tab under battery status its says charging.

edit: it says charging, but phone not charging.

Much thanks for verifying this, really appreciate it. SystemPanel does report the phone as being connected to USB or AC power for me as well, and will log it as though it was charging. I'm guessing you've already done so, but make sure you reboot your phone now.

I've released an update to SystemPanel (1.0.4) to avoid ever killing this service. It won't be ended by "End All" regardless of what level of application the user requests to be terminated. Directly ending it is still possible (as it is by using the OS' own task killer), but very much not recommended.

Thanks again!

 

[Dexter_prog]

Hey there. I'm having this problem but on another phone (Sony Ericsson X8) and I don't have a USB app. Did anyone resolve this somehow?

 

[colchiro]

Sorry, I didn't read every post, but how is the user deliberately killing the usb app a bug that needs fixing? If you kill an app, there may be consequences, but that doesn't make it a bug. App killers have been frowned on for several Android versions now.

 

[Dexter_prog]

But I don't have a usb app and I don't use autokill or the manual killing feature in System and I have the same problem.