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Help Battery Drain due to Software Bug w/GPS?

Are you able to replicate this same issue?


  • Total voters
    112

lexluthor

Android Expert
May 15, 2010
4,157
402
Ok, let me try this again. I think I had a bad title and started out a little off track in my other post.

This seems important, to me, so hopefully people will see it this time.

After reading this post
http://androidforums.com/support-tr...0-how-battery-life-droid-x-2.html#post1261548
I decided to download Spare Parts
Spare Parts - Android app on AppBrain

When I ran it, my phone had been unplugged for about 12 hours and I found that Spare Parts showed my phone to have been Running (not sleeping) for 100% of that time.

After being methodical and getting data points after opening various programs, I determined that after I opened any program that accessed the GPS, the phone no longer would go into sleep mode.

To get the phone to start sleeping again, all I have to do is toggle GPS off and then back on again.

It's completely reproducible every time on my phone.

Now, I don't know what kind of effect this will have on battery life, but seems like it probably would have some effect.

If others can test this and see if it affect you at all, it'd be helpful to see if there's a potential major software bug here or if it's just something with my phone.

Easiest way to test is to start with a fresh reboot with GPS toggle on, install Spare Parts, plug in the phone for a second (to reset the counters), let it sit sleeping for a few minutes, then read the Running % in Spare Parts. Should be pretty low. Plug in the phone to reset the counters again. Then start Google Maps or any other program that will activate your GPS. Close that program and then let the phone sit idle for a few minutes. Check Spare Parts running time again and, for me, it's pegged at 100%.

It stays like that until I toggle the GPS off or reboot the phone.

Very curious to see if others get the same results.
 
I will play around with this one a bit as well. I always knew that that one horrible year of my life that I spent in Software Quality Assurance would come in handy at some point.

While I work on that, could you in return please explain the ramifications of enabling "aGPS" and "Use Wireless Networks" (in Location and Security settings) on battery life? This is assuming that I have my "True" GPS turned OFF.
 
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Yup same issue. Bad thing for me is i use Fancy Widget so it displays my Weather like HTC Sense and all. So it hits my GPS as soon as i boot up and ever 30 min. So i have to sit and do toggle GPS atleast every 30 min to counter the affect of this widget and after anything else that uses my GPS. That seems pretty damn lame.
Thanks for confirming my findings.

I also use Fancy Widgets and am having another issue with that. Maybe you can take a look at this?
http://androidforums.com/android-ap...widgets-updating.html?highlight=fancy+widgets

Anyhow, why not just change fancy widgets to "use my location" only and not "use gps location". Might not always give you the exact city, but certainly close enough.

So, back to this issue, what now? IF not having the phone sleeping is hurting the battery, then this is a potentially huge bug.
 
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What do you mean no luck? Seems like you may have replicated the issue. Did you ever run a program in there to start the gps? If not maybe something else at startup did? Did you ever see the gps icon come on?

anything from dabomb or kaleb yet?

I misread your post. Yeah, I did replicated your results. I narrowed down the culprit to Fancy Widget which was using GPS location for weather. When I turned that off, my phone could sleep after start up. When I exit out of Navigation, the GPS icon is still on and keeps my phone up. So it does appear that the X is having trouble turning off GPS and drains battery if unchecked. Good find.
 
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When I exit out of Navigation, the GPS icon is still on and keeps my phone up. So it does appear that the X is having trouble turning off GPS and drains battery if unchecked. Good find.
Just to be clear, my GPS icon is going away when I close a GPS enabled program. I can even end the task too.

But, still, my phone doesn't sleep once the GPS has been activated and until I turn off the GPS in the settings.

Not sure if this info will help you but... I have my gps toggle turned on. I leave it turned on for my google lattitude. I've been unplugged for 3 hours and my "running time" is 24.4% and im still at 88% battery life with mild-light use. says I've still got 13 hours of battery left

Sure, even if it doesn't back up my findings, it helps. Are you sure lattitude is accessing the gps and not using cell towers/wifi to get your location? Do you actually periodically see the GPS icon? Are you determining running time using spare parts?
 
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Sure, even if it doesn't back up my findings, it helps. Are you sure lattitude is accessing the gps and not using cell towers/wifi to get your location? Do you actually periodically see the GPS icon? Are you determining running time using spare parts?

I'm using "batteryleft" which shows the same breakdown as spare parts. and yeah I have lattitude set to use GPS not cell/wifi. The gps icon pops up every now and then. I think I saw an option somewhere (I dont remember where though) to only use gps when its requested from a program (i.e. lattitude) but I have my Beautiful Widgets and WeatherBug Elite set to draw from Cell/wifi. I think one issue is there are so many programs that MAY ping the GPS so the settings in each program you have have to be set just right, ya know?
 
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ECFfighter7232,

Well, thanks for helping so far. Good info.

Let's try and keep our tests similar.

Can you run my test at the first post just as I did? Instead of lattitude, open google maps and make sure the gps icon comes up them. Maybe certain programs don't properly close the GPS?

Yeah I use maps pretty regularly with the traffic overlay because I have a 110 mile round trip commute 6 days a week in DC traffic. So most of my ride to and from work I am checking maps to see how/where the traffic is
 
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Yes, after 2 days of use, I think I can say my battery life improved as well. It's just so hard to really tell and yesterday I was in a bad signal area a lot of the day, but today it lasted pretty long.

Can some others run the exact test at the end of my first post?

If we determine a problem, is there anyone who has a Verizon or Motorola contact that this can be reported to?
 
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