Spotify makes phone hot, kills battery?

Has anyone had heating-problems with Spotify or very short battery life? In particular, when the screen is OFF? I have found a possible bug in the Spotify but they said that they do not support my phone (Samsung Galaxy S 2). I have described my way of testing here. Not the finest possible way to test this, but functional.

ADD: This is not the Android OS / suspend / 2.3.3 + dual core -bug. Top-program shows Spotify UI -process using 50% cpu, not suspend-process. I am using offline playlists. Battery-usage shows Spotify using almost one hour cpu time per 2 hours music playing when this bug occurs. This is really high!

If you have the same problem as I and particularly if you have any other phone than SGS2 (SGS2 users still welcome of course), please report it here: Short battery life, phone gets hot (Gui process uses a whole cpu core when screen is off).

ADD: My getsatisfaction/spotify -post:

Spotify GUI process uses sometimes up to 49% cpu on samsung galaxy S 2 (100% means full load on both cores). This happens randomly and only when the screen is OFF. Cpufreq jumps from 200mhz to full 1200mhz. Cpu usage and freq returns to normal only after I turn the screen back on. Normal spotify cpu usage is something like 4-17% / 200mhz. This kills battery in 3-4 hours and heats upper part of the phone (NOT battery). I have the latest spotify version, 0.4.9.181.

I might have had the same problem with HTC Wildfire. It got randomly hot too when listening spotify. I did not do it any measurements.

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I just received a reply to the original e-mail: "Please note that the Galaxy SII is not supported by Spotify yet. Having a Galaxy SII (dual core) app is something we want to do at some point but as with all development plans we don't discuss future releases. When we have something to say about a dedicated dual core app we'll be sure to let everyone know."

I suspect this has nothing to do with dual core processor. My understanding is that Android 2.3.* doesn't even have a full dual core -support (meaning that normal app sees only one core, OS two). Correct me if I am wrong... I would guess (based on my Wildfire+spotify experience) that this problem occurs with other phones too. SGS2s more powerful processor just makes things worse. Both cores run at 1200Mhz and one at full speed...

I am testing review-version (0.4.9.175). Preliminary results seem good. No heating yet. Needs more testing...

ADD: The same problem with the preview version. Absolutely no difference.

Click to expand...

ADD: How I know it is CPU problem:

First I started to listen Spotify.

Test 1: I pooled cpufreq readings (while() do cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq; sleep 15; done) and waited about 5 minutes. Result: 200Mhz, almost constant. Then I turned the screen OFF and waited for 10 minutes until the phone began to feel hot. I checked cpufreq pools. Result 1200Mhz, constant, at least 3-4 minutes. Cpufreq returned to normal after I turned the screen ON.

Test 2: top -m 20 -d 60. I waited 5 minutes. Result: spotify cpu usage 4-17%. Then I turned the screen OFF and waited for 15 minutes until the phone began to feel hot, again. I checked the latest top output. Result: spotify cpu usage 49%. Cpu usage returned to normal after I turned the screen ON.

If I understand this correctly, this means that the spotify retains a whole cpu core for itself forcing it to run at full clock. This might be the real reason why spotify kills my battery.

Click to expand...

I have repeated this test multiple times. Always same result. 49-50% cpu usage and full cpufreq.

ADD: Guide:

NOTE: Screen off -heating doesn't happen every time. Sometimes it works without problem for hours and sometimes it does it every time I turn screen off.

0. Start Spotify and click play. Use offline-playlist if possible.
1. Open Android Terminal Emulator (by Jack Palevich) (or any other terminal-emulator)
2. type: while() do cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq; sleep 15; done
3. It should start printing cpufreq reading every 15 seconds
4. Wait a few minutes with screen on and monitor the situation.
5. Turn screen off and wait until phone gets warm/hot.
6. Check cpufreq results
7. Press CTRL+C to quit. (Volume Up (or Down) + C)

Or, alternatively, you can type:
cp /sys
cd devices
cd system
and so on and then type:
while() do cat scaling_cur_freq; sleep 15; done
You can use ls-command to list to content of the current directory.

0. Start Spotify and click play. Use offline-playlist if possible.
1. Open Android Terminal Emulator (by Jack Palevich) (or any other terminal-emulator)
2. type: top -m 3 -d 30
3. It should start printing top 3 cpu using threads every 30 seconds. It takes while to print first time.
4. Wait a few minutes with screen on and monitor the situation.
5. Turn screen off and wait until phone gets warm/hot.
6. Check the latest top output
7. Press CTRL+C to quit. (Volume Up (or Down) + C)

EDIT: top -m 20 -d 60 -> top -m 3 -d 30. Better that way.