Help Gallery consuming lots of power, and unkillable?

[Quantumboredom]

Hi. I got my Galaxy tab a couple of days ago, and I'm quite pleased with it. But I have come across one problem. Basically if I run the Gallery application it will dominate the Battery use statistics (under Settings -> About phone -> Battery use). This happens whether I click back or home to exit the application, and even persists if I choose "Force stop" for the gallery application under battery use.

To replicate:
Run gallery and exit it (by pressing back or home, does not matter).
Go to battery use screen.
Plug in then out charger to reset battery use statistics.
Turn off screen for a little while (not long, just half a minute to let the statistics gather some).
Turn on screen again, and hit menu -> refresh.

Gallery is now at the top of the list (or maybe slightly below display). As I said this persists even if I tap Gallery and select force stop.

Has anyone else experienced this, or can anyone try to replicate it? Should just take a minute or so to do.

I have not actually done a test (overnight thing I guess) to see if this really affects battery life or if it's just a bug in the Battery use thingy, but I did get the feeling my battery had drained a bit quickly my first night, and I believe this was the cause.

 

[Tech Addiction]

Gallery sucks. I loaded it on my Incredible a few months ago and never used it again. I cant beliave its the only one they used. I downloaded Just Pictures after someone recommended it on here. Works much better and smoother.

 

[Quantumboredom]

Downloaded JustPictures and it seems nice. I don't need to view images all that often, but now I can steer clear of Gallery.

I'm still interested to hear if this is just a problem on my device though. If so it could be something wrong with my device, even though I haven't noticed anything else being off.

 

[Tech Addiction]

Downloaded JustPictures and it seems nice. I don't need to view images all that often, but now I can steer clear of Gallery.

I'm still interested to hear if this is just a problem on my device though. If so it could be something wrong with my device, even though I haven't noticed anything else being off.

Gallery uses a lot of memory for all the 3D effects. You would probably need a dual core processor to make this beast smooth.

 

[Quantumboredom]

That may be, but the point is that Gallery seems to be consuming power long after it has been closed, which should not be the case. So if I at any time have run Gallery, my phone will consume extra power because of that untill I do a restart.

 

[Tech Addiction]

I think XDA tells you how to uninstall it after rooting the device. I plan on trying this soon.

 

[Quantumboredom]

For anyone interested there's a thread about it at XDA as well, here. Seems it's possible to install a custom build of the gallery application or something. I'll try it if I wind up rooting my device.

 

[shaggles]

I also moved on to the just pictures party. The default gallery looks kind of nice but consumes way too much power.

Quantumboredom, check out z4root. It one click roots your tab just fine.

 

[Beards]

If Gallery is misbehaving, simply terminate it. I often terminate applications that refuse to stop hitting the CPU when not required.

Just be careful on what Task Killer you use as some are quite intrusive offering no assistance or information.
The best I have found and use is SystemPanel which has many, many features including the ability to terminate troublesome Apps in a tiered manner ~ i.e. either by Inactive Apps, Background Apps, Active Apps, Excluded Apps or System Apps.
Not only that but it also lists which Apps are targeting the CPU and lists this info as time.

 

[Quantumboredom]

Thanks for the suggestion Beards, SystemPanel seems like a nice application. However killing Gallery using SystemPanel has the same effect as killing it using the build-in way. Gallery disappears from the list of running programs but still shows up in battery use. Even killing all active applications has no effect on this.

 

[rm2092]

I downloaded Justpictures, I'm unable to view my pics in my regular gallery so I tried moving some pics in other folders and all I see is one pic that is mounted to the SD card so I made a folder on the SD card and I still can not see my pics.

 

[DarrylGittins]

Thanks for the suggestion Beards, SystemPanel seems like a nice application. However killing Gallery using SystemPanel has the same effect as killing it using the build-in way. Gallery disappears from the list of running programs but still shows up in battery use. Even killing all active applications has no effect on this.

Quantumboredom - did you figure this out? I also see that Gallery is the #1 Battery killer on my Samsung Galaxy, and I don't even use it. How can that be?

Thanks!!

 

[MasterRy88]

ok guys I found out what the gallery is doing. If anyone has spare parts you can also check this out. once you open the gallery and then close it it seems to be drainign battery, and neither the task killer or the task manager seem to be able to solve the problem.

If you open spare parts and go to battery usage and check sensor usage, you can see that the gallery is for whatever reason almost constantly using the sensor which is why it is killing our batteries even after we close it.

LAME, im sure there is a fix for this somewhere but havent found it yet.

 

[DarrylGittins]

This is a pretty horrible bug in the device. Has anyone tried contacting Samsung about it?

 

[MasterRy88]

well I havent contacted Samsung about this but I was reading random stuff and found that the galaxy S phones have a similar if not identical bug. Sooo I think if samsung had a quick fix for this they would have already done it with their smartphones (although this is arguable cause many samsung phones still run 2.1)

But at least now we know the problem so thats a step in the right direction

 

[LB2064]

I'm having the same problem on my Nexus S. Need to figure out how to uninstall Gallery.

 

[DarrylGittins]

Is it possible to just disable the Gallery so it can't run at all?

 

[KentInPhilly]

I have the same problem on my LG Optimus V. I've only had it for a few weeks, but a handful of times I have picked it up and the battery is suddenly nearly dead after having a full charge a couple of hours earlier and I look at the battery usage and the Gallery is the culprit.... Like you said, I did not leave Gallery up and running... I probably looked at images hours earlier and exited the application. At least once I did not even remember running Gallery at all recently.

This does seem like a pretty serious bug. At least twice it basically completely drained the battery before I realized it (screen was locked and phone was in my pocket) and I was phoneless until I coulud charge it back up.

I'll have to check out this other picture viewer program.

 

[KentInPhilly]

By the way, I did just check my account settings and noticed Gallery is set to sync with Picasa under my Gmail account. I've turned this off -- I'll be curious to see if it makes any difference.

I have no pictures on Picasa, so it should be negligible work to sync with it, but perhaps this will keep it from running in the background for no reason.

 

[asiir]

I have the same problem on my LG Optimus V.

I'm getting the same issue with my LG Optimus V. Has anyone come up with a solution?

 

[thomas.m]

Ok, it might be a little late for this thread but I have the same problem with my galaxy i5800. Gallery app is eating my battery. It is constantly using auto rotation sensor.
Here is a quick and working solution: just turn off screen auto rotation.

 

[karthik_sa2]

ANY SOLUTION FOR THIS??am using lg optimus black and the gallery app seems to consume 94%.. just 2 hours and the batt has already gone dwon from 100 to 70.. the prob is even after focefully stopping the app it still continues to consume.. tried switching off auto rotate but still no use

 

[batzerga]

Same story here on EU Motorola Xoom 3g with Android 3.2 stock. I don't wish to root my tablet, but this persistant problem with the Gallery app eating my batery will force me to.
I hope/pray that in ICS this bug will finally be fixed.

 

[batzerga]

UP with some kind of 'solution'. It seams that all of this bad behaviour of the Gallery app is caused by picassa autosinc. Turn off the autosync option in Settigns ---> Accounts & Sync ---> Auto sync and all will be fine from now on. At least this fixed it on euro moto xoom 3g with 3.2 andy.