Database Users

My phone seems to be possessed - apps from hell!

Hey guys - I am having a problem with my phone, and I am hoping someone can help? (Running stock/no-root, w/2.3.4)
A few weeks prior to the 2.3.4 release (while on 2.3.3), I noticed that an app called Bump was constantly running in the background (even though I had never launched the app before), and I'd have to constantly go in and manually kill it.
*Also I should note, Google Maps was another constant running app, that I would have to manually kill along with the Bump app.
This got tiresome, and since I wasn't using Bump anyway, I went ahead and uninstalled it. I figured that a recent update to the app/Bump, was the cause. After removing the Bump app, the problem went away (as well as the Google Maps stopped running in the background too - odd I know).
Anyway, the problem is back, but much worse this time - as this past couple of days, my phone is now running a bunch of apps in the background out of the blue!
1) Tango
2) To Market Lite
3) Google Market (even though I have Accounts & Sync/Background Data turned off)
4) Google Music
5) YouTube
6) Photaf
*Note: I have not launched any of the apps listed above in awhile, except for Google Market, which I turn on Background Data for this, and then turn off when I am done.
I have since removed Tango, but it hasn't solved the problem. It seems to happen the most when I turn my phone on (after I reboot, or if I charge over night with the phone turned off), but also will happen when phone is on during the day - with no reboot.
Anyone have an idea what's causing this, or how to fix it? TIA!

The best way to fix this is to stop worrying about it.
Apps do sometimes run in the background or have services waiting for some events to happen - it actuially HELPS battery life and performance and barely consumes any CPU cycles until something happens that triggers the app.
Killing them will drain your battery and make you crazy, more than letting the apps work as designed will.

patrixl said:
The best way to fix this is to stop worrying about it.
Apps do sometimes run in the background or have services waiting for some events to happen - it actuially HELPS battery life and performance and barely consumes any CPU cycles until something happens that triggers the app.
Killing them will drain your battery and make you crazy, more than letting the apps work as designed will.
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Thank you for the feedback. I just found it odd that this just started happening, especially since some of the apps running were apps I haven't launched in ages (or ever used).
Also (and I forgot to mention in my post above), that a couple of the apps were running so hardcore - that it set off the alarm in Watchdog, as an app draining my battery and memory - telling me to kill it. So idk what to think, other than I find this behavior a bit odd.

Many of them are set to run based on conditions, like bootup, wifi on, widget added, etc. If you hate it, download autostarts from the market.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA Premium App

i have a similar issue but as stated above i just leave them alone

Battery life in SwiftDroid (may apply to other ROMs too).

Hai,
Since nobody bothered to answer my call to track down what drains the battery I decided to just post my findings and you do with it whatever you like...
In recent couple of months I've been experiencing quite nice battery life, almost a week on standby, which is basically on par with original LG ROM. The trick is simple:
It's happening as long as the Gallery app is NOT running.
I don't know what this piece of software does but when it's loaded to memory it stays in there and ignores attempts to terminate it, doesn't sleep when phone wants to and eats battery in a matter of single day. Unfortunately it seems some other apps use it directly or indirectly, like when Wi-Fi starts and/or by Market for example. Thus my solution is just to force close the Gallery after I finish activities which seem to require it.
I don't know whether root of the problem is with the app itself (like, CM modifications made so it's more cool, at the price) or it's just something else unearthed by certain SwiftDroid's configuration. To anyone who wishes to furher investigate my sincerest good luck. And I'd be grateful if results were published too.

hmskrecik said:
Hai,
Since nobody bothered to answer my call to track down what drains the battery I decided to just post my findings and you do with it whatever you like...
In recent couple of months I've been experiencing quite nice battery life, almost a week on standby, which is basically on par with original LG ROM. The trick is simple:
It's happening as long as the Gallery app is NOT running.
I don't know what this piece of software does but when it's loaded to memory it stays in there and ignores attempts to terminate it, doesn't sleep when phone wants to and eats battery in a matter of single day. Unfortunately it seems some other apps use it directly or indirectly, like when Wi-Fi starts and/or by Market for example. Thus my solution is just to force close the Gallery after I finish activities which seem to require it.
I don't know whether root of the problem is with the app itself (like, CM modifications made so it's more cool, at the price) or it's just something else unearthed by certain SwiftDroid's configuration. To anyone who wishes to furher investigate my sincerest good luck. And I'd be grateful if results were published too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i deleted this slow sh** from /system/app and installed QuickPic!

hmskrecik said:
almost a week on standby
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Are you joking? Should i use my phone as a doorstop,or what else?
EDIT: And,an old trick: when an app stays opened,to prevent it to reload again you have to delete his user data (works with Maps and Gmail too)

Eth4n said:
Are you joking? Should i use my phone as a doorstop,or what else?
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Click to collapse
You do with your phone what it damned pleases you. In case you haven't noticed the battery life is most often reported as either standby time or call time. In my typical usage battery lasts no less than two or three days but what 'typical usage' means may mean totally different things to me and to you.
Eth4n said:
EDIT: And,an old trick: when an app stays opened,to prevent it to reload again you have to delete his user data (works with Maps and Gmail too)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hm, even more shotgun approach to what I described. Having user data could be the primary reason for keeping the app installed. But thanks for tip anyway, may come handy one day.

There is gr8 app on xda, better batery state. With this app you can see what aplication keep wake lock, use cpu, gps, etc...

Maps using battery, even though I haven't opened it. How to stop it?

Looking at my battery stats, Maps has used 8% today, even though I haven't run Maps since getting the phone and did a restart last night before putting it on the charger.
Any thoughts on what's going on and how to get it to stop burning battery?
I did have my GPS on, so I don't know if all GPS activity gets listed as Maps in the battery stats.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

I don't have that problem , most likely you installed something and that is triggering drain , maybe application that tracks or integrated with location service.

tnedator said:
Looking at my battery stats, Maps has used 8% today, even though I haven't run Maps since getting the phone and did a restart last night before putting it on the charger.
Any thoughts on what's going on and how to get it to stop burning battery?
I did have my GPS on, so I don't know if all GPS activity gets listed as Maps in the battery stats.
Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2
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I"m seeing that too. Not sure why. I do have my GPS on all the time.

ewingr said:
I"m seeing that too. Not sure why. I do have my GPS on all the time.
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Check if you have Latitude on

naturefreak85 said:
Check if you have Latitude on
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Click to collapse
I have not opened/run Latitude on this phone (never used it on my Atrix). I did just open it to check and can't find any settings to tell it not to auto-update or anything like that.

tnedator said:
I have not opened/run Latitude on this phone (never used it on my Atrix). I did just open it to check and can't find any settings to tell it not to auto-update or anything like that.
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Ditto....

Location services?
ewingr said:
Ditto....
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Could location services be causing the issue?? I see a bunch of apps running even though I have not started them.

"Maps" has crashed?

I keep getting this message on my N7 every once in a while, when I never opened the application in the first place. How do I fix this, and could this be draining my battery life?

map crash
UnixxinU said:
I keep getting this message on my N7 every once in a while, when I never opened the application in the first place. How do I fix this, and could this be draining my battery life?
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I am also seeing this on my xoom after I updated to stock Jellybean.

I get this on a pretty regular basis as well. By pretty regular I mean once every day or two (as long as I'm using the thing) - and I don't even have to touch Maps to get it.
I can have freshly booted it up, used it all day, never loaded maps once, be using it some more then next day and then Maps crashes...
It's kind of annoying, it interrupts me in the middle of doing things sometimes but not any one thing in particular that I could narrow it down to being related to.

A new update out for maps today. Hopefully this fixes our crashing.

Nope, no fix... still doing it, no change in frequency that I've noticed. Is really no one else experiencing this? Its difficult to troubleshoot if its being caused by conflict with some other app as it happens not often enough, like every couple of days.

[Q] Battery issues/questions

So, I've been having some battery issues lately and I can't really tell why. I haven't been doing anything too extreme, but my battery is almost dead within 12 hours of a charge, and the highest usage is mostly the Kernel and/or OS. I know next to nothing about that side of things, so I exported reports from GSam, and I'm hoping someone will be able to translate them for me if there's an obvious problem. Thanks in advance!
(I've also uninstalled Boxer, I only had it because Pro was free yesterday.)

greycobalt said:
So, I've been having some battery issues lately and I can't really tell why. I haven't been doing anything too extreme, but my battery is almost dead within 12 hours of a charge, and the highest usage is mostly the Kernel and/or OS. I know next to nothing about that side of things, so I exported reports from GSam, and I'm hoping someone will be able to translate them for me if there's an obvious problem. Thanks in advance!
(I've also uninstalled Boxer, I only had it because Pro was free yesterday.)
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Click to collapse
Keep the location enabled.
Are you using any of the smart stay/air view etc. controls?
If not turn them ALL off.

mirror3d said:
Keep the location enabled.
Are you using any of the smart stay/air view etc. controls?
If not turn them ALL off.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know, location is always turned on (meaning I never turn it off myself). One of the first things I did was turn off all the smart crap, and turn off every piece of bloatware I could in the settings (I'm not rooted).

When was the last time that your phone was restarted?

mirror3d said:
When was the last time that your phone was restarted?
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Click to collapse
I usually restart it every other day, give or take. It's gone a couple days without it before. I don't usually have it off for more than a couple minutes at a time though.

greycobalt said:
I usually restart it every other day, give or take. It's gone a couple days without it before. I don't usually have it off for more than a couple minutes at a time though.
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This is beginning to sound much more complicated.
Did you install any apps recently?
How old is the phone?
Also do you have data/wifi on all the time?

mirror3d said:
This is beginning to sound much more complicated.
Did you install any apps recently?
How old is the phone?
Also do you have data/wifi on all the time?
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Click to collapse
That's not good. :-/
I install apps often, but I just as often uninstall them...I guess that's not much help. If it was one of them though, wouldn't it show up under the battery log?
It's approaching a year old, I got it last November I believe.
Yes, I keep my Wifi and data on all the time.

Bad network will drain your battery. Check how the signal is.

Android OS and Kernel are normal between 12-25% on 4.4.2. It's an issue with the battery reporting.
It looks like you've got a wakelock. 12% per hour means it's not going into deep sleep.
Check Wakelock Detector to see if it's going into deep sleep or not. (It needs root for everything else, but that still works.)

ShadowLea said:
Android OS and Kernel are normal between 12-25% on 4.4.2. It's an issue with the battery reporting.
It looks like you've got a wakelock. 12% per hour means it's not going into deep sleep.
Check Wakelock Detector to see if it's going into deep sleep or not. (It needs root for everything else, but that still works.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stated in reply post that the phone is not rooted.
My advice will be to uninstall apps one at time to find the one causing the drain.

ddogishere said:
Stated in reply post that the phone is not rooted.
My advice will be to uninstall apps one at time to find the one causing the drain.
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Click to collapse
And neither is mine. Wakelock detector still works in the tab that shows Deep Sleep vs Awake. As I said by 'Everything else requires root, but that still works'.

Cundis said:
Bad network will drain your battery. Check how the signal is.
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Click to collapse
That varies. At home, I have great signal (full-signal 4G, router is never more than 20 feet away). Some places in town, I can drop to 3G, especially my grandparents (although my grandma does have a router I'm connected to). There's a weird (unrelated?) bug where if I drop to 3G, I either have to turn airplane mode on or wait several hours until it reverts back to 4G, even though I'll be back in a verified 4G area.
ShadowLea said:
Android OS and Kernel are normal between 12-25% on 4.4.2. It's an issue with the battery reporting.
It looks like you've got a wakelock. 12% per hour means it's not going into deep sleep.
Check Wakelock Detector to see if it's going into deep sleep or not. (It needs root for everything else, but that still works.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will definitely check that out and use it tonight. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get back to you on what it says. What generally causes the wakelocks, specific apps? Or just poorly set-up preferences?

greycobalt said:
I will definitely check that out and use it tonight. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll get back to you on what it says. What generally causes the wakelocks, specific apps? Or just poorly set-up preferences?
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Usually apps. Facebook, Skype, some games. Although Mediascanner(Android process) is also known to be responsible for it quite often.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2

ShadowLea said:
Usually apps. Facebook, Skype, some games. Although Mediascanner(Android process) is also known to be responsible for it quite often.
Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk 2
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It looks like PayPal was one of the culprits? For some reason?
I did find out I could root extremely easily, so did so and downloaded Greenify, so I'm hoping I can tweak enough to get my battery life back.

greycobalt said:
It looks like PayPal was one of the culprits? For some reason?
I did find out I could root extremely easily, so did so and downloaded Greenify, so I'm hoping I can tweak enough to get my battery life back.
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Click to collapse
That does seem to be the case... Either uninstall paypal or drop it in the Greenify list.
Google Search is probably either the widget or you're using Google Now.

ShadowLea said:
That does seem to be the case... Either uninstall paypal or drop it in the Greenify list.
Google Search is probably either the widget or you're using Google Now.
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Click to collapse
By widget, do you mean the search bar? I use Nova, and I've removed that, so it must be Google Now. I don't use it often, but it does leave me weather cards and shipping info, so would that be it?

greycobalt said:
By widget, do you mean the search bar? I use Nova, and I've removed that, so it must be Google Now. I don't use it often, but it does leave me weather cards and shipping info, so would that be it?
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Click to collapse
I don't think they're related, but I can't be a hundred percent sure. You can try disabling both Google Search ones under apps -> all, see what that does to the info updates. If it scrambles them, just turn them back on.
(There's two Google Search, one is the search bar, the other is the app related to it.)
With that and Paypal dealt with, battery life should improve significantly.

ShadowLea said:
I don't think they're related, but I can't be a hundred percent sure. You can try disabling both Google Search ones under apps -> all, see what that does to the info updates. If it scrambles them, just turn them back on.
(There's two Google Search, one is the search bar, the other is the app related to it.)
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Click to collapse
Awesome! I'll try it out today, and then get back to you again. Thanks for all your help, it's much appreciated!

greycobalt said:
Awesome! I'll try it out today, and then get back to you again. Thanks for all your help, it's much appreciated!
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Happy to help Let's hope that solves it! Also don't forget to greenify Paypal (Or uninstall it if you don't need it), as that seems to be the main culprit.