I have searched through XDA and read all the threads regarding the 'suspend process' issue. The specific issue is outlined in Issue # 11126 on the Google Code/Android project home...
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11126
I am trying to get to the bottom of this, as best as possible. For all intents and purposes, this really appears to be a mystery. Ultimately, it appears as though there is (currently) absolutely no specific reason a to why 'suspend' runs wild until the device is rebooted.
My question is (I know we can all only speculate):
Is there any chance that this could be Google account-specific?
The reason I ask is, I've been doing some "testing," just to try and make sense of this for myself. Here is what I've done/come across thus far...
- My fiancee's first MT4G was a black one manufactured in Taiwan. It had the inferior LCD-SH-C2 screen. Her battery was draining VERY quickly - i.e. before noon, without using the phone for much else other than texting.
- I enabled USB Debugging for her, to "rule out" the init process issue.
- Even though she only had Handcent, Facebook and Angry Birds installed, I removed all of them, leaving only Watchdog.
- I factory reset her phone, twice.
- For all of the above, the device was not rooted. I have since rooted her phone via the steps in this thread.
I'm in the process of creating a new Gmail account for her, exporting ONLY her contacts and then using that account for her new MT4G (Plum) that's scheduled to arrive today. I'm actually thinking of NOT using her new Gmail account at first though, so I can use her original Google account on this new, clean device and see if the suspend issue persists.
I might just be wasting my time, but I enjoy doing this and I don't think it's a complete waste to try and find SOME constant here. Am I nuts for thinking it's tied to the Google account? The Google account seems to be a black box of sorts. There is more than just contacts, apps and settings, yet there is no "window" into everything else that comes down - e.g. I can't log in to Gmail and "configure" it to not restore her wallpaper or WiFi settings. So that's why I say it's a black box of sorts, since it's doing more in the background than we have control over.
Nothing is truly random, at least not in the context of Android and the hardware affected. There has to be some reason why users of various devices, either do or do not experience this issue. Whether it's a specific action or the something that differs between one person's action vs. another person's, there has to be SOMETHING that's triggering this on her device, yet never triggers it on mine. I guess I'm just trying to flush everything out and hope that discussing it will help rule out/rule specific variables.
Let me know what you find. This is driving me crazy! I charge my phone at night, so when I head to work it's at 100%. By the time I'm heading home (4-430pm)... the phone is around 15% battery.
Watchdog tells me suspend ranges from 5%-49% at any given time. I've never had suspend drop below 5% except on fresh reboot. I've noticed, though, after a reboot that the suspend process will slowly work its way back up to using lots of CPU cycles (it starts at, say, .2%, then 10 minutes later its 3%... 30 minutes later its 5%... an hour later its 9%). Battery just gets hotter and hotter due to this.
I'll be checking back to see what you find! Thanks!
mwelliott said:
Let me know what you find. This is driving me crazy! I charge my phone at night, so when I head to work it's at 100%. By the time I'm heading home (4-430pm)... the phone is around 15% battery.
Watchdog tells me suspend ranges from 5%-49% at any given time. I've never had suspend drop below 5% except on fresh reboot. I've noticed, though, after a reboot that the suspend process will slowly work its way back up to using lots of CPU cycles (it starts at, say, .2%, then 10 minutes later its 3%... 30 minutes later its 5%... an hour later its 9%). Battery just gets hotter and hotter due to this.
I'll be checking back to see what you find! Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
According to XDA and Issue #11126, you're not alone.
What's really bugging me is that neither my first MT4G, nor its 1st replacement or its 2nd replacement, have ever done this. My fiancee's first phone did this. She is now using my 2nd replacement while she waits for hers to arrive (today). So a device that never exhibited this issue, over the course of at least a week of normal-for-me use, started exhibiting this issue for my fiancee maybe a day or so after using the phone.
I thought I had "solved" it when I didn't see it crop up the first day she used my replacement phone. She was quick to let me know I was incorrect.
So I've got serious pressure here - all of my MT4G's haven't exhibited the out of control 'suspend process' issue while I was using the devices, but with her, it does. <queue the jokes>
We own our own business, so we're in the same room all day long while we use our phones. I was the first to tell her, "it's something you're doing." I'm only repeating myself by saying that I blamed it on an app she installed or something she "did" to cause it. After factory resetting, what...2, 3 times...I'm starting to forget; after checking the apps that are installed (and removing all of them); after verifying every setting from USB Debugging, screen brightness, account sync, etc. I seem to at least be able to say, "every single setting, shortcut, widget, app or usage pattern, does not produce the issue on any device I have used with my Google account, whereas it does with my fiancee."
That's the most difficult part to get absolute - the usage pattern. She's doing such basic things though, but I know that even the slightest of difference can produce different results.
I will most certainly report my results, futile or not.
The only common denominator I've noticed so far is that it only affects Sense UI devices.
Chadastrophic said:
The only common denominator I've noticed so far is that it only affects Sense UI devices.
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Click to collapse
That seems to be the constant, to a degree. I'm seeing people state that they're having this issue on anything from the Samsung Galaxy S (i9000) to a Nexus running Cyanogen 6.1. That's people stating it though, so I'm not sure if they're actually experiencing the same issue or not.
I am biting my tongue, but I think I found another common denominator...I am going to post back in a coupla days once I've seen it last for this entire week.
hi,
i'm running cyanogenmod 6.1 on a desire hd and have been experiencing the suspend process problem exactly as described in this thread a nubmer of times now over the last week. so its definately not limited to devices running sense.
the only circumstances this behavior hasnt shown is when running 2g only with all other sorts of communications and sync off
zero_oli said:
hi,
i'm running cyanogenmod 6.1 on a desire hd and have been experiencing the suspend process problem exactly as described in this thread a nubmer of times now over the last week. so its definately not limited to devices running sense.
the only circumstances this behavior hasnt shown is when running 2g only with all other sorts of communications and sync off
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, it didn't seem 100% related to devices running Sense, so thanks for posting back to this.
My fiancee was experiencing this across her first two MT4G devices and has yet to experience the issue on her third and final MT4G. I want to see it run the rest of the week though before I share, but the issue did pop-up for her pretty much within 24-48 hours on her first two MT4G's.
Shlongwoodian: I have been following your posts as the "suspend" process has been affecting me since I received my phone the first day available. However, I am reluctant to send for a replacement as all else is great on the unit I have and there seems no gaurantee that a new phone fixes this issue.
I have tried Tmo and HTC and both seem clueless; therefore, I appreciate your research and look forward to any "fix" short of waiting for Gingerbread.
Anyone have any wisdom to pass on? This issue is driving me crazy! I've noticed it most on my black MT4G (w/the good screen) after browsing the web, youtube or using the media player. My wife's red MT4G (w/the inferior screen) has had no issues and her battery is amazing! The first day she got her phone her battery lasted 24 hours without even conditioning it! Granted she doesn't use it like I do mine, but it is still a huge difference. When this issue comes up on mine, I'm dead within 3-4 hours. I have Watchdog set so when it alerts me I just soft reset. That clears it up until it decides to come back at random intervals. It usually doesn't come back until I open the browser, etc. With as much as I use my phone (I am constantly on the road), it becomes a major pain to have to constantly monitor battery life. Any help is greatly appreciated!!!
Man, I am sorry to report that I gots nothin'. Ok, here was my original theory...
I was speculating that "something" inside the Google/Gmail account was the cause. My reasoning being, essentially, your info is stored in a database. When you get an Android device, that online database is synced locally with the phone's database. We each have different databases and there is more than just your apps, Market links, contacts, etc. I never exhibited the /suspend issue on phones that she experienced the /suspend issue on. I figured it was database-specific.
If a table contains a value, or rather, does not contain a specific value (or if columns are missing, etc.), it can cause an application to respond in a negative way. Sometimes, this causes an error to bubble up in an application. Other times, it doesn't. In my experience, I've seen much more subtle issues in databases, that don't cause errors or a crash, but instead just cause "undesirable results."
When my fiancee got her final, good replacement Plum Glacier, we started with a completely new Google account. We thought we nailed it, when a handful of days passed without seeing /suspend get out of control, leading to Android System and/or OS sucking down battery life. I think it was nearly a week into it and one day while she was out, she realized she lost battery life really quickly - i.e. left the house with 90% and by the time she got to the store, shopped for a bit and looked, her phone was down to like 30-40%. She knows how to check for /suspend and it was, of course, back.
It's still not something that can be completely ruled out, since it's not a very air-tight test. There could be something about my Google account (which I've had pretty much since Gmail beta was available) that's keeping me (and others like me) from getting it or that idea could be crap.
For some reason, I have never, ever seen this happen on my Glacier(s) running stock 2.2.1. Phones that I never saw the issue on, she saw the issue on. There is so much speculation around it, but it just seems like "some people" don't experience it and "some people" do. It's all over different devices, different skill levels, etc. No apps, same apps, whatever and it happens to some but not others.
Sorry to get anyone's hopes up. I'll keep looking for differences/similarities though and if I find anything at all I'll - or if anyone else finds anything, no matter how ridiculous it sounds (yes, we've tested the 'rock' and it doesn't appear to suffer from the /suspend issue) - post it here.
Thanks for trying! It was a good theory. So . . . now what? Is there any way to get this ranked higher with Google, HTC, etc. to get more people working on it? It is really driving me nuts! It mainly happens after I use the web browser, then put the phone on standby for some reason. I can't even use the browser any more without needing to reboot it to save battery life. There is another thread, but specifically for the Evo and I think one for the Nexus one, all with the same problem. What if a new thread were started that is not device specific? That way we can get more people to star it and maybe Google or whoever will pay more attention to it! I would hate to think that we are stuck with this problem until when and if we get upgraded to 2.3. I would suggest rooting and flashing a new ROM, but even those with custom ROM's are having the same problem, so that's not going to help. Thoughts???
jpiano said:
It mainly happens after I use the web browser, then put the phone on standby for some reason.
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Click to collapse
It truly is a mystery to this day. I've seen people say, "it happened right after I installed Handcent" or "it happens as soon as I do..." No one has come up with any concrete evidence thus far.
My fiancee has Handcent, I have Handcent. I used Handcent heavily, never had an issue. She stopped using Handcent - still has the issue. We've gotten so granular in our troubleshooting, we're literally tracking every step. LOL i.e. I pressed the trackpad to wake the phone, once; I unlocked the phone, I swiped my thumb once to view my Watchdog Widget on the screen to the left of my homescreen, etc., etc., etc.
So, for now, we just wait? My phone (and all previous phones) have been just fine. My fiancee however...yeah, I'm trying to find a fix pretty quickly.
One common theme that I've seen with this issue is that it only happens after I put the phone to sleep. I have never seen it crop up while actually using the phone. Maybe we're going about it the wrong way in trying to identify an app, etc that's causing the problem... perhaps it is simply the code involved in putting the phone to sleep and that's why there hasn't been any consistency with what one does to make it appear. In your experience, have you ever seen or heard of it showing up while the phone is being used? Perhaps it's just on mine that it works that way, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I know nothing about code or how android works so please forgive the noob comment if this is an obvious one. Merry Christmas!
I've got this problem big time. Returned my first phone because I thought it was the phone. First few days were good but lately its back and as bad as ever. First thoughts were angry birds twitter or wifi but I have no idea. If I can't figure this out I might have to sell this phone.
I will try to post some more thoughts. I think you're onto some good ideas here.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
(Re-posting from the developer's Google blog where others are following this issue): Interesting about using the phone without a Google account. Not sure if this is relevant or not, but I've noticed something else with consistency. Granted I wasn't able to document the behavior through system panel at the time, but this has consistently happened. When suspend goes crazy, I can get it to stop simply by charging the phone! Even if I charge the phone for a few seconds, then unplug, it stays dormant without having to reboot. Noob speaking here but perhaps the part of android that actually logs the battery usage is suspending when the phone goes to sleep? When it us charging, this log is reset and clears the process from running. If this is even possible, then could someone write an app that clears this system log? Maybe by mimicking what happens when the phone is charging, we can at least temporarily clear the issue without the need tovl reboot? Again, I know nothing about all this so sorry if this is all irrelevant. Just sharing what I've noticed to be consistent. Thoughts??
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
jpiano said:
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
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Click to collapse
I wonder if you're on to something with the SD card. I've been thinking I haven't seen the suspend issue return on my phone in quite a while. I just realized that the only thing I've really changed is installed a new 16 gb SD card. Since then, no suspend process problems. For those who are having the problem still, I wonder if removing or formatting their cards would show any improvement? Worth a shot if at least to eliminate another possible factor.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
That's cool that this thread is flushing out other ideas and possible variables. I like the idea of connecting it to the charger for a couple of seconds, but my fiancee is so used to just rebooting her phone each morning and sometimes again by mid-day, that it's easier for her to do just that.
jpiano said:
Even if I charge the phone for a few seconds, then unplug, it stays dormant without having to reboot.
Also, I saw on another xda blog (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=870557&page=2) that someone linked this issue to a corrupt photo on the sd card. After formatting the card and restoring some files, says the issue has not returned!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like the microSD Card notion. This is such a weird issue, that it's so easily associated with other items - e.g. applications, usage patterns, etc. This seems feasible though, but the only way to know for sure is to reproduce it. My fiancee experiences the suspend issue daily, if she doesn't reboot regularly. So, I should be able to take her microSD card and use it in my phone and get the suspend issue. I don't want to 'muddy' up by swapping microSD cards, so I'll try reformatting her card and see if that makes any difference. She usually sees the issue within 24-48 hours of a fresh boot, so it shouldn't be long before we see if that fixes it or not. I can check the card for errors, etc. as well.
werk said:
I just realized that the only thing I've really changed is installed a new 16 gb SD card. Since then, no suspend process problems.
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Click to collapse
I'll be upgrading to a 16 GB Class 10 soon, so I can give her my Samsung if need be. I'd really like to see if this is it though. It would explain the "some people get it and some people don't" pattern.
I also noticed that the minute I plug the phone in the problem goes away. Not sure why, just confirming it happens to me too. I also should note that when I returned my phone, they popped my old SD card into my new phone. So if there is an SD card issue with a corupt file/photo that could be something as well. I wonder woody if your girlfriends phone has had the same SD card after how many times did you say you traded it in? BTW, a side note, how did you exchange it so many times? After I took mine back to the store on day 14 they told me I wasn't able to exchange it again.
I do have a 16GB SD card but just haven't had time to install it. Wanted to double check which things I need on the new one from the old one, but it might be a good way to test this issue. Let me know some ideas before I swap the cards and maybe I can help test this.
Also, one more thing, what is the app you're using to log stuff? I'm just using Watchdog Lite right now.
I've got to figure this out or this is a dealbreaker for me. I have waited 3 years to upgrade phones, first time on Android, really wanted iPhone but wanted to stick with month to month from TMob. If this continues I think I will move to Windows Phone 7 or iPhone if I have to, but I really like this phone when the battery is not draining like a leech.
Thanks.
werk,
Just wondering what process you went through when you upgraded SD cards. Did you copy any files over to the new one or just start blank?
Thanks.
royhobbs said:
werk,
Just wondering what process you went through when you upgraded SD cards. Did you copy any files over to the new one or just start blank?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just straight copied the existing files over from the old card to new one (new one in phone connected via USB, old card in SD adapter in my laptops SD card slot). I think some Angry Birds files didn't make it due to long paths, but reinstalled it and no problems since then.
Okay I've always had a concern of having my phone stolen and the data in it being used for nefarious purposes (i.e. someone buys with my google account). Well not that worried but its a thought. So after 6 months of cursing blur and trying to get rid of it I thought I would try out the "Locate my phone" with it.
Logged into my blur account and yep there is my phone (phone number isn't recongised), but when I try the "locate my phone" feature it just ends up searching and never finding. Not sure if this is a carrier issue (I brought an unlocked phone from the UK and I live in Australia, my carrier does not support the Milestone 2), but just wondering if anyone else has trialed this.
I had a go at lookout but kept force closing for some reason, and I figured if Blur did what I needed, no need to pay for Lookout.
I used the motoblur apps when I first got the phone just to see what they were like...
But I quickly got rid of them as the phone was running so slow and chuggy for a 1GHz and battery life was atrocious.
As for the locate my phone feature, you would have to leave GPS on all the time yeah?...the amount of apps and Google apps that can keep track of your movements if of more concern to me than tracking the phone if ever lost (I've never lost a phone to date, touch wood!)
Sent from my Milestone 2 using XDA app
I had tried to use the feature to test that if it works, but even if I enabled GPS, the web page was keeping finding my tombstone and resulted in failure. Maybe it was caused by the position I'm in (you know China's GFW always blocks some normal internet requests). Anyway, since then, I turned to pay attention to my bags instead of trusting in blur. And I should remind you that any thief who got your phone will pull out your battery at once and therefore any app can not work.
Sent from my Milestone 2
I'm not overly sure they would always pull the battery, if I was a theif I would pull the info on the phone first that way to grab details about the customer to onsell. Also be interested incase I left my phone at work (on my charger) and panicked when I got home.
I gave up on it, and tried Seekdroid, works great, only a $1. I have no issue with being tracked by my phone, I figured that they could do it from cell towers anyway (did install the app that access the tracking data out of interest). My life is so dull that I cannot see a reason why anyone would care for that info (they would find out the bus route to work and home again mainly)
MotoBlur Works for me.
Blur works fine for me. At least in South America, I tested the locate my phone feature and it worked flawlessly. I heard seekdroid is another great app for finding your phone as well.
Motoblur is a piece of crap, it only exists to slow down the device.
Sent from my A953 using XDA Premium App
When it comes to tracking, of course there's Cerberus. Total win for tracking your device, getting a picture, even video, current location, sending them messages, locking or wiping the device, etc. That's all well and good, but what if your Nexus 7 was part of the student batch stolen from work, and your job is within a school district? Suddenly the awesome picture/video taking functionality turns into a very massive concern.
What I'm curious about is whether or not there's an app that will show GPS location *only* of your device. No pictures, video, or anything fancy. Remote wipe/permanent lock would be pretty awesome as well. Does anything like this exist?
Also, how difficult would it be to write something like this? Doing our own in-house apps wouldn't be a bad idea at all, but I'm not even sure where to get started on a project like this. If tinkering with GPS tracking and whatnot could absorb a substantial amount of man-power and time, it may not be an optimal route.
About the mass management piece, I'm curious if anybody has any suggestions about controlling, say, 50 of these units. By control I mean disallow applications to be installed unless there's an admin override and prevent existing applications from being removed. Either that, or perhaps some sort of "deep freeze" functionality that continually resets the devices back to a clean slate.
Any/all suggestions are welcome!
Where's my droid will do this...
I haz no sig
mentose457 said:
Where's my droid will do this...
I haz no sig
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How, exactly? Everything I'm reading about this is saying you have to text phone your the GPS word and it'll find it. My Nexus 7 is not a phone. How would I do this?
I tried out real time tracking... An app I used quite a while ago. It looked like it could work, but I'm curious if anybody knows if, from the Web interface, you can call on the unit to turn on the GPS remotely. This way if they're connected to their wifi we can at least get a feed for what's up... But of course without remote start, we got nothing. Any idea?
I have a stock 32 gb wifi only Nexus 7.
I was in Vegas last week to get married, placed the Nexus 7 in the room safe and when I came back, it was gone. Strange part was the thief left several thousands of dollars in wedding rings, pearl necklace, etc in the safe. All they took was my Nexus 7.
I discovered it missing scant minutes before we had to meet the limo to take us to get married. So we got married and when we returned to the hotel I reported it.
Security came up to the room after we did a report in their offices and searched the room thoroughly at my request. I opened the safe and we emptied it, security searched the safe and all around it with a flashlight, it was not in the room.
My wife and I left with security after the room search, security went back to work (I suppose), we went to dinner.
A few hours later we returned and I noticed the closet doors had been disturbed. The maid had been to the room MUCH earlier in the day. So I opened the safe and lo and behold, my Nexus 7 had "found it's way home".
I can think of no good reasons why someone would steal a Nexus 7 then return it. I can certainly think of a few bad reasons why they would do such a thing.
So I left it in airplane mode for the remainder of the trip, just used it to read a book on the Kindle app.
Of course I took a LOT of security measures with my banks, etc.
Since this has happened I returned home and encrypted the tablet. There are two levels of passwords you have to go through now when it boots just to get to the "desktop".
I also installed AVG after the theft and did a complete scan, I made sure to tell AVG to scan EVERYTHING.
The scans came up clean.
ALL my passwords where I bank, etc have been changed. I always use passwords of 15+ characters and when I can I also mix in special characters such as [email protected]#$, etc. Often banks won't allow those though. Curious.
So, I do use this tablet to login to my bank accounts sometimes.
Do you feel I'm safe to do so again?
Should I do a complete wipe of the tablet?
I do have the correct version of Android and the correct build number that I downloaded. They are for the wifi only Nexus 7 and they match what's on the tablet now.
If you feel I should do a complete wipe, where can I find a tutorial? ... and will my apps including the paid ones automagically reinstall?
You shouldn't have touched the tablet at all, but called the police to take evidence, such as fingerprints and an analysis of whatever might have changed.
Now that aside, using a probably Compromised device any further is not the smartest thing either. It does not matter if you change the password of anything, if you then enter the password through the compromised device, since there you are giving away the new password again.
Wipe the device, reset it to factory and restore from a pre-vegas backup. Then change all accounts again.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium
Maybe its someone you know or room service. BTW the reason they returned it because they realized its not an iPad mini. Next time you need to spend more money on hip devices of you want it stolen.
You might want to wipe the device not just factory reset which is not wiping, since it will retain the system partition. I don't know how to write zeros to the partition and doing it wrong probably perm brick the device too, but someone else might know. But you can be more thorough by using fastboot to flash the factory image which will format all the partitions, then encrypt afterward. Just use the sticky thread in this section on hour to factory reset and use the fastboot links in my signature.
Also I don't use antivirus on Android, but last time I heard Microsoft once pulled AVG from their app store because it doesn't do anything but run adsware. Not saying that it's useless, but there are other good ones to look at: http://www.av-test.org/en/tests/mobile-devices/android/jan-2013/ I heard good things about Zoner as well. Just throwing a few suggestions out there, use which ever you prefer.
This is also a good time for you to check out the app Cerberus for theft prevention, but it required sending hidden text message so I guess you will need a 3G version to receive SMS, but still recommended for phones.
Also make sure to turn off USB debugging when not using it.
Sent from XDA app