There is an easy way to discover what causes a phone reboot? - Nexus 6P Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Master, my Nexus 6P is rebooting , and I am quite sure that some app is responsible for this.
Please, there is any way to discover what app was responsible for the reboot, like a log file that register the last logs before a kernel panic?
Thanks!!

Search for logcat. Should be droid info you're looking for.

For information and feedback, I am using the phone without reboots for 5 days. First I removed Snapchat and downgraded all applications I participate as tester from Beta to last released version, but the reboots still happened.
So I removed some players widgets (groove, tunein and spotify) but the reboots still happened.
So I disabled System UI Tuner (I used to display the battery percentage in batt icon) and cleaned up the Settings cache to remove the developer settings (I do not enabled any option there) and I do not seen any reboot since this Settings cleanup o/

Related

[Guide] How to Keep Android System Drain Minimal - Battery Life Boost

Good Day all,
I have benefitted greatly from Google and XDA. So I thought I would provide a consolidated way of saving our battery's grace from Android System demonic drain.
I am running Euphoria with Furnace, and I had loads of Gapps installed.
I tried multiple attempts over a 3 days period and did many researches back and forth. And it came down to these few main culprits:
1. Android Location Services
2. Google Play Services
3. Qualcomm Location Services
4. Google Now Launcher
5. Unwanted Sync
Tools I have used to assist in this matter.
1. Disable Service - here
2. Greenify
3. Privacy Guard (should be in built in most custom roms)
4. Titanium Backup
Basically the highest causing drain came from Google Play Services and Qualcomm Location Services. These items persistently wakes the phone up and runs on the background. Using greenify on there further cause issues as greenify tries to hibernate these services over and over again, making this a self-made draining routine.
I followed this thread on Google Play Services drain fix and used the Privacy Guard to perform those tricks. I ran through ALL Google Related Apps and as long as "Keep Awake", "Wake up" or "Auto Start" is enabled, I disabled them. I also look through apps I suspect were waking phone up by looking at the last activation of those events (Keep Awake, Wake Up, Auto Start).
Next I followed this thread on Guide to disable google play internal services using Disable Service app. I also took the opportunity to look at both 3rd party apps and system apps to see if there are services that could be disabled. I disabled Apex Notifier as I realize I didn't needed its service.
Then the next sneaky culprit was the Qualcomm Location Services. Even though I froze them with Titanium Backup, they persist in the system. So making a backup of them, I uninstalled them completely. Hasn't caused me any issue with GPS or Maps. They are namely, com.qualcomm.location and com.qualcomm.services.location. Both appeared as LocationServices 1.0 on Titanium Backup.
I went ahead to Greenify many Google Apps, namely Google App, Google Play Store, Google Services Framework, Google+. I also Greenify many apps that Greenify suggested would slow system down or appear to run in the background which I have no use for.
Lastly I uninstalled Google Now Launcher as it was persistently coming up as alternative home launcher even though I froze it. And I also went through settings of apps to make sure sync were turn off. I only kept Calender and Contacts and Gmail Sync on.
Now I have reduced Android System from 34% to 2% and increased my SOT from 2++ hours to 4++ hours at least. Not an out of earth SOT, but I believe that's decent.
Hope I helped and I wish you all the best in your endeavour to reduce Android System Drain. Cheers.
Thanks bro
Will try and give feedback asap
Suscribed, Rated, and Thanked.
I didn't had time to do any research on this, and this thread appeared on the right time.
Thanks
Paradoxxx said:
Suscribed, Rated, and Thanked.
I didn't had time to do any research on this, and this thread appeared on the right time.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
metuncc said:
Will try and give feedback asap
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your feedbacks will be appreciated. It works for me and I hope it works for you. And hopefully help many others that face our problem. Cheers
I can't seem to find App Ops anywhere..
Edit: found it by the name "Access lock" but there is no google play services in there..
bestest609 said:
I can't seem to find App Ops anywhere..
Edit: found it by the name "Access lock" but there is no google play services in there..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It should be found in settings page, "Privacy".
I know that this guide is meant for CM based ROMs but I said to myself "ehh, what the hell" and I tried it on my Cloudy 2.2 and the results were horrible. Had to fully charge my device twice in order to go through 22 hours and a total of 2h of screen on time which consisted mostly of browsing and messaging. Wakelock Detector told me that the device was mostly asleep and everything was normal in the Batter Usage menu. Usually I get around 18-20h on a full charge with 2,5-3h SoT. Maybe the locations tweeks were not liked by my Tasker app and caused a huge battery drain, although it didn't appear that much as a wakelock trigger.
I am wondering if the problem was caused by Tasker or the stock ROM itself, but badly I do not have the time now to tweak around and I am reverting back to my previous configuration.
steelclaw said:
I know that this guide is meant for CM based ROMs but I said to myself "ehh, what the hell" and I tried it on my Cloudy 2.2 and the results were horrible. Had to fully charge my device twice in order to go through 22 hours and a total of 2h of screen on time which consisted mostly of browsing and messaging. Wakelock Detector told me that the device was mostly asleep and everything was normal in the Batter Usage menu. Usually I get around 18-20h on a full charge with 2,5-3h SoT. Maybe the locations tweeks were not liked by my Tasker app and caused a huge battery drain, although it didn't appear that much as a wakelock trigger.
I am wondering if the problem was caused by Tasker or the stock ROM itself, but badly I do not have the time now to tweak around and I am reverting back to my previous configuration.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try using GSam battery monitor to find out the real culprit. I used that to boil down to the final two irritants - Qualcomm LocationServices.
Really enjoying the app.
Here are the screenshots:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/fvzvyvdsfqr1e89/AABeH-BwUHKOjpqnXaFcATbaa
steelclaw said:
Really enjoying the app.
Here are the screenshots:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/fvzvyvdsfqr1e89/AABeH-BwUHKOjpqnXaFcATbaa
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Kernel OS issue I am not too sure what issues are they. The issues I had was high Android OS drain.
@JokerAce my friend ...nice to see you posting useful advice ....gonna grab it ...especially qualcomm service....thanks mate
/LG-G3/d-855/16Gb/Titanium Black/
m1trand1r said:
@JokerAce my friend ...nice to see you posting useful advice ....gonna grab it ...especially qualcomm service....thanks mate
/LG-G3/d-855/16Gb/Titanium Black/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks mate )

Android O Public Beta opinions

Today I installed the Public beta version of Android O, it has a really nice redesign and some cool new functions, but, how is the performance?, I would like to share with you my experience, and hope you guys can share your experience here too.
Im going to be direct:
*Notification sounds are delayed
*Ambient display just work tapping two times
*Recent app lags
*Clean data option (on storage) is gone.
*Slowdown in some apps (guess just have to wait for an update)
I did a "wipe cache partition" after install the update, I didnt clear the data from storage cuz the option is gone.
New info: 05/24 (or 24/05 from spanish people)
For those that are having a really bad experience with Android O this could help:
I dont have a USB-C to Standar USB wire and I really wanted to make my phone works better, flash a stock rom is not an option for me today, so I did this (do a proper back up and do it under your own risk)
*Back up everything.
*Unroll from Beta
*Downgrade to Android N (that implies lost everything)
*Config the device as a new one BUT dont log in your google account, just connect wi-fi (that implies LOSE APP CONFIGURATIONS and Wi-Fi passwords)
*Regist your device to Android O again
*Wait for the update and install it.
*Configure the whole phone, apps and everything (remember, if you config it as a new device before going back to Android N the device will not download your previos configuration as settings config, apps config, wi-fi saved passwords etc etc.
I did it and Im still configuring everything but the phone works better that the first time I installed Android O through OTA without wipe the phone.
I will keep testing the phone in this way and I will let you guys know if it really helps in long terms (I mean, if next week the phone still works fine means that all the effort worth it)
PD: Just one thing, if Ambient display doesnt work for you, just, turn the option off, then On, and then power off the phone (power off, not a restart), turn it on and thats all.
NOTES: Going back to Android N could cause some stuff stop working like, rotation, gps, etc.
If you do a factory reset in Android O that could cause a bootloop, be careful and just try it IF you can flash the phone (remember the USB-C to Standar USB wire, my phone didt came with one...)
IMPORTANT:
If you went back to Nougat and found that stuff like GPS, rotation etc was not working, here you have a solution that allow you back to Nougat without those problems.
In Android O:
*Unroll from Beta program.
*Install the downgrade package
*Start your phone loging in your account but disable everything and dont restore your configuration. (Just use your account for go to the main screen)
*When finally you get the control of the phone DO A FACTORY RESET (from settings)
*This time configure averything as you want (restoring apps and configurations) and thaths all!, try to test everything and this time all will be working as always!
No root, no flash, just doing that
I installed by flashing the factory image. Device feels a lot sluggish when opening app drawer, recents, App info. I read various comments on Google+ that their device feels snappier and fast than Nougat but it took them a while before device gets settled in. So, I will give it a few good hours before judging on performance.
same feeling but still usable
Runs amazing on my device
takes ages to take a shot with hdr on
Things I've found not working:
1. Lock screen app resets after phone is turned off or restarted, and has to be selected manually again
2. Force activities to be resizeable in developer options not working
3. UI lags more often
4. Picture in picture more not working ( at least for me)
*I'll add more when I find
Is Gmail working? That was the thing that was constantly messed up for me. Everything else was fine
mikeprius said:
Is Gmail working? That was the thing that was constantly messed up for me. Everything else was fine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes it is working fine.
The reason for the UI slowdown I think it is because recents preview images are bigger (more resolution).
It's quite good for a beta.
- Some UI lags
- Sometimes apps load a little slower than 7.1.2
- Picture in picture doesn't work for now (Only for youtube red users right now)
I've noticed the battery charges faster when the phone is being used compared to 7.1.2
---------- Post added at 10:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:02 AM ----------
Billys20 said:
It's quite good for a beta.
- Some UI lags
- Sometimes apps load a little slower than 7.1.2
- Picture in picture doesn't work for now (Only for youtube red users right now)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For picture in picture mode
Use the hidden navigation bar tuner in SystemUI Tuner. Add a navigation button and select the button type to be “keycode” and look for keycode #171. Once you’ve done that, your navigation bar will now have a button that, when pressed inside of a supported app, will toggle PiP.
bootloop !
hi my device stuck in bootloop after update on google Logo
but recovery mode is working , i wiped cache and data and now stuck in android boot animation and restart
my device is dead?
Some differences I've noticed in comparison to the 1st dev preview:
* Notification tray redesigned again, I do not like the lightgrey tone, but the layout of the elements does feel abit more mature compared to dp1.
* It seems more stable, less lags - altough animations seem to lower in framerates at some moments, triggering the Recently Used function delivers low framerates always (Project Butter failing?)
* In the 1st dp, the Sense 7 keyboard I use would crash, works again in dp2
* Images are misaligned in the Telegram app, I do not notice this in other apps, but everything was alright in the dp1 regarding this.
* Not sure but I feel like the Settings app has some additional icons, still not complete though. Some titles in the Settings.apk now also inherit the accent color.
* The LTE icon is now displayed in full, the wlan icon is shown with disabled status in the statusbar if its disabled. The muted sign has returned.
* Notification icons in the statusbar seem to have a wrong top-padding, so they misalign ~1-2px
The PiP mode should come available once the YouTube app gets updated with the feature, it's just that the api was made available with this release.
abolfazl.h said:
hi my device stuck in bootloop after update on google Logo
but recovery mode is working , i wiped cache and data and now stuck in android boot animation and restart
my device is dead?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try reflashing the factory image with fastboot. If the device was dead, it would bootloop in the recovery aswell.
guys how to download the latest beta ?i mean developer preview 2 ..on DP site i have found opp2 but dated to 20\4 isnt it old ?
tornido067 said:
guys how to download the latest beta ?i mean developer preview 2 ..on DP site i have found opp2 but dated to 20\4 isnt it old ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
20/04 is the beta image, give it a try. So far it's pretty good and has stabilised on my phone after an initial few hours of sluggish behaviour.
Settings app keen crashing, anyone got a solution?
ishrak619 said:
Settings app keen crashing, anyone got a solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
factory reset
---------- Post added at 01:52 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:51 PM ----------
Is the Pixel Launcher included or is GNL still used?
Gnl
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
After few hours of using it everything seems smooth now. But Recents are lagging every now and then.
To me everything is lagging as hell
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Closing Idle apps on Screen off

Hi,
It has been a while since I have been able to play with custom ROMs as my previous phone was not well supported.
I have just now switched over to the Axon 7 and have just started setting it up as my daily driver. I Installed NucleaROM with LIGHT PATCH, Open GApps and ARISE Sound System. All seems to be working fine but I have one issue and I think it may be a feature from not just the Custom ROM of choice but the underlying source (ResurrectionROM/LineageOS).
When I first setup the phone, it had an option on the lock screen to customize how apps are closed (i believe the term was Smart Close) when the device is idle and the screen is off. I remember looking through it and having options for which apps are closed and which are to remain running.
Since then I have installed a collection of apps, one of which is the Garmin Connect which I need to run when the screen is off.
I am unable to find how to get to these options now. I have looked through the power options and cannot see it.
If anyone can help me, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for your assistance.
As I have started to use the phone a little more I have noticed that this is having another effect.
It seems to be closing my keyboard app so every time I unlock it goes back to the stock keyboard and I need to select SwiftKey again.
I hope someone knows where these settings are.
I have found a workaround for now, but if anyone knows how to control the SmartBattery application, it would be greatly appreciated.
I believe this function is coming from the System App called Smart Battery. I have gone into Settings -> Apps then selected the menu to show system apps. From there I was able to locate the SmartBattery app and disable it.
This seems to be working for me as by Garmin Fitness tracker was losing BlueTooth to the phone before but not now with that app disabled.
I'm not entirely positive about this, as I've never heard of that app. At first, I thought you were talking about the screen lock cleaning feature from the power manager on stock. After your follow up post indicating you had actually found reference to the app on your system and a bit of Googling, I was able to find some reference to it. Nothing useful, I'm afraid.
Try using an app that can launch activities, like Nova Launcher or Tasker. Try to find the app in the list, and see if you can launch it by calling for one of its activities.
P.S., if you're running RR, if you have a look at the extended settings, there might be a way to set the nav keys long-press action to a custom activity. Remember to enable the app, otherwise it might not show up in any lists.

Guide for hunting down wakelocks and battery drain (No Root)

I've posted this guide on reddit already, but thought it might be useful here as well. A lot of users promote intense usage of package disablers to reduce battery drain, but this is not required to such an insane extend.
---
After experimenting with my S8 for 2-3 months now, I've collected some data and constructed some basic idea on how to fight wakelocks without having to root your device. I'll try to lay down everything here under a few categories.
First of all, I'll say that I tried using my S8 with a package disabler with hundreds of apps and services disabled, and also tried using it with no package disabler at all. I did not see a significant difference. It's too hard to determine if there is one, but I have to note that disabling TOO MUCH can actually hurt your battery usage.
Finally, I settled on using the device with a disabler again, only this time I disabled things strategically after some investigation with battery stats measurement and wakelock detection.
The apps I used were:
BK Package Disabler + BK Plugin
Better Battery Stats or GSam
These are paid apps, but I am happy with what they can do. BK can be replaced with another disabler (as long as it gives you control over individual package services) and BBS can be replaced with GSam Battery Stats, which is free.
General tips on using these apps:
BBS will require your device to have USB debugging enabled, so that you can connect the phone to your PC and unlock the permission manually. You need an ADB command prompt to do that, and you need to give it the following permission with the following command (read more here).
Code:
adb -d shell pm grant com.gsamlabs.bbm android.permission.BATTERY_STATS
You can use BBS if you do not restart your phone while testing. If you do, it will wipe stats and likely not activate for another few hours, or until you charge again.
You should be using BBS to observe Deep Sleep percentage in the Summary tab (which should be above 95% when the phone is left in idle mode for hours), and Partial Wakelocks to find individual wakelocks that come from apps. Kernel wakelocks are hardly ever something you can do anything about and shouldn't be observed too much, no point in that unless you are rooted. The highest kernel wakelocks should be the ones related to your screen-on time - they are easy to point out as their awake time equals your screen on time.
BK Package disabler, or any other disabler for that matter, WILL require admin privileges to work on your device, so keep that in mind.
BK Package disabler should be used in tandem with BBS, only once you have found wakelocks and/or managed to understand which service is the actual cause. I will give examples below.
---
So, let's start.
Google Play Services battery drain
This one really sucks and it seems to plague any Android device at some point. Most often than not, this problem will occur after you do a system update without doing a factory reset. Last time it occurred on my S8 was right after I did the AQI7 update, after having very good idle drain previous to updating.
What to do in this case?
Log out of your Google account(s).
Enroll for Google Play Services BETA. To enroll, scroll down on this page and find the beta button OR Find Play services in your App list, and do "Uninstall updates", then update it right after that.
Turn off your phone and then boot it in recovery mode (Hold volume up + bixby key, then also hold power button) and select Wipe Cache - This will erase Dalvik cache.
Reboot the phone and delete system cache from the Storage settings
Log back into your Google account(s).
Charge your device and then observe idle drain overnight, or over a few hours.
If this process does not help your problem at all, you might have to do a factory reset to cure the services issue, or the problem might be related to something else, like a google service from some particular app. Use BBS to investigate wakelocks as you check your idle drain.
If this process helps you, but you see the issue again in future without changing anything, try going to the Developer Settings, look for active processes, and find Google Play services. Open them and then hit 'STOP' for each of their sub-services. Don't worry, they will restart on their own. After doing this, you might reboot your phone as well. Last time this little chore helped me out and the drain went away.
---
General Wakelocks
It's normal to get wakelocks even on a perfect system, but BBS will show exact percentages on each of them. Normal wakelocks usually show 0-1% of awake time for a session. If you start seeing numbers like 3%, 7% , 9%, or more, on some specific wakelock, then there is definitely a problem.
Wakelock battery drain will usually appear in your Android System/OS drain stats, so it's impossible to determine without an app.
The most common wakelocks for me are:
- *net_scheduler* wakelock - this one can be related to your WiFi connection. In order to fix it you should have access to the router's settings, and that is not always possible. If you do have access, you can try changing the Wi-Fi channel (choose channel based on Channel Width, for example 40Hz width on 2.4GHz network could use channel 11), and Beacon Interval (set the interval to the highest possible). I found this helped in my case. This wakelock can also be related to google play services - check the previous part of the post on how to possibly resolve the GPS issue. Also, the wakelock can appear under the icons of other apps, when there is little you can do to track down exactly why it happens.
- *com.google.android.gms.measurement* wakelock - this is a VERY common one in my case, and BBS usually shows it comes from Google Services, but always has a specific app icon next to it. In order to resolve this wakelock I had to do the following:
Open my package disabler and go through each app that might be using background data, or the app that is shown next to that wakelock, and then open their lists of individual services. I searched for:
1. AppMeasurementService
2. AppMeasurementJobService
3. Firebase... any service starting with Firebase in its name
These services are related to apps collecting some usage statistics on how you use them and sending them back somewhere, probably the app vendors. You do not need them for any app to be functional, and many apps don't have them. For some reason they can keep your device awake for long periods of time. I disabled them on ALL apps I could find them in and it seemed to resolve a lot of wakelocks after investigating the next following days. This process was probably one of the things that helped me the most with hunting down daily wakelocks as the drain is very stable for me now. For example, today I came back from work with 20 hours of phone usage since charge, almost 1h of SoT and 75% battery left. Other days, I have come back from home with 10 hours of usage, 1.5h of SoT and ~60%. I've seen a lot of improvement lately after doing all of the suggested things and keeping Google services at bay in parallel to that.
---
Bluetooth wakelock
This one was the most inexplicable to me. I never use Bluetooth, or turn it ON for any reason at all. I could not understand why the wakelock occurs.
Ultimately, my solution was to completely disable the Bluetooth System package and all services in it through the BK disabler.
I know this solution doesn't sound good to anyone, but at the same time it might be useful if you also do not use BT at all.
I plan to buy BT headphones in the near future and will be re-enabling this, and at that point I will start observing the behavior of the package once again and maybe turn it on/off at will if the wakelock re-appears too often.
---
Other wakelocks
The general rule here still applies. First, you record your usage with BBS. Then you note down which wakelocks appear on top, and google them as best as you can. Search is your friend here, as the wakelocks are endless and it is impossible for me to list them all and give solutions for even a small percentage of them. Sometimes you might get lucky and find an easy fix. In other times, there will be no easy explanation, or no explanation at all. Such is the nature of Android.
In some cases the wakelocks might be specific services that you can disable for specific apps. In other cases, they will be too general and it will be unclear why they occur. For example, I sometimes get *net_scheduler* wakelock with the Viber app, that can last for 20-30 minutes at random times, and still have not found a way to resolve that, other than uninstalling Viber completely (which is not a bad idea but sadly some of my contacts insist on using that crap. Telegram is your friend).
---
General Tips:
Use an AMOLED black theme. System theme from Samsung Themes (!) and individual app themes / status bar from Substratum. Do not use overlays for the system UNLESS you do not use samsung themes. I found out that Samsung themes do a better job at painting all system apps black, while some substratum overlays miss a few things. It will also be a LOT less painful to update overlays as you uninstall all of them and re-install them, because using Samsung for the system means less packages from Substratum to be installed. REMEMBER to always uninstall system overlays and statusbar overlays (ALL overlays if you want to be super safe) before doing a system update! Otherwise you can soft-brick your device.
Use auto-brightness and make sure to make it as low as you are comfortable with in rooms that you stay often in (like your own room, your office room, etc). Smart auto-brightness will remember you preference and you will hardly ever use more brightness than you need.
Turn off notifications for any apps that are not essential to you. In fact, I have turned off everything except Gmail, because I have a habit of checking my phone very often and do not miss out on anything, while notifications have become a bit annoying to me anyway.
Put almost all of your apps to 'Always Sleeping' in the device optimization app.
Do NOT always sleep apps that you need to be awake, like your Messaging app, Home Launcher, utility stuff like Navbar Apps, Keyboard. Put those in the 'Unmonitored' category instead.
DE-OPTIMIZE your fingerprint scanner from battery optimization settings if you are having issues with waking up the device with it. It is optimized by default if I remember correctly.
If you are feeling BRAVE, you can do your own investigation for each app that you use often to look for any services that might look like Analytics services. Experiment at your own risk, but generally such services are always a benefit to turn OFF for both battery and privacy reasons.
---
Overall, that's it. If I remember something, I will update the thread. Hopefully this can help someone.
In my personal results, I've managed to achieve a 0.3% idle drain per hour with Wi-Fi active during a test of 12 hours of standby. As visible in the screenshot, the Wi-Fi signal is not even perfect.
Here is an example of idle drain with about 1h 10m of SoT at the time it was taken.
---
Feel free to use this guide in conjunction with Neomancr's general battery and performance tuning guide
Thanks!
magarto said:
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No problem!
This should be on top! Thanks a lot!
The "Service Disabler" functionality has been removed from the latest app version due to Google Play policies.
Fortunately we can find the previous apk version in the developers website.
https://kunkunsoft.wordpress.com/news_2/
Cheers!
hey thanks a ton for this article! My battery is horrible...REALLY. 2 h ost...I've just completed the first part. please explaind better what do you mean with "sign out from Google accounts" step by step. and in my case BBS was not adb enabled...I was not able to see wakelocks. the command explained here https://alexus.org/howto/better-battery-stats-no-root/amp (the google play store version) granted permissions for me. maybe you want to update the guide! I'll let you know how it goes.
cheers
@brokich
Could you please point us exactly to what are the main apps with AppMeasurement and Firebase services?
Until now I have found only the Google play store app.
Thanks for your great guide.
Thanks for the guide. Starting to debug battery issues. Meanwhile tried setting up the black theme. What do you mean by installing only Samsung theme? Do you mean a specific theme made by Samsung electronics or any black theme from Samsung theme market?
Here are the correct adb commands to BBS, as shown in the app in first start:
adb -d shell pm grant com.asksven.betterbatterystats android.permission.BATTERY_STATS
adb -d shell pm grant com.asksven.betterbatterystats android.permission.DUMP
adb -d shell pm grant com.asksven.betterbatterystats android.permission.PACKAGE_USAGE_STATS

How to disable/adjust the background task limit?

My background with android is long and rocky.
A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I had a Samsung Galaxy S, then a S2.
I can remember a Google Nexus phone in there somewhere.
Then at some point I switched over to Windows Mobile for many years.
A couple of hears ago I came back to android with a Samsung Galaxy S8+ and I hated it.
Recently I upgraded to a OnePlus 6T McLaren and here I am.
I had been expecting to see android happily use up 7, 8 or even 9GB of ram before the background task manager would begin to kill tasks.
Except that I seldom saw android use much more than 5GB of ram.
And worse, background tasks were being killed on a regular basis.
Widgets would stop working overnight, or even in just a few hours.
Spotify would close while a playing a playlist.
A quick search on XDA reveals that many users believe that Android will just use up as much ram as your phone has.
However, that is simply not true.
And so, I began my quest to have Android use as much ram as the phone could provide.
In my case, 10GB.
- I understand that there is an inherent trade-off between keeping background apps running and battery usage. I can live with extra battery usage in exchange for keeping my widgets running or Spotify running for an entire playlist.
- I realized very quickly that in order to achieve the results that I was looking for that the phone would have to be rooted. So rooting was one of the first things that I did.
Step 1.
I started with the basic stuff that a quick google search would provide;
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Saver (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Adaptive Battery (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> widget app (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Spotify (don’t optimize)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Deep Optimization (off)
- Settings -> Battery -> Battery Optimization -> Advanced Optimization -> Sleep standby optimization (off)
- Settings -> Apps -> Widget app -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
- Settings -> Apps -> Spotify -> Battery -> Background Restriction (app can use battery in background)
This helped but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 2.
I supposed that my specific background tasks that I wanted to keep running were being killed because of the many other apps that were running in the background.
I searched for and found Tomatot DeBloater scripts for the Oneplus 6.
Excellent! Just what I was looking for.
I chose the Tomatot-Debloater-OOS-Light-2.3.zip and installed it.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
Step 3.
I realised that there were still some apps running in the background that I didn’t use or want.
So I used Titanium Backup to freeze the following apps;
- Calendar
- Calendar Storage 9
- Contacts (O+)(I replaced with google contacts)
- Dashboard
- Drive
- Face Unlock
- Gboard
- Gmail
- Google
- Google partner setup 9
- Google play music 8
- McLaren AR
- Messaging (O+)(replaced with google messaging)
- OK google enrollment 9
- Oneplus system 1
- Youtube
Perfect! These apps were no longer competing for phone resources with the apps that I wanted to run.
This helped some more but not enough to make the widgets or Spotify usable.
This did make the phone feel faster and smoother.
The phone is much more responsive and fluid to my input.
This made me realize that the apps were being closed not due to a lack of phone resources, but a background task manager being aggressive.
Presumably for battery saving purposes.
I changed my focus to adjusting that background task manager.
Step 4.
Enable the recent screen ‘LOCK’ on the widget app and Spotify.
This didn’t do anything for me.
Everything that I’ve read on it says that it just stops the task from being killed when you click on kill all tasks.
The lock doesn’t lock the task from being killed by the background task manager.
Step 5.
Further google searching led me to believe that the OEM kernel was limiting background tasks.
I choose ElementalX-OP-3.09 and the EX Kernel Manager.
I had to read a lot of google university material to make any sense of the settings in here.
I’m not sure that I fully understand even now.
Eventually, I ended up with the following settings;
Memory
- Adaptive Low Memory Killer (disabled)
- dirty ratio (20)
- dirty background ratio (5)
- min free kbytes (12398)
- vfs cache pressure (100)
Memory -> Low Memory Killer
- apply on boot
- Foreground app (72mb)
- Visible apps (90mb)
- Secondary server (108mb)
- Hidden apps (200mb)
- Content Providers (587mb)
- Empty apps (783mb)
This helped a lot.
This almost made the phone usable to the state that I wanted.
But the widget and Spotify would still stop running overnight and by morning the apps would have to be reopened to get them to run again.
At least the apps would run most of the day without being killed.
Still not the behaviour that I expected from a phone with 10GB of ram.
Ram usage was still not going much over 5.5Gb even if I opened up many apps at once.
Can I ever get ram usage up to the 10Gb that I have?
Step 6.
The last thing that I tried yesterday afternoon was to increase the background task limit in the build.prop.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 (changed it to 60)
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 (changed it to 10000)
Yes, I know that I am on PIE and there isn’t supposed to be any effect.
No, I don’t know yet if this had any effect.
I am hopeful.
The widget app didn’t close last night, but Spotify did.
I am getting closer!
This is the best that I could do on my own without asking for help.
So here I am posting my question and asking for help.
How do I get the apps that I want to run to not be killed by the background task manager?
OR
How do I get the phone to use the 10GB of ram?
I feel that I am missing something.
With any luck, one of you smarter persons will be able to point it out to me.
As an aside from all of these changes the phone feels very smooth and fluid.
Except for apps closing that I don’t want to, this phone is a great experience and a pleasure to use.
Apps that I want to run are staying open much longer then before I started.
It’s now just an overnight issue.
And getting the phone to use over 6Gb of ram.
I would suggest that I am 90% happy with it now.
KERNAL: ElementalX-OP6-3.10
ROM: STOCK OOS 9.0.11
PHONE MODEL: 6013 O+6T McLaren
Tomorrow I may try making this change to the build.prop file;
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false
Don't know if it will help or not.
Wow dude, interesting read, i will sign up for notifications from this thread hoping you get your answer because i have the exact same problem but with my work app, throwing it all out of whack and making me a target to big fines (in the $1,000's) and potentially reducing my marketability!
The attached screenies are from before i realized that the app getting killed in the background is what causes the problem (I've left it in the foreground HOURS a few times and it works perfectly!)
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
geeksquad2 said:
UPDATE:
Good news!
I seem to have solved my issue.
Time will tell for sure though.
But this morning and all day today, Spotify and the widget app have been running without closing.
AND I have seen memory usage up to 6.8GB used.
Here are the further steps that I took;
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true (changed it to false)
I didn't really notice much of a change.
But then I noticed that perhaps the limit of 60 tasks was not high enough.
I seem to have that many apps open and limiting to just 60 may be an issue.
- ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=60 (changed it to 120)
THIS!
This seemed to have worked for me.
All apps seem to be open and be staying open.
Today I got a message/warning from android telling me that the widget app is consuming the battery in excess but I ignored the warning and android did not close the app or stop the widget from running.
I will keep an eye on the phone for the next few days to confirm that this actually solved my issues.
My next step will be to see what effect if any this has had on my battery usage.
I am curious to see if it's all that bad...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
UPDATE:
I am a silly goose.
I broke a cardinal rule while troubleshooting.
I may have had a few too many wobbly pops and made two changes at a time, thus when change was affected, I was unable to determine properly which change caused the affect.
The rule is, "only make one change at a time when testing".
Yes, all of my apps stay open all the time.
I am getting the behaviour that I was looking for.
However it wasn't necessarily changing the build.prop bgservice_limit from 60 to 120 that did it.
Let me back up a bit.
Earlier I had suggested that locking an app to the recent screen didn't do anything for me, and that in my reading it only locks the app from being killed by you when you try to close it manually.
However in reading up on the oneplus framework-res.apk I found a reference to an oneplus whitelist of apps that will never be killed, and a reference to the recent screen app lock that suggests that oneplus will add a locked app to the whitelist and not kill it.
In the course of a single day, I had inadvertently edited the build.prop and locked the widget app to the recent screen thus breaking the one change at a time rule.
So the next morning and the following days when all apps were staying open I attributed it to changing the build.prop not realizing that it could also have been the app lock.
Last night I realized my mistake.
I unlocked the widget app from the recent screen and went to bed.
When I woke up this morning the widget app was not running for the first time in days.
Also the notifications that I was receiving about the widget app consuming excessive battery have stopped.
It would appear that I was wrong in my earlier observations regarding the app lock mechanism.
It appears to be very useful for keeping apps running all the time.
Did changing the build.prop have any affect on keeping apps open?
Maybe?
I have noticed that my battery life has gone for a complete ****.
I can barely get 24 hours out of the phone.
Worse is that it doesn't matter if the screen is on or not, battery usage remains the same.
i.e. with the screen off and the phone put down, battery life appears to be used at the same rate as when the phone is in use.
I had expected the battery life to be not as good, but I didn't expect it to go to for a **** that badly.
There must be a balance between aggressive app management and acceptable battery life.
The phone didn't display this behaviour until I changed ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true to false.
I think that today I will change ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable= back to true and observe the battery tomorrow.
kantjer said:
Nice find, I checked my build.prop and found this. No wonder my apps are killed
Code:
#ifdef VENDOR_EDIT
#[email protected] modify for app memory
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
#endif/*VENDOR_EDIT*/
EDIT: I see a lot of custom ROM's have "ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=60" to the build prop, I wonder if that going to make a difference
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= and ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= are essentially the same thing, except for android versions.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit= is for Android 7: Nougat and below.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit= is for Android 8: Oreo and above.
Someone more knowledgeable than me should chime in here though.
Do you think any of this could have to do with the way the phone keeps disabling push in Gmail? (Every other day I need to set my O365 exchange in Gmail back to push because it automatically changes to the default of checking every 30 mins.)
Any conclusion?
Did you guys manage to solve this issue please by editing the build prop?
Latest smurf kernel rc14b seems to have solved the RAM management issue. I haven't had any apps closing in background since using it.
thank you for the thread!
What did you find in the end?
How did you set this ?
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
So what's the verdict on the buildprop edits? Do they make a difference?
I notice that sometimes my on-going weather notification doesn't update, or gets killed off. I also have an app that controls rotation per app, and that also seems to stop doing it's thing after a while.
Just want to share. If you are rooted with Magisk, try appsystemizer module. System apps don't get killed by oneplus as aggressively. Tried it with accubattery and it works.
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
scloss84 said:
I am so glad I stumble across this, I just want to say, changing
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5 to 120
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000 to 10000
Keep apps in ram for much longer then original! For me the battery life is unaffected, might even be better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
popy2006 said:
Also want to solve this issue.
On which OOS Version you are? (i am on 10.3.1)
Does this really work in newer OOS Versions?
I have read elsewhere that those settings dont work on newer versions, sadly, cant find the thread/source.
thx
pOpY
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm actually Oneplus 6, OOS 9.0.9.
I also read that it doesn't work on Android 10 because magisk doesn't mount /system in Android 10, but there is a magisk module workaround that you can use. And hopefully magisk will update in the near future to fix that. Just google "Android 10 can't edit build.prop" and you'll find heaps of info.
This is what I have in my build.prop file and it seems to help. I have Oreo it works great on my phone I don't know about later versions of Oreo.
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_enable=true
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_age=5000
ro.vendor.qti.sys.fw.bservice_limit=5
ro.sys.fw.bg_apps_limit=64

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