Possible solution for Vibrant GPS wakelocks - great battery life trick! - Vibrant Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi, I've had quite a few roms on the Vibrant (all JB) and they've all suffered from poor battery life due to a GPS wakelock getting out of control and leaving the phone stuck at 100mhz, unable to go into deep sleep. The wakelock I see mostly is ste-gps-interface. There isn't much out there except a previous post that I made thinking I fixed it (which wasn't the case, I just did something to make it happen more frequently). Interestingly enough too if you google "ste-gps-interface" nearly all the information out there is for the Vibrant. I know there have been GPS issues with this phone and I guess I'm lucky that GPS works at all.
Basically what would happen is that once the wakelock got started, nothing short of a reboot would clear it, and then it would happen maybe only a few hours after rebooting the phone again. Actually turning GPS off is not a solution. I think I even tried to kill the GPS daemon and that was not a solution either. Installing tweaking scripts seemed to trigger it more for me but I couldn't pinpoint any one action - it would just be the case that the longer I had the phone on, with any rom, inevitably the wakelock issue would rear its ugly head. I'm surprised not more people have mentioned it on here, but it could be that they're not aware of it, and just assuming that battery life is a little bad. It's acceptable when idling at 100mhz but I'd never get a full day out of it. I'm about one day and 4 hours now and at 40% with this fix. I have gone about 4 days with this fix and it seems to be holding so I'm fairly confident to say that at least for me it seems to have solved the problem.
Here is what I did. Download the app Greenify. This hibernates apps and services when the screen goes off. Curious to see if this would help my issues, I greenified Maps. This seemed to help a little bit, but the issue popped up again. I then turned Google Now into a user app via Titanium Backup and Greenfied that as well (Greenify won't let you freeze system apps, and it's safe to make google now a user app because it's not an essential process). You can find this app on the market. I have gone over a day today and I have only had 10 mins of the wakelock, opposed to nearly continuous (hours upon hours) of the wakelock, draining the battery. The only drawback I could see is if you depend on services that need maps or google now to be running when the phone is off, like latitude or location history. I imagine too that hibernating this nasty service just helps with battery life in general.
I'm very curious about this fix, because I wonder if it's a bug on Google's end. I've often thought that the location services seem buggy and excessive. This is worth trying just for battery alone. You can verify if you have the wakelock issue by using BetterBatteryStats and looking at kernel wakelocks (will have a ste-gps-interface wakelock going for almost the entire boot time), or even just looking at any CPU state breakdown - if you see only a tiny bit of time in deep sleep and the rest in 100mhz, that could indicate you're experiencing it as well. Please let me know if this helps anyone and thank you to the app developer of Greenify

Related

[Q] Android System Partial Wakelock

Hey, I've been noticing something odd in my flashing experiences with SuperClean since 2.8.
After I flash a new ROM or a kernel, for about twelve hours afterwards, "Android System" has almost a 100% partial wakelock on the system as listed in Spare Parts. After that initial time period, it drops like a rock and the battery doesn't drain nearly as fast. Is anyone one else noticing this? If so, does anyone know what the cause is? Like I said, it fades after about a half a day, so it's not an ongoing drain. I'm just curious more than anything else.
s13_slider said:
Hey, I've been noticing something odd in my flashing experiences with SuperClean since 2.8.
After I flash a new ROM or a kernel, for about twelve hours afterwards, "Android System" has almost a 100% partial wakelock on the system as listed in Spare Parts. After that initial time period, it drops like a rock and the battery doesn't drain nearly as fast. Is anyone one else noticing this? If so, does anyone know what the cause is? Like I said, it fades after about a half a day, so it's not an ongoing drain. I'm just curious more than anything else.
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mine was doing the same, then i realized my gps was on. this is a know issue, if you have gps turned on, turn it off and you should get great battery. if this isnt the case...then i dont know. im on 2.9.2, when in doubt i think reboot a few times as well. Im somewhat new but i read a lot.
I've always found a wakelock with auto-rotation on. Leaving it off has drastically improved my battery life. The gps situation has a workaround: use any app that needs a lock(like google maps, nav or earth; I use gps status, free from market), open the app & let it lock, close it & no more wake-lock. Also, toggling airplane mode works for the high Tw/oS bug.
After flashing a new ROM I always turn aiplane mode ON and let my phone sleep for some time (1 hour).
I also remove most of my widgets (Plume, FB, calendar some others).
Reboot phone and turn airplane mode OFF.

Wakelocks with ste-gps-interface keep device from sleeping

Can anyone help me with this problem here?
I have been trying various roms on my Vibrant, but didn't spend a ton of time on the ones before Paranoid Android because they seemed unstable. So I can't fully tell you if I was having this issue before, but I will say that the battery drain didn't seem as extreme.
I noticed that I was having extreme battery drain the night after I flashed PA (it was plugged in overnight). I was trying to charge it before I went out, and here's something weird - I was talking on the phone plugged into *AC* power (NOT usb!) and the battery drained during the call! That kind of threw me because it's never something that's happened on AC for me. By the time I went outside, it was down to almost nothing, drained about 5% in 3 minutes walking to the bus stop and died. I recharged it again, swapped in my extra battery in case it was a battery problem, and noticed that also it took a couple of hours of basically not using the phone to drain to 0. I have no signal issues in my area.
I noticed that in BBS that a wakelock ste-gps-interface was taking up a TON of time. I am not using GPS that much. I figured it may be Google now, so I actually froze the app. That didn't seem to help, so I turned of Google location services as much as I could to still use maps - basically everything short of turning GPS off itself. I still got the wakelock! This shows up in the battery settings as making "Android OS" jump to 50% when this is happening.
So since whatever is triggering this wakelock causes the phone to not go into deep sleep and idle at 100mhz, I'm getting bad battery drain. I tried several things such as updating the Semaphore kernel, reflashing the GPS data, using an AGPS app to reset the cache, and tweaking the CPU governor/IO settings. For some reason I seemed to get some relief after reflashing the GPS data once and then clearing cache/dalvik cache, but the issue has come back again.
I couldn't find any informative posts on it, but interesting the posts that I did find were Vibrant specific. If anyone has any ideas past turning GPS off completely please let me know. One thing I have not tried is kernels other than Semaphore, but I've heard that Semaphore is a good match with PA. Thanks!
Edit: I may be wrong because this seems odd, but even turning the GPS off in location preferences doesn't seem to be stopping the wakelock!
Have you calibrated your battery? You should always calibrate after flashing a new rom. I'm not sure about the wake locks you speak of since I have never flashed a PA rom. Someone else may have some insight on that, in the meantime definitely calibrate your battery. I recommend this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nema.batterycalibration. You must be rooted, I'm assuming you are...
Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk 2
Thanks, but since this is a wakelock issue with CPU processes running amok I'm afraid battery calibration won't help but to get a few more seconds out of it before it dies in an hour :/
I do think I have found the issue for now, but it's confusing that it's related, so if anyone could shed some light on it, that'd be great. If not, hopefully others who search for it will be able to look for similar issues on their phone.
In the past on other phones, I used the CPU Editor mod that you can find on XDA. I was partial to it because I got good results with the battery saver profile, and unlike other apps on the market that kept a running process, this one was all on the command line. For some reason when I set the profile through the command line and exit the app, as long as it's enabled, the ste-gps-interface wakelock flares up and drains the battery in a matter of hours since the device cannot idle. It was a tough connection to make because I had even disabled GPS entirely and was still getting the wakelock, so I'm still not sure what the connection could be. I did notice that putting CPU Editor into sticky mode caused the device to bootloop, so I wouldn't suggest this script for PA in my experience.
I have since switched back to just using Semaphore Manager to handle CPU and governor settings to keep stuff simple, which I probably should have done in the first place Sort of ironic that trying to squeeze some more battery out of that device caused the wakelock bug. I'd ask the author of the script about it, but it seems to be kind of dead - yet another reason to move on. Smartassv2 is good enough for my purposes!
I'm now having problems with this as well. Rebooting doesn't help and neither does a data wipe. I've been on CM 10.1 nightlies for the last couple weeks and this started on Saturday. Won't allow phone to go into deep sleep. I tried the Greenify method but it doesn't seem to be working from another post... Anyone have any more info?
Welp, I think its a hardware problem unfortunately... The phone went into Safe Mode last weekend when it got damp from rain. Probably due to that.
I've tried everything... I've reverted to stock and wiped everything via odin and it still wont sleep. Time for a new phone! Been a good (almost) 3 years.
Did you try to full formatting to FAT 32 (by USB connection with a PC) both the sdcard and emmc?
selmandeli said:
Did you try to full formatting to FAT 32 (by USB connection with a PC) both the sdcard and emmc?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just did and no go... Still occurring.
Possible Fix
Kind of digging up an old thread but since there was no solution posted, I thought I'd post this for anyone else having this issue and happen to stumble upon this thread.
I had the same issue with SlimBeans where ste-gps-interface was keeping my device awake. I just flashed the gps fix below and initial results show that my phone is going into deep sleep, hopefully this remains to be the case.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2089338
Edit: So after a day's worth of testing, I can say that it worked for me.
Apparently the Insert Image function doesn't work as I expected... so here's a link to the image:
http://ctrlv.in/192705

[Q] Help - ANDROID SYSTEM, GOOGLE SERVICES AND BATTERY DRAIN RELATIONSHIP

Anyone with some knowledge about the system and their workings (and what caused the battery drain), PLEASE HELP!
Attachment file is screenshots from GSAM, and the help I need is to understand what is causing it, or what would be just as nice is to learn how to stop it.
Basic info
Still .475 firmware
rooted with Vroot
Stamina off, but happens to an extent with but not as severly with Stamina on
I have Greenify installed, but doubt that this is the cause, since it happened before installation too
Only the chinese SU and Google+ disabled by going into system/apps
Here is the flow of what happened.
I Fully charged to 100%, disconnected and went to bed listening to podcasts (Beyond Pod)
I wake up 5 and 1/2 hrs later to find battery down to 15%
I open GSAM, take screenshots of what looks suspicious
I note that App usage is whopping 92%, where the screen is only accounting for 1.1% usage of screen.
Of the 90%+ of power used by apps, close look tells me is 44.7% is Android System, and 41% is Google services
Looking further into these 2 culprits, is where I get lost.
Is it something about wake lock? CPU usage (background)? WifiStateMachine is high up in the list of both Sysytem and Google services?
%numbers tells me that they are something to do with it, but I have no further understanding, thus powerless to prevent or cure.
As the first screenshot will tell u, when things were smooth, I get 15-16 hrs of Batt life
Any suggestions/actions???
If this is any hint, I have no idea, but once I remember seeing in notification bar a notice saying that some app was preventing Stamina mode from going into sleep mode...
It seems I faied to attach screenshots. Here are the missing ones in attachment
Interesting. I also use vroot and 475 kernel workaround to root my 510. Your phone clearly didn't enter deep sleep all that time.. Held awake for 5+ hours, and WiFi is on for almost 5 hours initiated by google service (strange, in my phone google service doesn't initiate WiFi on) but your first screenshot suggests that WiFi is active for only 33 minutes.. Looks like conflicting information.
My ZU also sucks a lot of power when held awake (not as fast as yours though - almost 100% in 5 hour is full screen-on for me; logging gps track with screen off is around 50% down in 4 hours) and the major power drain is the kernel, android service, and google service. Looks like a lot of background processing, but I can't figure out what's the specific cause(s) is..
For those with more proficiency in these things, is there any recommended place in the internet to start deciphering the power usage logs?
unk_damnation said:
For those with more proficiency in these things, is there any recommended place in the internet to start deciphering the power usage logs?
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Click to collapse
Yes, please, anyone?
Just to give update on what has happened since....
Still on .475 HK Firmware.
I have traced back what apps I have installed (in order, un-installed them one by one)
I dont know if the conclusion I reach is correct or not, but results seem to have solved it.
The 2 apps I have rid since are GREENIFY and TITANIUM BACKUP.
My guess is that Greenify was maybe the culprit?
It worked well on my previous device. But Not Z Ultra. Is it because it is SD 800 and it takes different kind of working/updating to fully compliment this SoC, Z ultra being the first out with SD800?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
jewelkobayashi said:
Yes, please, anyone?
Just to give update on what has happened since....
Still on .475 HK Firmware.
I have traced back what apps I have installed (in order, un-installed them one by one)
I dont know if the conclusion I reach is correct or not, but results seem to have solved it.
The 2 apps I have rid since are GREENIFY and TITANIUM BACKUP.
My guess is that Greenify was maybe the culprit?
It worked well on my previous device. But Not Z Ultra. Is it because it is SD 800 and it takes different kind of working/updating to fully compliment this SoC, Z ultra being the first out with SD800?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also use greenify. Entered deep sleep with no problem. Stamina mode turned on, too.
unk_damnation said:
I also use greenify. Entered deep sleep with no problem. Stamina mode turned on, too.
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Click to collapse
Does Greenify feel like it is working for you? Can you feel battery life being longer? Depending on your opinion, I might give it a try again...
jewelkobayashi said:
Does Greenify feel like it is working for you? Can you feel battery life being longer? Depending on your opinion, I might give it a try again...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, the hibernated apps are not giving notification anymore and gsam battery didn't report any wakelocks in sleep from them. But I can't really say about battery life, though, since in my case, sony's stamina mode is the main factor for battery saving. I treat greenify as a tool to minimizing data footprint.

Battery Life - HDX 7in

Anyone else having issues with battery life? I can go from 54% to 14% overnight, totally stock install with no added apps.
My HDX 8.9 only loses about 2% over night. Get a task killer and see what you can kill.
Fully recharged it, watched a movie for a few mins, then let it sit for four hours or so. It managed to go from 84% to 72%. For some reason while it does stay connected to my wifi, it keeps losing internet connectivity.
I got a taskkiller app and killed a few processes, I don't believe it should be necessary though. I wonder if I got a dud since no one else seems to be reporting the same issue.
OakyTree said:
Fully recharged it, watched a movie for a few mins, then let it sit for four hours or so. It managed to go from 84% to 72%. For some reason while it does stay connected to my wifi, it keeps losing internet connectivity.
I got a taskkiller app and killed a few processes, I don't believe it should be necessary though. I wonder if I got a dud since no one else seems to be reporting the same issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most likely you have a rouge app. Uninstall all unnecessary apps. if the problem persists then install gsam battery monitor and track the irritant. Uninstall annoyance and all is happy again
conan1600 said:
Most likely you have a rouge app. Uninstall all unnecessary apps. if the problem persists then install gsam battery monitor and track the irritant. Uninstall annoyance and all is happy again
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Totally stock install, to my knowledge I can't uninstall any of the preinstalled stuff. The battery issues persist though reboot so if it's a stock app with some issue there's not much I can do about it at this time.
On a possibly related note I've been having issues with internet connectivity, after my fire is inactive for some period of time it loses connection to the internet but stays connected to wifi. I have to toggle the wifi to get the data working again.
I finally decided to just get them to ship me a replacement, should hopefully solve all of my issues without me having to spend days trying to diagnose any problems with my limited access.
install wake lock detector and see which app is locking cpu.
azfar said:
install wake lock detector and see which app is locking cpu.
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Click to collapse
I have discovered that the location services can cause this exact issue due to constant polling. This issue is worsened with the additional use of the Google Android location services. Make sure you do not have the Location setting turned on in the "Wireless" tab of settings.
This issue only occurs intermittently, but when it does, it continues until location services are disabled & the device is restarted.
GSLEON3 said:
I have discovered that the location services can cause this exact issue due to constant polling. This issue is worsened with the additional use of the Google Android location services. Make sure you do not have the Location setting turned on in the "Wireless" tab of settings.
This issue only occurs intermittently, but when it does, it continues until location services are disabled & the device is restarted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It wasn't enabled, I got my new kindle today though and just unboxed it. Hopefully it's resolved now.
Edit: Nope, same issue. When I got it, I turned it on, went though the tutorial, made sure location wasn't on, then turned off the screen and sat it on my desk. Six hours later I'm down 16%. Guess it's not as bad as before, but it's still not great. I wish amazon had better battery stats.
OakyTree said:
It wasn't enabled, I got my new kindle today though and just unboxed it. Hopefully it's resolved now.
Edit: Nope, same issue. When I got it, I turned it on, went though the tutorial, made sure location wasn't on, then turned off the screen and sat it on my desk. Six hours later I'm down 16%. Guess it's not as bad as before, but it's still not great. I wish amazon had better battery stats.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have great battery life and idle time. Did you download anything at all? Did you change any settings?
conan1600 said:
I have great battery life and idle time. Did you download anything at all? Did you change any settings?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope nothing, I can't think of any reason why two separate devices would act this way when no one else is having the same issue.
From when I edited my previous post to now, it's gone down 33%. (Which is a little over 2% per hour)
Edit: I installed better battery stats from an APK (didn't realize it would let me do this), so hopefully now I can see what's eating up the battery.
Edit 2: Something called msm_hsic_host is what's draining my battery. Apparently that has something to do with a cellular modem, which I find odd since my device is wifi only.
Edit 3: Installed DS Battery Saver, set it to slumber (If screen's off, data's off), problem solved.

Vbus_wake_lock wakelock keeping the phone awake

Hello everyone,
I've been following these forums every now and then and was very helpful when I encounter some minor problems so far.
But lately I start having a very strange problem on my mom's phone which is a Samsung Galaxy Win (i8552- stock rom- android 4.1.2) and couldn't really find a decent solution or a good explanation so far. So I decided to ask you guys.
The problem is phone is having a bit poor bettery life overall, especially while in idle. I found out most of the times it is losing 2-3% battery per hour while idling (i.e overnight). Sometimes it's slightly more 1% per hour and sometimes between 0.5-1% (which sounds more normal).
While in idle usually Androis OS seems eating up the battery around 50-60%. I disabled most of the notifications, most of the sync options (especially google ones), all kinds of screen sounds, facebook update intervals, uninstalled Avast and also disabled the location access. But these changes didn't really give a noticable difference. Battery drain inconsistency was still there.
After I noticed this strange battery drain I decided to digging it up a bit more and installed GSM Battery and wakelock detector.
Firs that I noticed in GSM battery is that the phone is awake for like 1.5 hours out of 7-8 hours of overnight idling. And Android OS kernel seemed responsible for this. But couldn't really get more clues.
Then I found more clues on the culprit in Wakelock Detector under "kernel wakelocks" tab. Which is vbus_wake_lock wakelock.
WD shows vbus_wake_lock is awake for almost an hour after the last charge, which was 7 hours ago.
After I found this I googled around a bit but couldn't really found a useful explanation except it might be caused by an apple charger. But I know that mom's using the original samsung charger.
I tried rebooting to see if it helps. It's been almost 4 hours now, phone lost around 2% battery which seems ok-ish but the vbus_wake_lock is still there with 25 minutes of awake.
So any idea. What should I do to hunt this wakelock down?
I don't really want to make her worried about her phone though, she seems happy with it, since she is playing some games and charging it every day so not really having a battery issues. But I know that there's something wrong here and I want to fix it.
So I desperately need your helps guys.
Thanks a lot.
Sorry for my English btw, as it's not my native.
Best,
supertrampp said:
Hello everyone,
I've been following these forums every now and then and was very helpful when I encounter some minor problems so far.
But lately I start having a very strange problem on my mom's phone which is a Samsung Galaxy Win (i8552- stock rom- android 4.1.2) and couldn't really find a decent solution or a good explanation so far. So I decided to ask you guys.
The problem is phone is having a bit poor bettery life overall, especially while in idle. I found out most of the times it is losing 2-3% battery per hour while idling (i.e overnight). Sometimes it's slightly more 1% per hour and sometimes between 0.5-1% (which sounds more normal).
While in idle usually Androis OS seems eating up the battery around 50-60%. I disabled most of the notifications, most of the sync options (especially google ones), all kinds of screen sounds, facebook update intervals, uninstalled Avast and also disabled the location access. But these changes didn't really give a noticable difference. Battery drain inconsistency was still there.
After I noticed this strange battery drain I decided to digging it up a bit more and installed GSM Battery and wakelock detector.
Firs that I noticed in GSM battery is that the phone is awake for like 1.5 hours out of 7-8 hours of overnight idling. And Android OS kernel seemed responsible for this. But couldn't really get more clues.
Then I found more clues on the culprit in Wakelock Detector under "kernel wakelocks" tab. Which is vbus_wake_lock wakelock.
WD shows vbus_wake_lock is awake for almost an hour after the last charge, which was 7 hours ago.
After I found this I googled around a bit but couldn't really found a useful explanation except it might be caused by an apple charger. But I know that mom's using the original samsung charger.
I tried rebooting to see if it helps. It's been almost 4 hours now, phone lost around 2% battery which seems ok-ish but the vbus_wake_lock is still there with 25 minutes of awake.
So any idea. What should I do to hunt this wakelock down?
I don't really want to make her worried about her phone though, she seems happy with it, since she is playing some games and charging it every day so not really having a battery issues. But I know that there's something wrong here and I want to fix it.
So I desperately need your helps guys.
Thanks a lot.
Sorry for my English btw, as it's not my native.
Best,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any ideas? Anyone?

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