Develop Bugs

On gps issues...

Hello everyone! I just registered on the forum, but I'm following it for a while. In fact I just bought a galaxy s, switched from an iphone 3g in fact, and I'm loving it!
Before buying the phone, I read all the info available about it, and I was really preoccupied about the whole gps issues posts...I use the gps quite a lot, and I really couldn't stand a 500€ phone with no working gps. But in the end I bought it, thinking "well, if it is so bad I could always keep my iphone and use it as a navigator".
Now I tried the navigator two times already, on a 40km route, from my house to the city and back, the former with the navigon software and the latter with the google navigator. I must say that my navigator was ALWAYS SPOT ON. And I mean it, every street I crossed was exactly at the point it is supposed to be, and turn indications were very precise, in fact even more precise than the iphone gps with tomtom, which I loved!
My galaxy s was bought in Italy, and is running firmware 2.1-update1, baseband I9000XXJF5, kernel 2.6.29 root(at)SE-S602 #2, build number ECLAIR.XWJFD. I configured it to use both the gps and the wireless network in home settings.
I just wanted to share my experience because maybe there are other people like me out there who are thinking twice about buying the phone because of the reported gps problems...
Now...could it be that the supposed gps issues were an hardware problem, which has been fixed in a more recent batch production?

I havent had any issues with my SGS aswell, works great (JM2 firmware), maybe its a different version of SGS...

Navigation software like Navigon, CoPilot etc always try to place you on the nearest road, and hence they work fine even though the GPS isn't spot on.
Try using MyTracks, SportyPal or iMapMyRun to track a route and you can clearly see that the GPS is struggling with keeping an accurate fix.
I've used my SGS with CoPilot and it guided me perfectly around northern europe, but tracking my cycling or running is not an option as it is now.
Would be interested in seeing you track a drive/bike ride/run with one of these apps to see if it works as it should.

I have to agree with you on this. I never experíenced ANY problem with the GPS. And I use it ALOT!

And here we go again.
The problem is indeed with the GPS having trouble to keep an accurate fix (so not obtaining it fast enough) and in most 'road navigation' software, or the likes, you won't experience this behavior since they: pin you to the road, smooth your path, or perform any other optimizations after they've received the position from the GPS driver/interface.
If you indeed use a program like MyTracks, SportyPal, RunGPS, etc then you will see you're 'jumping' around quite a lot. This is caused by:
1) The GPS LOCKS to 8 satellites Max
2) It drops any satellite with a SNR less than 22
this can be tested by using a program like GPS Test. This holds true for ALL Galaxy phones out there. Not every one is experiencing these problems since:
1) They use a program that pins the user to roads or does some other modification
2) They are lucky to be in a relative clear field so enough satellites with a SNR above 22 are available
3) They simply think those few deviations are not a problem
It is very most likely an issue with the GPS driver which can be fixed by Samsung.

scrappy.doo said:
And here we go again.
The problem is indeed with the GPS having trouble to keep an accurate fix (so not obtaining it fast enough) and in most 'road navigation' software, or the likes, you won't experience this behavior since they: pin you to the road, smooth your path, or perform any other optimizations after they've received the position from the GPS driver/interface.
If you indeed use a program like MyTracks, SportyPal, RunGPS, etc then you will see you're 'jumping' around quite a lot. This is caused by:
1) The GPS LOCKS to 8 satellites Max
2) It drops any satellite with a SNR less than 22
this can be tested by using a program like GPS Test. This holds true for ALL Galaxy phones out there. Not every one is experiencing these problems since:
1) They use a program that pins the user to roads or does some other modification
2) They are lucky to be in a relative clear field so enough satellites with a SNR above 22 are available
3) They simply think those few deviations are not a problem
It is very most likely an issue with the GPS driver which can be fixed by Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
or they have another batch, or they do not have lots of programs running or they have that magic touch or they control memory in a better way or using another firmware........
My GPS has been accurate both walking in the forest driving the car .... and yes I know the differences between the softwares internal handling of the fixes. I still think that some people has the error and others have not. Of course I can get errors if I want to, by loading a lot of programs, keeping it very hidden inside the car etc. Due to something, different users get different results and I do not know which is in majority. Maybe all but a few got a faulty phone or the reverse. Just do not get to the assumption that everybody that has a good GPS are some amateurs and do not know anything about GPS.

My Galaxy S regularly has locks on sats that have SNR's lower than 22.

scrappy.doo said:
And here we go again.
The problem is indeed with the GPS having trouble to keep an accurate fix (so not obtaining it fast enough) and in most 'road navigation' software, or the likes, you won't experience this behavior since they: pin you to the road, smooth your path, or perform any other optimizations after they've received the position from the GPS driver/interface.
If you indeed use a program like MyTracks, SportyPal, RunGPS, etc then you will see you're 'jumping' around quite a lot. This is caused by:
1) The GPS LOCKS to 8 satellites Max
2) It drops any satellite with a SNR less than 22
this can be tested by using a program like GPS Test. This holds true for ALL Galaxy phones out there. Not every one is experiencing these problems since:
1) They use a program that pins the user to roads or does some other modification
2) They are lucky to be in a relative clear field so enough satellites with a SNR above 22 are available
3) They simply think those few deviations are not a problem
It is very most likely an issue with the GPS driver which can be fixed by Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have found that the internal driver that spits out the NMEA can get locks to more than 8 satellites < 20 SnR, but when presented to the Android API, Samsung only announce upto 8 satellites > 20 SnR.
Unfortunatly the NMEA locations are just as wayward as the MyTracks information, so we can't blame the apps.
I too agree that this problem is across all phones, whether the user is fortunate to experience the issue or not. You just have to have the right/wrong conditions, and even then the system is intermittent.
I have had two Galaxy S phones now. The second isn't as bad as the first. But I know there is a large section of people who state that their GPS is perfect who then fire up MyTracks and go back on what they say.
milsjg said:
or they have another batch, or they do not have lots of programs running or they have that magic touch or they control memory in a better way or using another firmware........
My GPS has been accurate both walking in the forest driving the car .... and yes I know the differences between the softwares internal handling of the fixes. I still think that some people has the error and others have not. Of course I can get errors if I want to, by loading a lot of programs, keeping it very hidden inside the car etc. Due to something, different users get different results and I do not know which is in majority. Maybe all but a few got a faulty phone or the reverse. Just do not get to the assumption that everybody that has a good GPS are some amateurs and do not know anything about GPS.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How long have you had your Galaxy S milsjg? How long have you been testing the GPS? What firmware version are you running? Have you applied any lag fixes? What software do you use to test the tracking?
I would be keen to point out, just because you don't experience errors, do not assume your phone does not have the error.
Certainly at minimum, your phone will have the software bug where accuracy is misreported, locks on satelltes < 20SnR, or locks on more than 8 satellites are reported.
heygrl said:
My Galaxy S regularly has locks on sats that have SNR's lower than 22.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think 22 is the wrong SnR. It's actually < 21, but lets say 20 to be on the safe side.
If you do have lots of locks, please post a picture of GPS Test output showing a lock on more than 8 satellites. As far as Im aware, no one ever has seen this on GPS Test under Samsung Galaxy S, and when pressed about the matter, they confess that they see more than 8, but only get a fix on upto 8.
Remember a fix is a bar in GPS test that isn't grey.

sjdean said:
I have had two Galaxy S phones now. The second isn't as bad as the first. But I know there is a large section of people who state that their GPS is perfect who then fire up MyTracks and go back on what they say.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But there are also people who do use MyTracks that does not have problems with the GPS.
I have posted an example when I recorded with GPSCompassMap (which like MyTracks will not snap to roads):
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=e...9.033224,15.057449&spn=0.076491,0.147629&z=13
That is typical performance for me, and I have been walking and driving with MyTrack, GPSCompassMap and Co-Pilot without issues.
Obviously, judging by most disussions on the subject I seem to be in a minority, so it still seems to be a major issue with the phone that needs to be fixed.
But something seems to be at play that means that some users find the GPS unusable, while for others it is fine.

That's not terrible at all.
I also wanted to note that the GPS really seems to be biploar. I think this is just a huge issue with Samsung's poor firmware/software/coding/whatever. There is no reason why it shouldn't work right, the chip is featured in many other phones and it's not from some second rate manufacture. The phone has no problems seeing sats with good enough SNR's.. etc.

PsiIion said:
But there are also people who do use MyTracks that does not have problems with the GPS.
I have posted an example when I recorded with GPSCompassMap (which like MyTracks will not snap to roads):
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=e...9.033224,15.057449&spn=0.076491,0.147629&z=13
That is typical performance for me, and I have been walking and driving with MyTrack, GPSCompassMap and Co-Pilot without issues.
Obviously, judging by most disussions on the subject I seem to be in a minority, so it still seems to be a major issue with the phone that needs to be fixed.
But something seems to be at play that means that some users find the GPS unusable, while for others it is fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like suggested earlier if your Galaxy's GPS performs perfectly 100% ok to you then please: "post a picture of GPS Test output showing a lock on more than 8 satellites."
Judging the track you drove you where clearly in the open field so the GPS should perform ok. The conditions are very optimal. Despite the conditions being good you see some deviation at the beginning of your track (when you seem to be just marginally surrounded by some trees/forest).

Hell I can show you plenty of screenshots that will show my Vibrant locked on sats that have SNR's well under 22 which seems to be some type of "thing" that the Vibrant doesn't do which is a fabrication for me. I often have locks below 22SNR.

heygrl said:
Hell I can show you plenty of screenshots that will show my Vibrant locked on sats that have SNR's well under 22 which seems to be some type of "thing" that the Vibrant doesn't do which is a fabrication for me. I often have locks below 22SNR.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, but i do bet that you dont have a lock under 20SNR!

scrappy.doo said:
Like suggested earlier if your Galaxy's GPS performs perfectly 100% ok to you then please: "post a picture of GPS Test output showing a lock on more than 8 satellites."
Judging the track you drove you where clearly in the open field so the GPS should perform ok. The conditions are very optimal. Despite the conditions being good you see some deviation at the beginning of your track (when you seem to be just marginally surrounded by some trees/forest).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never locked to more than eight satellites, but why do I need to do that as long at it the precision is fine?
GPSCompassMap shows the number of sats you are connected to, and while recording that track it was locking to eight almost constantly, only occasionally dipping down to six or seven.
There is a lot of trees and forest along the road, but not really obstructing the view of the sky.
I basically turned on the GPS and app and started driving, and the starting point was not obstructed. But of course it takes a few seconds to get a proper lock.
Like I said, I have used the GPS a lot in various conditions without problems. It does't seem like the ones having problems are only trying it indoors or in canyons, so I don't think the difference is about the conditions.

Well to answer the questions that Sdjean asked: I have had the phone for one and a half month. I am using I9000XWJM2 with Samset 1,7 (I have not had any serious problem with any firmware regarding the GPS but have had some lag issues). I have used CardioTrainer, My Track as tracking software, Navigon for navigation and Gmaps for, well I don,t know. I have had a mobile from 1989 and GPS from ca 2000. I have had GPS enabled phones and handhelds for the last 6 years and also owned some external GPSs. I have worked with tracking for at least 8 years, so do not think that people that do not complain about Samsung GPS is amateurs.
IMHO handhelds without any corrections (WAAS, ERGOS, DGPS etc) will get a fix within 5- 15 meters (sd 95). If you want a fix better than that, you have to apply some correction.
This talk about more than 8 fixes is not important. If you have 8 fixes the ninth will not improve the total location fix very much, specially if it has crappy s/n. Other phones may use another statistically way of calculating the fix using bad fixes and get down to an accuracy of 5,6 feet (which I do think is highly improbable if you do not use corrections). If they use low quality fixes they may only mess things up.
However, I agree that the jumping of the GPS fix is not tolerable so if you have that issue Samsung most help you. But if you complain about the accuracy being 5 to 10 meters. Search Google and read about how the GPS works and what you can do to correct it.

Definitely, I agree. An accuracy of 5m to 10m would be ideal, unfortunately while my phone does achieve that on many occasions, the signal is too sporadic.
I can turn a corner and get a signal loss and show as going round a loop, or carrying on in a straight line until the GPS catches up. I can go under a bridge and the GPS will think Im walking off to the right, or left when Im going straight.
I know XWJM2 seems to dampen the path a little. That I think is in XXJP3 firmware as "Use Sensor Aiding", but unfortunately this is a bodge that doesn't fix the jittery signal.
At times, my GPS can be flawless. I'll get a lock onto 8 satellites, stable with no problems. I'll get a flawless track. But the rest of the time, I'll lose lock at random moments and struggle to gain even three satellites.
Then there are the times I'll be out walking and the because I turn corner, despite having a ten metre accuracy and the compass pointing in the right direction, the GPS thinks Im moving sideways and plots a sideways path. It thinks Im a crab.
I would concur, 8 satellites should be enough, but we do know that more satellites can help in urban canyons when you're likely to lose 5 behind a tall building. The problem is further compounded when your GPS struggles to maintain lock. Some of us do actually need those extra satellites on the GPS, and we do need the system to lock onto <20 SnR Satellites.
Just to ask this one more time in case it was missed milsjg, are you running any lag fixes?
Thanks
Simon

What is this nonsense about the phone not allowing a lock on sats with SNR's below 20?
I regularly get 5-10 meters in my car. NEVER any higher.
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sjdean said:
Definitely, I agree. An accuracy of 5m to 10m would be ideal, unfortunately while my phone does achieve that on many occasions, the signal is too sporadic.
I can turn a corner and get a signal loss and show as going round a loop, or carrying on in a straight line until the GPS catches up. I can go under a bridge and the GPS will think Im walking off to the right, or left when Im going straight.
I know XWJM2 seems to dampen the path a little. That I think is in XXJP3 firmware as "Use Sensor Aiding", but unfortunately this is a bodge that doesn't fix the jittery signal.
At times, my GPS can be flawless. I'll get a lock onto 8 satellites, stable with no problems. I'll get a flawless track. But the rest of the time, I'll lose lock at random moments and struggle to gain even three satellites.
Then there are the times I'll be out walking and the because I turn corner, despite having a ten metre accuracy and the compass pointing in the right direction, the GPS thinks Im moving sideways and plots a sideways path. It thinks Im a crab.
I would concur, 8 satellites should be enough, but we do know that more satellites can help in urban canyons when you're likely to lose 5 behind a tall building. The problem is further compounded when your GPS struggles to maintain lock. Some of us do actually need those extra satellites on the GPS, and we do need the system to lock onto <20 SnR Satellites.
Just to ask this one more time in case it was missed milsjg, are you running any lag fixes?
Thanks
Simon
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No lag fixes except the Samset 1,7 that may do something to run it smoother (I really do not know). I hope that Samsung can resolve this jumping fix and bad reception problems Even if it is a problem that not seems to occur in every phone (or setup) they are obliged to customers to fix the problem. I appreciate your work to get a deeper view in to the GPS problem. So as long as you are interested keep on doing your good work but remember it is Samsung that are obliged to get the solution.

heygrl said:
What is this nonsense about the phone not allowing a lock on sats with SNR's below 20?
I regularly get 5-10 meters in my car. NEVER any higher.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This seems very strange from my perspective if this is a normal view. I hope that this is the startup of the GPS in GPS test otherwise it should lock on to the satellites with higher S/N. I do not have any GPS problems just for the record. What firmware are you using?

igniztion said:
Try using MyTracks, SportyPal or iMapMyRun to track a route and you can clearly see that the GPS is struggling with keeping an accurate fix.
Would be interested in seeing you track a drive/bike ride/run with one of these apps to see if it works as it should.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
just for the record, windows mobile devices like my old HTC Athena, had even worse GPS tracking, and took forever to pick up satellites using any GPS software
so the SGS GPS is amazing in comparison, it picks up in less than a minute vs. like 5+ min on the HTC Athena

gps-lock draining battery

My phone's battery is draining really fast with minimal usage. Take a look at these battery usage screenshots:
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As you can see, the battery is pretty close to dying out after 11 hours with just 30 minutes of screen time. This definitely isn't right so I decided to look around. I haven't installed any suspicious apps and Android's battery usage stats are pretty unhelpful, but Better Battery Stats reveals the culprit: a gps-lock kernel wakelock.
While this wakelock is active, I've noticed that GPS apps don't work. None of the GPS apps show any GPS icon in the status bar and I don't seem to get any lock. The apps just fall back to the network location.
Turning the GPS or location services altogether off and on doesn't seem to help. Keeping the GPS off completely doesn't help either. A reboot does remove this wakelock... for a short while. Then it just pops up back again after a short while and doesn't clear unless I reboot.
I'm not sure where else I can look for the source and I could use some help.
I'm running stock 4.1.2 on a GSM Nexus.

Bogdan-xd said:
My phone's battery is draining really fast with minimal usage. Take a look at these battery usage screenshots:
As you can see, the battery is pretty close to dying out after 11 hours with just 30 minutes of screen time. This definitely isn't right so I decided to look around. I haven't installed any suspicious apps and Android's battery usage stats are pretty unhelpful, but Better Battery Stats reveals the culprit: a gps-lock kernel wakelock.
While this wakelock is active, I've noticed that GPS apps don't work. None of the GPS apps show any GPS icon in the status bar and I don't seem to get any lock. The apps just fall back to the network location.
Turning the GPS or location services altogether off and on doesn't seem to help. Keeping the GPS off completely doesn't help either. A reboot does remove this wakelock... for a short while. Then it just pops up back again after a short while and doesn't clear unless I reboot.
I'm not sure where else I can look for the source and I could use some help.
I'm running stock 4.1.2 on a GSM Nexus.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google Maps/Google Now any app that use gps is active and searching for your location.
Go the app info clear cache/data and force stop them.
Google Map is pretty the biggest drain.
post your partial wakelock as well that can help us determine what app are awake =)

Simply go to maps setting and remove check-in and other useless option
This gps-lock is caused from google now and maps that continue research for your position, but it's strange and abnormal, i've googlenow actived with all option, and i do 4 hours screen on with always 3g up

r29 said:
Google Maps/Google Now any app that use gps is active and searching for your location.
Go the app info clear cache/data and force stop them.
Google Map is pretty the biggest drain.
post your partial wakelock as well that can help us determine what app are awake =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't take a screenshot of the partial wakelocks since there was nothing suspicious going on in there, but I can get one tomorrow if my battery drains again.
The biggest partial wakelocks usually come from AudioOut (if I listen to music), exchange sync, google backup, g+ sync and the like. Pretty much the same as on my Nexus 7, which doesn't have this crippling kernel wakelock.
Teezekel said:
Simply go to maps setting and remove check-in and other useless option
This gps-lock is caused from google now and maps that continue research for your position, but it's strange and abnormal, i've googlenow actived with all option, and i do 4 hours screen on with always 3g up
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. Suprisingly, I had location reporting turned on in Maps, though I don't remember ever turning it on.
Hope it helps, since before this started happening, I could get around 2 days of standby time with around 4 hours of screen time on a single charge.
Other than that, I don't think Google Now and the GPS lock that Maps tries to take every now and then are the culprits. I remember Maps trying to get random GPS fixes on my old Gingerbread phone with no significant effect on battery.

Had the same problem - thanks!!
I just wanted to say thank you to all of you - I had pretty much the same problem, and I think following this advice will take care of it for me. It was obvious from the screen captures that "something" was wrong, and searching through the log files for what had the largest percentage solved it for me (I think).

Solution
Simply install TopNTP from google play
and then install his gps options (choose what you prefer)
Problem for me gone after this, and also gps working faster
sry for necro-posting

Sudden battery drain - how to tell what caused it?

My Zenwatch usually consumes <50% of its battery during a typical day. Today however it was completely dead by 7pm, even though there was nothing unusual about the day - it was worn at the same location all day, and was in close proximity to my phone all day.
Is there any way of tracing what causes this sort of sudden battery drain?

Hello,
same Problem here.
You can use the "Android Wear" app, connect to your watch and press the gear wheel on the upper right, then press on the first entry " Asus Zenwatch 2" and then you see the option "Battery of the watch" in the middled of the screen. It looks the same as you can see it on the telephone but for you watch battery.
I made a few screenshots today:
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looks ok for me...
still ok...
now there has something started sucking the battery empty....
now it has stopped... but only for a moment - later it came back and at 15:30 I had only 13% left. I noticed that the temperature display still was showing 7°C but my car display shows 16".
I restarted the watch now and voilá the temp changed to 16°... very stange
And this is the second watch - the first one I send back to Amazon because of the same "bug" ....

For some reason I can't see any of your screenshots. Any chance or re-uploading them?

itm said:
For some reason I can't see any of your screenshots. Any chance or re-uploading them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
better now?

Still nothing
???

I think he was trying to upload a screenshot like the one I attached to this post, it's basically a similar battery usage indicator like the one for the Android phone itself. I don't have anything on here really, yet, because it hasn't been too long since I took it off the charger.

Asus Zentalk forum has walkthroughs
The Asus ZenTalk forum has a walk-through with pictures on how to get to the battery use screen. (I'd post the link for you, but I don't have enough posts yet to post links).

I just had the same problem happen this evening. Everything was fine until about 8pm, with 70% remaining, then two hours later it had plummeted to 15%. I checked the battery stats in the Android Wear app, as suggested, but they didn't help: there were only 2 lines:
- Watch Idle: 5%
- Screen: 2%
Screenshot is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jd8x74gbhs78uih/Screenshot_2015-10-29-21-47-19.png?dl=0
???

itm said:
I just had the same problem happen this evening. Everything was fine until about 8pm, with 70% remaining, then two hours later it had plummeted to 15%. I checked the battery stats in the Android Wear app, as suggested, but they didn't help: there were only 2 lines:
- Watch Idle: 5%
- Screen: 2%
???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is a pretty drastic and sudden drop. What watch face were you using? Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time?
What are each of your settings in the settings area (what features do you have turned on or off)? If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing (like trying to connect to networks where there are sign-on pages where you have to agree to a user agreement before connecting to a free wifi network)?
If you look at your phone battery usage during that same time (if you still can) does it show anything highly active on your phone during that time? (For example could the phone have been trying to update any of the files or apps on your watch during that time?).

To answer your questions:
- What watch face were you using? Perfection (although the last time I had this problem I was using the Explorer watchface)
- Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time? No - I just got a few notifications when emails came in
- What are each of your settings in the settings area?
- Brightness: 3
- Font size: Normal
- Always on screen: Off
- Wrist gestures: On
- Screen lock: Off
- If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing - No, I was at
home in my study and lounge (within 15 feet of my wifi router at all times)
- If you look at your phone battery usage during that same time (if you still can) does it show anything highly active on your phone during that time? I don't have the ability to look at yesterday's phone battery stats, but I know that there were no app updates or unusual notifications on the phone during that period yesterday
???

itm said:
To answer your questions:
- What watch face were you using? Perfection (although the last time I had this problem I was using the Explorer watchface)
- Did the watch do (vibrate?) or alert you to anything (view messages, receive a call, etc) during that time? No - I just got a few notifications when emails came in
- What are each of your settings in the settings area?
- Brightness: 3
- Font size: Normal
- Always on screen: Off
- Wrist gestures: On
- Screen lock: Off
- If you have wifi turned on where you in an area where it may have been attempting to connect to nearby wifi networks and repeatedly failing - No, I was at
home in my study and lounge (within 15 feet of my wifi router at all times)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the days that have followed did the problem of sudden drain continue to occur, or does it appear to have been an isolated incident?
In that time period it experienced the drastic drop were you doing anything repeatedly? (ex: eating food, exercising, reading a book?) Repetitive tasks where you wrist was moving a lot may have been turning on your watch using the wrist gestures, and it seems that wrist gestures (where the brightness level 3, color, etc are activated) may use more battery than always on in its timed-out dim mode does. If you're continuing to experience the problem try going a day with always on screen turned on, wrist gestures turned off, and see if there is a difference in your battery use at the end of the day.
Your watch may also be preforming syncing with your phone at a particular time, and transfer of data across wifi between the two may be draining the battery. You could try turning off the sync setting on your phone for a day, and see if that makes a difference.
Finally you can try turning off wifi, and see how much longer your battery lasts with wifi switched off on the watch.

In the period when it dropped drastically I was sitting on the sofa watching TV. There were no repetitive tasks. In fact I could probably not have been less mobile!
I now have "always on" mode enabled, and have disabled tilt-to-wake. So far it has maintained the usual (low) battery usage, so I'll wait and see if I get a recurrence of the problem.
The problem with turning off sync for a day is that it's unlikely to prove anything. This problem only happens every few weeks, so if it doesn't happen on the day that I have sync turned off then I'll be no wiser.
I'm not sure what you mean by turning off wifi on the watch - do you mean putting it into airplane mode? If I do I would fully expect my battery life to improve, but how would that prove whether it was the potential cause of the rapid 2-hour drain?
I'm watching my watch battery levels very closely at the moment, but if I do notice a sudden drain again what can I do to establish exactly what is happening on the watch at the time? If the watchface is displayed as usual, and there's no evidence of any specific app running on the watch, what other options do I have for finding the cause of the excess battery drain?

After 4 weeks I've just had the same problem on 2 consecutive days. At the end of the first day I notiiced that the "tilt-to-wake" option had become re-enabled (I'm not sure how, as I don't remember enabling it). I disabled it again last night, but today my battery was pretty much dead by 9pm. I tried a reboot earlier in the day, but it didn't seem to help.
The latest version of the Android Wear app seems to have removed all info on battery usage, so this is impossible to diagnose. As things stand, the watch has gone from being an all-day device to a device that won't last a whole day in the last days (

Rather than trouble shooting you should just go for a completely new set up of the watch. Uninstall the wear and ZenWatch manager apps, factory reset the watch and reinstall everything.
I've gone from just under a day to an insane 3-4 days battery life. (I don't use any fitness trackers or ambient mode btw)
Sent from my ASUS_Z00AD using Tapatalk

So today the problem seems to have gone away. For the first time since the weekend I got through the whole day with only 40% battery usage. This battery drain issue seems completely random, and it's annoying that there's no way of diagnosing it.
Surprised that more people aren't seeing this.

itm said:
The latest version of the Android Wear app seems to have removed all info on battery usage
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.

CSX321 said:
The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmmm....I'm not seeing an update with that option in it yet.....maybe tomorrow...

itm said:
Hmmm....I'm not seeing an update with that option in it yet.....maybe tomorrow...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For reference, the version I got yesterday (as shown on the phone) is 1.4.0.2470307.gms

CSX321 said:
The new version of Wear from yesterday has the battery usage option again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CSX321 said:
For reference, the version I got yesterday (as shown on the phone) is 1.4.0.2470307.gms
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah OK I'm still on 1.4.0.2462440.gms and the Play Store isn't showing an update available yet. Fingers crossed I'll get it soon, and that the battery info actually gives me some useful information when I see it draining fast next time.

Battery Life and Performance – “Do it Yourself” vs. Smart Switch. My Experience.

I came from a Note5 and thought my (pre-replacement) Note7’s performance was equal and battery life was better but not fantastic. I was pretty satisfied and thought it was a very worthy upgrade. When using my (pre-replacement) Note7 it would occasionally get for want of a better word – draggy. Scrolling and transitions would sometimes stutter but it was very occasional so I chalked it up to early s/w.
Flash forward to my replacement Note7. Like many here I was experiencing degraded performance compered to my first one. And battery life was about 20% worse with both phones configured the exact same way. So I spent yesterday and today rebuilding my phone from scratch. I hard reset it via the diagnostic menu and hand-loaded every one of my 100+ apps and configured every individual system and app setting.
I’ll start at the end – it’s like a totally different phone. It’s far more fluid, scrolls beautifully, transitions far more seamlessly, and apps open and close faster. I can’t speak to battery life yet because I was playing with it non-stop. I intentionally left if off the charger while I was configuring it and preliminarily battery usage was surprising low.
Here are some findings:
Smart Switch may work fantastically on phones without tons of apps, syncs, and complex settings but it appears to overwrite or duplicate apps and system files. For example the Samsung apps and widgets on my Note5 were carried over to my Note7 even though it had newer versions of the same items. I had two identical versions of Optical Scanner with different icons on my Note7 after Smart Switch was done. I know/knew it hosed Android Auto because I had to uninstall/reinstall my music apps to get AA to play them. My hypothesis is that conflicts are being created in the background and some apps even though they appear to work fine may have anomalies that affect their and overall system performance. And I'd imagine the unnecessary and duplicative files are cumulative. Meaning as I went Note5>first Note7>second Note7 the last Note7 ended up with files and settings it didn't need from both previous phones.
Samsung Cloud is incredibly invasive and it collected 12GB of data from my pre-replacement Note7 without me even knowing it.
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It also took over my Gallery and was auto-syncing it which appears to be its default setting. Again, just a hypothesis, but when my phone(s) were getting draggy it may have been Samsung Cloud syncing in the background. I actually found this all accidentally. I moved my photos and music from another device via microSD and when I went in to the Gallery all my photos were duplicated. Also, when sync is enabled, you can’t use the tools in the Gallery to move and organize your photos. While Samsung Cloud is “free” with 15GB of storage and extremely well integrated it’s headless. Meaning you can’t access it directly via mobile or PC to organize and manage your content. I bet that since Samsung Cloud is a system app it could be contributing to high Android System usage. I completely turned it off but didn't disable it in Applications. Doing so with Samsung's in-built apps sometimes causes more problems than it solves when other apps continually poll the disabled app.
Back in the day when my mobile’s were less complicated I’d always hard reset them and then restore them manually after an update. That’s essentially what I did by hard resetting my replacement Note 7 after two AT&T updates. One was a system update right after the phone came out and the other the green battery update we’ve all been receiving. I don’t know if that helped but it was part of my two-day restoration process.
It would be great if others that might be having performance/battery problems confirm or refute my experiences. I know using automated back up and restore tools is easy but I doubt I’ll use them anymore based on this experience. My phone really flies now and is significantly faster and smoother than my retired Note7. The jury is still out on battery life but the drain rate over the past two days was surprisingly low considering all the processor intensive stuff I was doing. And the majority of it was via SideSync over Wi-Fi while the phone was downloading apps and data via Wi-Fi at the same time it was connected to my computer. Through it all the phone was warm but never got hot.
Good luck out there.

I ended up with two Optical Scanners too (smart switch from Note 4 then Smart Switch N7-N7 due to replacement grr).
I thought it may have appeared when I went to Galaxy Apps and spotted some listed in there (updates showed nothing but sometimes it shows me apps with the round like reload image which I think is an update..)
But perhaps I ended up with two versions for the reason you mention? I purged the lower number version of the two when I sorted alphabetically the other day and moved some known Samsung things to Samsung folder and saw the two same app names.
Sent from my SM-N930F using Tapatalk

BarryH_GEG said:
I came from a Note5 and thought my (pre-replacement) Note7’s performance was equal and battery life was better but not fantastic. I was pretty satisfied and thought it was a very worthy upgrade. When using my (pre-replacement) Note7 it would occasionally get for want of a better word – draggy. Scrolling and transitions would sometimes stutter but it was very occasional so I chalked it up to early s/w.
Flash forward to my replacement Note7. Like many here I was experiencing degraded performance compered to my first one. And battery life was about 20% worse with both phones configured the exact same way. So I spent yesterday and today rebuilding my phone from scratch. I hard reset it via the diagnostic menu and hand-loaded every one of my 100+ apps and configured every individual system and app setting.
I’ll start at the end – it’s like a totally different phone. It’s far more fluid, scrolls beautifully, transitions far more seamlessly, and apps open and close faster. I can’t speak to battery life yet because I was playing with it non-stop. I intentionally left if off the charger while I was configuring it and preliminarily battery usage was surprising low.
Here are some findings:
Smart Switch may work fantastically on phones without tons of apps, syncs, and complex settings but it appears to overwrite or duplicate apps and system files. For example the Samsung apps and widgets on my Note5 were carried over to my Note7 even though it had newer versions of the same items. I had two identical versions of Optical Scanner with different icons on my Note7 after Smart Switch was done. I know/knew it hosed Android Auto because I had to uninstall/reinstall my music apps to get AA to play them. My hypothesis is that conflicts are being created in the background and some apps even though they appear to work fine may have anomalies that affect their and overall system performance. And I'd imagine the unnecessary and duplicative files are cumulative. Meaning as I went Note5>first Note7>second Note7 the last Note7 ended up with files and settings it didn't need from both previous phones.
Samsung Cloud is incredibly invasive and it collected 12GB of data from my pre-replacement Note7 without me even knowing it.
It also took over my Gallery and was auto-syncing it which appears to be its default setting. Again, just a hypothesis, but when my phone(s) were getting draggy it may have been Samsung Cloud syncing in the background. I actually found this all accidentally. I moved my photos and music from another device via microSD and when I went in to the Gallery all my photos were duplicated. Also, when sync is enabled, you can’t use the tools in the Gallery to move and organize your photos. While Samsung Cloud is “free” with 15GB of storage and extremely well integrated it’s headless. Meaning you can’t access it directly via mobile or PC to organize and manage your content. I bet that since Samsung Cloud is a system app it could be contributing to high Android System usage. I completely turned it off but didn't disable it in Applications. Doing so with Samsung's in-built apps sometimes causes more problems than it solves when other apps continually poll the disabled app.
Back in the day when my mobile’s were less complicated I’d always hard reset them and then restore them manually after an update. That’s essentially what I did by hard resetting my replacement Note 7 after two AT&T updates. One was a system update right after the phone came out and the other the green battery update we’ve all been receiving. I don’t know if that helped but it was part of my two-day restoration process.
It would be great if others that might be having performance/battery problems confirm or refute my experiences. I know using automated back up and restore tools is easy but I doubt I’ll use them anymore based on this experience. My phone really flies now and is significantly faster and smoother than my retired Note7. The jury is still out on battery life but the drain rate over the past two days was surprisingly low considering all the processor intensive stuff I was doing. And the majority of it was via SideSync over Wi-Fi while the phone was downloading apps and data via Wi-Fi at the same time it was connected to my computer. Through it all the phone was warm but never got hot.
Good luck out there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is why for New devices I rather re-download all my apps and restore the device manually. Automatic backups always seem to carry over issues it seems. Especially when there pulling over data as well.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Here are my battery stats for my first full day post-rebuild. Hugely impressive and way better than my Note5 and previous Note7. Miraculous compared to the decline I saw with my post-Smart Switch restore on my current Note7.
P.S. - My biggest battery drain isn't the display. I use my phone for business and it's the syncs and background processes that drain the battery fastest.

My first Note 7 initially had very noticeable lag overall, and unbearable lag in the Gallery app. I used Smartswitch, but only for text messages and phone log. Because of the fact that lag in the Gallery, in particular, was so bad, I also suspected that Samsung Backup might be the primary culprit. I have 13 GB of photos and videos and maybe backing all that up was putting drag on performance. I also thought that maybe the restored text messages and phone logs were contributing to the problem as the OS was indexing and linking months of text messages and phone calls to my contact data.
Anyway did factory reset on that first Note 7, did not use Smartswitch, and turned off Samsung Backup before reinserting the micro SD card. The lag was gone. It was still not quite as snappy as my S7 Edge, but pretty close. I then wiped the device cache and after the cache was rebuilt, performance is even better, on par with the S7 edge.
For the replacement Note 7, I did not use Smartswitch at all and left Samsung Backup turned off. I then cleared device cache after setting everything up. The new one is about as snappy as a the first (after the factory reset). But the the new one is slightly smoother (i.e., it seems the animations and transitions are rendered with more consistent frame rates).
As far as battery life is concerned, standby drain is almost exactly the same. Screen on time has been maybe 10% longer with the replacement, but I'm not sure if that is meaningful since that can obviously vary significantly depending on use.

My second full day's battery results. My Note7 is the most efficient Android phone I've ever used. Keep in mind I'm a productivity user so push syncs and background processes are what chew up my battery more so than display time. My results are comparing me-to-me against my Note5, first Note7 via Smart Switch, and second Note7 with and without Smart Switch. Comparing "you" to anyone but you is futile because no two users configure or use their phones the same way. With such a dramatic before-and-after difference the lesson I've learned is to always rebuild your phone by hand vs. using automated restore solutions. Even though it's a royal pain in the ass.

just curious how your internal wifi transfer speeds are? are you getting 400-700k? or 3-10MB?
Considering going this route, have had weird slow downs, did a smart restore as well..=(

Question Very absurd heating issued not fixed + battery drains fast

I've had this issue ever since I restored whatsapp backups, deleted everything regarding it. Now the phone heats up noticeably with NORMAL usage, and the battery drains way faster than normally. I have done a few factory resets, cleared cache then finally flashed stock rom with odin, using nand erase option.
But the issue still persists.?! Anybody more technical than me? Been through the whole internet searching about this issue and no avail, and visited service center 2 times where they claim it is an app when clearly it's not.

What does it say for your battery usage? Settings->Battery and device care->Battery->(tap on graph)
Also you said you've done some factory resets - it can take a few days for the adaptive battery usage to optimize itself after a reset.

Arobase40 said:
Have you tried uninstalling whatsapp to see if your phone still heats up noticeably with NORMAL usage, and the battery drains way faster than normally ??? So you will see if the problem is on whatsapp side or not... ^^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I installed whatsapp way back in march and this caused the problem to arise. Haven't touched it ever since.
koimr said:
What does it say for your battery usage? Settings->Battery and device care->Battery->(tap on graph)
Also you said you've done some factory resets - it can take a few days for the adaptive battery usage to optimize itself after a reset.
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Obviously TikTok using a lot of battery because I've been using it a lot. Installed or not, heating still occurs when using other apps. Neither is it microG, that has been using battery today unrelated to the draining issues.
And regards to the factory reset, they were done way back in march as well. I did wait until the optimization to sort itself out but nothing ever seemed to change. I had done a reflash through odin as well, making sure the storage gets completely wiped out.
The apps aren't at fault though. Before I had installed whatsapp, these apps you currently see did not have such massive draining or heating issues until installing wa. Neither did the issue go away after factory reseting or flashing the stock rom. All of this happens in safe mode too, I am not sure where to even begin with.

Ah ok, I see. Yes, that's more than enough time since your reset for the adaptive battery to figure things out.
How much is the drain overnight when you're sleeping?
Are you mainly on wifi or cell data? How strong are they for you?
Another thing you can try is dark mode and see if that helps at all as our screens use less power when showing black. I don't know how much of an effect that actually has though.
Also, if you haven't already, set your screen to 60Hz instead of 120Hz.

Overnight drain is nonexistent. And I am typically on wifi when at home, outdoors using data. Both have full bars so I am sure it's not them.
Been on 60Hz the whole time, I dislike 120Hz
I've had this same problem on my previous S7 where it was more severe due to the exynos chip. I had a spare S7 edge not used by me, so I installed whatsapp and restored the backup, and the same issue I described began. That phone ran cool without lag, now suffering the same fate as my A52s. I flashed the stock rom on the edge as well and it didn't seem to fix the issue either.

Sorry. I forgot to mention I had uninstalled whatsapp back in march, so the issue should be gone but it still persists.

You don't need to be so aggressive to me. I know what I am here for and I am trying to get help after trying to fix this by going to the service center where they claim false stuff, and whatever I posted earlier. Read what I posted, TikTok is not causing it neither is any app causing it.

Please read what I wrote above. Not tryying to start an argument here but sounds like you are trying to.
It does not matter if TikTok is installed or not. The same issue persists nevertheless and I already mentioned WhatsApp was not installed. Everything I mentioned above was tested by myself...
TikTok obviously is using a lot of battery because it has been on for a long time. Same thing, does not matter if it's installed the same heating and battery drain issue will occur in other apps. (Normal usage, not gaming or doing anything that stresses the phone)
What I am trying to gain here is advice to fix it, not asking for blaming on apps or useless advice because you never read my post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxys10/comments/bfdbbz
This post is similar to what I am experiencing at the moment but for a different reason. Going to the service center isn't really an option anymore because they do not believe me and make up false reasons for this problem, and I am not a very confrontational person either.

twixbar said:
This post is similar to what I am experiencing at the moment but for a different reason. Going to the service center isn't really an option anymore because they do not believe me and make up false reasons for this problem, and I am not a very confrontational person either.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not a huge fan of these types of apps but one might point you in the right direction here - try and install something like AccuBattery and let it go for a few days. See what it says for battery usage.
It's been a while but I think there's an additional setting in the app (AccuBattery) that will enable the app to get more details, make sure you do that (was an ADB command if I recall).

koimr said:
I'm not a huge fan of these types of apps but one might point you in the right direction here - try and install something like AccuBattery and let it go for a few days. See what it says for battery usage.
It's been a while but I think there's an additional setting in the app (AccuBattery) that will enable the app to get more details, make sure you do that (was an ADB command if I recall).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Absolutely, I will install it and let it run for a few days then report the results back here.

Did you try enrolling to Whatsapp's beta program or sideload the latest beta from apkmirror and compare the battery drain between the two versions (Stable vs Beta)?