The High CPU Usage Issue

[Guest Brins0]

If you can set out exactly what steps you followed I'll try and reproduce it and let you know :P

Here's the steps I took to produce the error. This happens with all roms I tried on the device. The new device does not show these problems.

1: Power off device completely

2: Place device in a brightly lit area (to prevent auto button lights from turning on)

3: Power on device with USB cable plugged in

4: In a console, whilst it's still booting, type "adb shell top -m 10" (to show only the top 10 processes)

5: Look for the "system_server" process in the console, and see what it's CPU usage is.

6: If it's really high, wait a while for the device to finish booting

7: If it's usage is still high, cover the brightness sensor at the top left of the device with your finger, or place the phone in a dark area, and wait for the key lights to come on (should be a couple of seconds)

At this point, the CPU usage on my device drops completely.

Look forwards to seeing if you have the same issue or not. Anyone else with the issue, see if you can replicate it too, thanks!

[Guest Brins0]

Sorry for the OT, but is speedX running ok in your phone? It has a lousy framerate on mine :P

Yeah, using the r3 ROM which has the hardware acceleration enabled, it runs absolutely brilliantly.

Feels as smooth as it does on my Acer Liquid, and my mother's HTC Desire.

[Guest mELIANTE]

Yeah, using the r3 ROM which has the hardware acceleration enabled, it runs absolutely brilliantly.

Feels as smooth as it does on my Acer Liquid, and my mother's HTC Desire.

I'm using sebastian404's rom. At least now we know that hardware acceleration can be a good thing :P

[Guest Eclogue]

Hi,

first post :P

I have the exact same issue where the cpu is at constant 95-99% usage. After looking at many things I found that if i go into my camera application and open the slider for the options for the camera and close it and then close the camera application at this point it stops the high cpu usage. My current cpu usage is 16%. This happens everytime i boot my phone. I have to go go in and out of camera app to lower the cpu usage

Hi, great stuff, another vote for this - after I turned the phone on today, took me a long time to even get into the phone as it wouldn't process my touch unlock, as the screen was so unresponsive.

When I got in, OSMonitor was showing the CPU pegged at full speed, with 90-100% use by system.

Once I followed your camera instructions, all was well. I'd tried airplane mode, task killing various things etc.

I'm on R3.

Perhaps it's trying to process the camera input all the time? i.e. it's defaulting to the camera input being processed on boot?

If it happens again I'll try the light sensor thing, as above, to see if I can give soem more feedback on that.

Edited October 21, 2010 by Eclogue

[Guest Brins0]

As another thing I've noticed with my new Blade (yes, the problem still occurs on this new one much to my dismay), when I first power on the phone, the CPU usage is close to 100%.

Upon opening the camera app, I'm presented with a very laggy, black & white preview. When taking a photo, it's captured in colour. The CPU %age of the system_server process is terribly high, and the button lights do not turn on at all.

If I go to view the image I've just captured, then go back to the camera preview, it's in colour, the system_server process has dropped in CPU usage, and the button lights turn on.

I really think it's worth finding out how to remove the camera completely to see if this problem still occurs at boot time, but I don't know enough about how the android subsystem works to remove all of the hardware references. Personally, I'd merrily give up the camera completely, for a smooth running device. It's not like it's that good in the first place.

If anyone's willing to help me nuke the camera on my device, I'd gladly give it a go to see if it's that which is causing the problems, as a restore would recover it anyway...

[Guest Aranathos]

I'm using the r4 ROM and I have the 100% CPU issue occurring randomly.

The camera 'fix' mentioned by Drizmod works every time, which is very strange.

[Guest schkinx]

I've been monitoring the cpu on my blade for a while now . On R4 rom ( did try the 2.2 alpha , but the dialler was sucking the life out of the battery ). Once you take the phone out of the screen lock the cpu does hit 100% at 600mhz , but after a few seconds ( i have to wait because the monitor is set to refresh every 5 seconds ) it idles between 15 & 25% at 245 mhz . anytime you start or close an app it does hit the 600 again , but only momentarily . Just have the free task manager running in the background and everything seems ok :rolleyes:

[Guest targetbsp]

7: If it's usage is still high, cover the brightness sensor at the top left of the device with your finger, or place the phone in a dark area, and wait for the key lights to come on (should be a couple of seconds)

At this point, the CPU usage on my device drops completely.

I have the 100% cpu usage issue intermittently on a phone with no custom rom or anything. Based on your step 7, i covered the light sensor and it instantly recovered.

After a series of on and offs, I've noticed that sometimes the phone boots up and puts the key lights on and all is well. Othertimes it doesn't put the key lights on and is stuck on 100% until I cover the light sensor. I don't know if it turns the lights on as the last task after it's finished booting and so sometimes it's just getting stuck on something it's booting and never getting there. Or if it's sitting on 100% until the lights come on and sometimes the key lights aren't coming on. I am testing it in fairly low light conditions so sometimes it might think its dark and others not. In which case only powering it up in the dark seems the way to go! I don't know if this info is in anyway useful. Unless it's simply turning on the key lights that solves the problem - in which case... is there an app for that? :rolleyes:

Edited November 8, 2010 by targetbsp

[Guest Freekers]

Could it be the 3D gallery?

The stupid thing re-builds it's database of thumbnails and previews everytime it reboots. Takes forever to load em' all and lags the device for ages

When the 3D gallery was added to the Pulse it had the same issue (We had to reboot almost every day) and made the poor old phone unusable.

Care to try it? :rolleyes:

Install 'Watchdog Lite' from the Market and see what it reports?

P

It was indeed the Gallery (http://www.appbrain.com/app/gallery-3d/com.cooliris.media) which was causing the High CPU usage here.

I am currently looking for an alternative gallery app but for now I have added it to the blacklist in Watchdog

[Guest Adam Cable]

Just to say that the 3d gallery was causing 100% cpu here too

[Guest targetbsp]

Wasn't the gallery for me. I removed it using Titanium and still had the problem. However I bought autostarts and removed a lot of auto starting applications and it hasn't happened since. I couldn't say which one was the cause because I removed a lot at once - and also the fact my problem was intermittent made testing a pain anyway.

[Guest cobalt01]

I had this problem on all roms other the last few hours but i've gone back to a restore that i created and everything seems alot smoother now wierd. My screen would just freeze and then everything tried to catch up, hopefully will off gone now and be fixed soon.

[Guest yeawhatever]

Has anyone found a decent solution to this. Both mine and the misses are suffering get from this. Looking for new rom. Both running r4. Is there any better alternatives without prob. Both got fancy widget and LauncherPro. Not sure if these are related

[Guest yeawhatever]

Quick update: have removed gallery on mine and misses and replaced with alternative. Seems to have solved the problem. Will run for a few days and see how it goes.

[Guest Freekers]

Quick update: have removed gallery on mine and misses and replaced with alternative. Seems to have solved the problem. Will run for a few days and see how it goes.

Which alternative did you take ? JustPictures! ?

[Guest mitchgixer6]

My first post here, and very much an Android newbie as I've only had this phone for a week, but just wanted to add my experience with this problem.

As I say I've only had the phone for a week but have had this issue twice. Both times I've managed to get it back to normal without removing any apps/roms etc. My phone has been rooted by Universal Androot and I took all the Orange stuff off with System App remover Busy Box etc. No custom ROM's but I am using the free Launcher Pro.

The first time the CPU was at 90-99% even after 3 or 4 reboots. I cleared it by turning off, removing battery and Sim then turning back on. CPU back to normal for a few days.

Yesterday I had the same CPU problem, I downloaded OS Monitor and it was the Android System running high. Again I rebooted probably 10 times with no luck. Tried the battery/Sim trick but wouldn't work. Was getting frustrated until I took the battery/sim + SD card out. Re inserted and this cleared the issue. Must note also that after every reboot I'd get the "preparing SD card" notification. After re-seating the card I didn't get this notification.

I obviously don't know enough about the phone to know if this was coincidence or not, but thought I'd post in the hope it helps someone out.

[Guest mitchgixer6]

My first post here, and very much an Android newbie as I've only had this phone for a week, but just wanted to add my experience with this problem.

As I say I've only had the phone for a week but have had this issue twice. Both times I've managed to get it back to normal without removing any apps/roms etc. My phone has been rooted by Universal Androot and I took all the Orange stuff off with System App remover Busy Box etc. No custom ROM's but I am using the free Launcher Pro.

The first time the CPU was at 90-99% even after 3 or 4 reboots. I cleared it by turning off, removing battery and Sim then turning back on. CPU back to normal for a few days.

Yesterday I had the same CPU problem, I downloaded OS Monitor and it was the Android System running high. Again I rebooted probably 10 times with no luck. Tried the battery/Sim trick but wouldn't work. Was getting frustrated until I took the battery/sim + SD card out. Re inserted and this cleared the issue. Must note also that after every reboot I'd get the "preparing SD card" notification. After re-seating the card I didn't get this notification.

I obviously don't know enough about the phone to know if this was coincidence or not, but thought I'd post in the hope it helps someone out.

[Guest yeawhatever]

Which alternative did you take ? JustPictures! ?

To got it

[Guest sanfran1]

I hadn't been suffering from this bug until I installed Launcher Pro and Framework Factory...

After uninstalling Launcher Pro android system went from constantly being at 80% back to 0%. I then flashed framework factory and system server went back up 80%...had to restore my backup in clockword mod to revert.

I hadn't tried covering the light sensor to fix it, i just uninstalled.

EDIT: Just reinstalled framework factory...android system went up to 90%. I fixed it by covering the light sensor as previously mentioned, annoying as I have to do this every time I reboot my phone.

Edited November 20, 2010 by sanfran1

[Guest targetbsp]

Someone earlier had commented that both his affected phones had 2 apps in common - one of them being Launcher Pro. I also use Launcher Pro. Might be time to try ADW!

[Guest schkinx]

i reflashed this morning after the cpu got stuck at 600mhz on the r4 rom . never happened before , i can only put it down to an app i installed , but i cant remember the name of it . a combi clock and weather widget . all good again now , idling nicely at 245mhz B)

[Guest targetbsp]

It wasn't launcherpro (at least in my case) - the same thing happens with Zeam.

[Guest sanfran1]

For some reason after following the battery recalibration tip - http://android.modaco.com/content/zte-blad...bration-protip/ the android system is back to 0% with framework factory installed, no need for me to cover the light sensor!

I'm going to install launcher pro and see what happens...

[Guest targetbsp]

Errm... you say that like covering the light sensor is a pain. You don't have to permanently cover the light sensor. You just put our thumb over it. After powering the phone from it being off (rather than sleep) - which isn't often. It's a lot quicker and easier than that battery thing sounds (unless you needed to do that anyway) B)

[Guest sanfran1]

Errm... you say that like covering the light sensor is a pain. You don't have to permanently cover the light sensor. You just put our thumb over it. After powering the phone from it being off (rather than sleep) - which isn't often. It's a lot quicker and easier than that battery thing sounds (unless you needed to do that anyway) B)

Covering the sensor only worked when the camera app was open, so it was tedious waiting for the phone to start up then waiting for the menu icons to load then waiting for the camera app to load.

I installed Launcher pro again, the first time I ran it I left the option to set it as the default launcher unchecked and it ran perfectly - no high cpu usage.

I then rebooted my phone in order to set Launcher pro as the default launcher, however after doing so android system was up at 90%. I fixed it using by covering the light sensor when the camera app was open.

After rebooting my phone again android system stays normal now, it's fixed - I don't have to cover the light sensor after rebooting anymore.

Maybe others who are having the same problem can try this and see if it works for them.