The High CPU Usage Issue

[Guest targetbsp]

I've never done anything with the camera? You just have to cover the light sensor.

[Guest steff.jay]

I've never done anything with the camera? You just have to cover the light sensor.

sorry for noobish question, but what exactly do you mean with covering light sensor?

(perhaps my englisch ist too bad, but do you mean to hold your hand in front of the screen to save battery?)

[Guest targetbsp]

sorry for noobish question, but what exactly do you mean with covering light sensor?

(perhaps my englisch ist too bad, but do you mean to hold your hand in front of the screen to save battery?)

If you look to the top left of your screen, to the left of the speaker there's a couple of purple dots. I only noticed them when someone in a screen protector thread asked whether a particular screen protector blocked them. Anyway, when I turn my phone on there seems to be a 50/50 chance as to whether it will start up fine or start up with Android System using up all the CPU time. So based on post 51 above I covered these dots with my finger until the keypad backlight turned on at which point the Android System dropped down to 0% and the phone is much more responsive. At that point you can take your finger off the light sensor and nto worry about it again until you switch the phone off (not asleep - off) which isn't going to be often.

[Guest uberduck]

I've been facing this problem for a long time, pulling out the battery used to work for me, which made me think it's some sort of memory leak problem.

But unfortunately I am stuck with the same problem again, battery trick didn't work, tried booting the phone without SD card, no luck. I've even tried deleting cache file using the clockmod thingy, made no differences.

What's even more interesting is that my phones would sometimes stuck at 100% loading with the lowest frequency (2 sth sth MHz) instead of 600MHz.

But i can confirm starting the camera apps / terminating system_server in OS monitor (require root) does solve the problem until the next reboot.

I don't have any fancy widget or launcherpro installed, so I think we can probably rule them out as the possible causes.

If I'm allowed to give a blind guess I would say it has something to do with sensors, because I've been seeing very very high akmd2 cpu times in my phone.

Edited November 25, 2010 by uberduck

[Guest uberduck]

i've just pulled out the battery + sim + SD card and set aside my phone for 10 minutes, during the time I moved the files from the SD card to my computer, remove android system files, formatted the SD card and moved the files back in

and now the phone appeared normal to me :/

i wonder how long will it be before the phone acts like nuts again

[Guest Frankish]

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

Can i ask what you mean by "open the options slider"? You mean press the onscreen icon that looks like a dial at the top?

[Guest uberduck]

Can i ask what you mean by "open the options slider"? You mean press the onscreen icon that looks like a dial at the top?

i think me means pulling out the "drawer" thing on the left

[Guest Frankish]

There is no drawer thing on the left...i'm using 2.2 Froyo rom.

[Guest Eszed]

Just to give my details, in case it helps anyone figure it out.

Rooted Blade.

Stock Orange Rom.

Free version of Launcher Pro.

Usage never drops. At least, not for 30min, which is when I lost patience with it.)

Killing system process (through Terminal emulator) - WORKS

Sensor trick - WORKS

Camera trick - WORKS

My phone also says "preparing SD card" on every boot. I thought that was normal, but someone upthread mentioned it like it was something exceptional.

This only started happening this morning. Last night I was messing about with different calendar apps. Unistalled Business Calendar Beta. Installed Touch Calendar and Smooth Calendar Widget. Decided I didn't like them. Unistalled both and re-installed Business Calendar Beta.

Those are the only apps I can recall doing anything with on that boot cycle. I'm chronically short of phone memory (too many apps!), so I tend to reboot at least once a day. I don't know if they had anything to do with it, but it's all I can think of that had changed.

[Guest 23rdian]

Have the problem too...

Unlocked.

Stock Orange Rom with Orange nonsense removed.

Free version of Launcher Pro.

Although noticed the problem out of the box - get preparing SD card on each boot. Is this normal?

When it's fast, it's very fast but otherwise I'm loosing patience (given wifi issue too)

Had hoped removing Orange apps might do the trick but I'm not convinced.

Edited December 4, 2010 by 23rdian

[Guest Freekers]

My phone also says "preparing SD card" on every boot. I thought that was normal, but someone upthread mentioned it like it was something exceptional.

I get the same message on boot. I tried different ROMs based on different builds, but I assume it's just normal. The MoDaCo ROM doesn't have this issue btw.

Have the problem too...

Unlocked.

Stock Orange Rom with Orange nonsense removed.

Free version of Launcher Pro.

Although noticed the problem out of the box - get preparing SD card on each boot. Is this normal?

When it's fast, it's very fast but otherwise I'm loosing patience (given wifi issue too)

Had hoped removing Orange apps might do the trick but I'm not convinced.

Install Watchdog Lite and figure out what's eating your CPU

http://www.appbrain.com/app/watchdog-task-...ut.watchdoglite

[Guest 23rdian]

I get the same message on boot. I tried different ROMs based on different builds, but I assume it's just normal. The MoDaCo ROM doesn't have this issue btw.

Install Watchdog Lite and figure out what's eating your CPU

http://www.appbrain.com/app/watchdog-task-...ut.watchdoglite

OK, according to Watchdog Lite it's just the Android System (foreground)

Once you enable the relevant alerts in options, it goes alert crazy.

Had one other alert but it was a one off for Android Media Process

This is lame. Anyone want to buy a rather warm SF?

Edited December 5, 2010 by 23rdian

[Guest Frankish]

Yeah if you're selling it for cheap ;)

[Guest targetbsp]

Put your finger over the light sensor until the keypad lights up. Problem solved - android system will drop to nothing. It'll only happen again (and even then only sometimes) when you switch the phone on from having been off (as opposed to asleep). So it's going to be fairly rare.

Edited December 5, 2010 by targetbsp

[Guest 23rdian]

So this needs to be done on boot? Had no effect otherwise.

BTW how is the light sensor keypad/supposed to work exactly? My keypad doesn't seem to light when I put the phone somewhere dark. But I have seen it lit. Hardware fault?

Edited December 5, 2010 by 23rdian

[Guest targetbsp]

You should be able to do it anytime after it has booted.

I have no idea under what circumstances the keypad lights come on of their own accord. It seems random to me lol.

[Guest uberduck]

this problem seem to affect all builds of san francisco, could this be a problem with the kernel/something that communicates between the hardware and software?

[Guest Phoenix Silver]

I use fibblesan r3 rom with several installed apps.

No new launcher installed indeed.

I have made the factory reset after install.

CPU is more or less at 30 %

Strange bug anyway.

[Guest Lew247]

My phone also says "preparing SD card" on every boot. I thought that was normal, but someone upthread mentioned it like it was something exceptional.

If you have antivirus installed and tell it to check everything, this is probably checking the SD card before letting the phone have access properly?

[Guest cartierv]

mine says preparing sd card when just booted too. I thought it was normal. But if there is an issue I wonder if Android is corrupting the filesystem on the card. And that might also explain the rebooting issues I was having (when Linux sees some problem with the fs it's answer is to reboot)

If you have antivirus installed and tell it to check everything, this is probably checking the SD card before letting the phone have access properly?

[Guest 23rdian]

OK, bit more on this after stupid thing went mental after a reboot tonight. For those having problems and trying to identify the light sensor, try this and post how you get on...

Open camera app

Place phone face down (on sofa etc) for at least 60 secs.

Have a look in Task Manager to see if it drops.

It did for me so can't just be coincidence. Could this be down to the various sensors giving values that the Android System can't handle? So it constantly retries? Just a thought...

Anyway, post your results please and lets get this nailed?

Edited December 15, 2010 by 23rdian

[Guest tdodd]

mine says preparing sd card when just booted too. I thought it was normal.

Mine shows that too and I have no problems with CPU usage or battery life with my phone.

I'm running a stock Orange UK ROM with the Orange apps and games removed. I've also uninstalled Gallery and replaced it with JustPictures because Gallery can be a CPU hog, especially at boot time, and is basically clunky and rather unsatisfactory all round. JustPictures performs far better in my experience. I do wonder whether the "camera fix" that some people have discovered may in some way interrupt whatever greedy process is being performed by Gallery. IMO the best thing to do is bin it and replace it with better software. YMMV.

[Guest xtrm_xtrm]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, I have now the solution which is probably available in other forums like xda, and I think Im adding important information not only for ZTE mobiles.

The problem lies in the known android system process mediaserver, which as some you explained, looks for new picture or music files in all your folders and sometimes gets frozen in an infinite loop, eating all CPU.

As an alternative for the android gallery, I would recommend QuickPic: https://play.google....lensw.PicFolder

And another alternative to the slow web navigator I would recommend Opera Mobile which goes a lot faster: https://play.google....m.opera.browser

However there are some possible solutions, like creating a .nomedia file in all folders, the bug is still there and from what I haven been cheking in android issues lists, there is still no official google patch available. It happens to a lot of ROMs and to a lot of mobile devices. The thing is that we, ZTE users with 600Mhz easily detect this issue since our mobile begins to go really slow. Most people with 1Ghz processor or above will not notice it at all, but their battery will be still consumed fast and they will think that its a battery problem.

- ZTE users will see the process mediaserver or system_server or android.process.mediaserver to go higher than 20% CPU a lot of times with the top -n 1 command.

- Other mobile users will probably see those bugged process with 5-6% or even more. The trick is that if you see it constanly using that percentage, its probably frozen and the process needs to be restarted.

Solution:

Use Os Monitor to detect what process is constanly using a high CPU load. *In Options, select to view internal system android process or you wont be able to catch it. You can use Os Monitor to manually kill the process, but it will restart again and probably hang in some minutes after you killed it, so its recommended to use the script below which will do it automatically.

Use the following script to kill the bugged process, credits to the xda user who published it:

http://forum.xda-dev...d.php?t=2050252

http://forum.xda-dev...ad.php?t=964933

I have slightly modified the script to work with ZTE Blade and changed the time interval to check each 1 minute.

#!/data/local/system/bin/busybox sh

if [ ! -d /sdcard/log ]; then

mkdir -p /sdcard/log

chmod 664 /sdcard/log

fi

echo "" >>/sdcard/log/watchm2.log

echo "[`date`] - starting..." >>/sdcard/log/watchm2.log

while [ true ]; do

if [ `top -n 1 | grep mediaserver | awk '{print$2}' | sed s:%::g` -gt 20 ]; then

	 echo "[`date`] - Force killing mediaserver[`pidof mediaserver`]..." >>/sdcard/log/watchm2.log

	 kill -9 `pidof mediaserver`

	 sleep 5

	 if [ `top -n 1 | grep system_server | awk '{print$2}' | sed s:%::g` -gt 10 ]; then

echo "[`date`] - Gracefully killing system_server[`pidof system_server`]..." >>/sdcard/log/watchm2.log


	 fi

fi

sleep 60

done

Script help:

You probably need root to execute the script.

Download Android Terminal to execute the script: https://play.google....pal.androidterm

If you use notepad++, remember to set it as ANSI and in Edit option, set Line Ending to UNIX format or it wont work.

In some other android versions you will need to change the {print$2} to {print$3}. ( in terminal try typing: top -n 1 | grep mediaserver | awk '{print$2}' to see if you get the number percentage like 82% )

Copy the script to your sdcard, and copy it to / folder. In file properties, give it full execute permissions ( rwx rwx rwx / chmod 777 ) with Free android file ES Explorer: https://play.google....droid.pop&hl=es

Not necessary but better if you manually create the folder /sdcard/log

Open a terminal and type the following to execute the script:

su

cd /

sh watchm2.sh

Script explanation:

The script will kill mediaserver process if its found to be greater than 20% of CPU load usage each 60 seconds. It will also kill system_server if its found to be greater than 10%.

- top: shows processes info - http://www.javachart...nd-memory-usage

- grep: get lines wit the string found (ie: we will get only the line of mediaprocess process)

- awk: prints only a parameter from a string ( ie: we will get 82% ) - http://www.pedrovent...spacio-en-disco

- sed: only gets a value from a string (ie: it will get only the number percentage 82 without the % character).

- gt: means greater than in shell, its like the > condition character.

You will need to restart Terminal and execute the script again in each boot of your mobile. You can use GScript to do it automatically but since it consumes CPU, I do not recommend it, use terminal and the script. Works like a charm.

Edited January 20, 2013 by xtrm_xtrm