"Maps" is eating up battery

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

I noticed this yesterday. When I went into the battery usage it told me Maps had eaten 62% of the battery, but it had only been used 1 min 42 sec.

I made sure GPS was off and I had exited out of navigation. I did a full charge and it did it again. I had not even used maps and out the hour I used the phone it had run for 23 seconds but used 42% of the battery usage. Usually disply is the highest followed closely by wifi, phone idle, etc.

What is going on here? After the last two full charges I have not even used Maps, yet it is still showing up as he highest battery drainer.

 

[jsh1120]

After you "fully charged" your battery and used it for an hour, how much of your battery had drained?

 

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

ok current status is:

Battery left 90%
Time since unplugged: 2h 3m
Maps: 53%, CPU Total 2s
Display 14%, Time on 7m 29s

I have not used maps at all today

 

[jsh1120]

ok current status is:

Battery left 90%
Time since unplugged: 2h 3m
Maps: 53%, CPU Total 2s
Display 14%, Time on 7m 29s

I have not used maps at all today

OK. So it seems that in two hours maps has used about 5% of your battery. Right?

First, keep in mind that the 90% figure is very unreliable. You'll drain the first 10% of your battery much faster than the next 10% for example.

But even recognizing that I suspect that you have one or more apps that start on boot and try to get a GPS location. ShopSavvy does this, for example. I believe that the CPU use associated with that application is reported as "Maps."

I suspect that if you turn off GPS and reboot, you'll see the "maps" battery drain drop. And if you just leave the phone on for an extended period you'll also see it drop since the use of maps occurs, I'm guessing, when you boot and it shuts down after that time.

 

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

Rebooted. In half an hour, maps is showing now usage at all. Maybe one of my widgets was just stuck or something and constantly using it. Anyway. Thanks.

 

[jsh1120]

Rebooted. In half an hour, maps is showing now usage at all. Maybe one of my widgets was just stuck or something and constantly using it. Anyway. Thanks.

I've found that an app called "System Panel" is the best of the so-called "task killers" at diagnosing what's going on on my Droid. It's a task killer for people who hate task killers. I seldom use it to kill tasks but it does a great job of identifying the phone's performance and the apps that are "active" versus those that are simply sitting in memory doing no harm.

 

[Sweet Kitten Feet]

Thanks. I'll check it out.

 

[REMilk]

If GPS comes on with maps, then your battery will drain quicker that if the GPS does not come on.

 

[Tojus]

I have the same problems, tried all the above solutions and nothing seems to work. Only thing that has seemed to work was uninstalling at reinstalling. If a program was natively using maps I don't believe it would report as ~5-30secs of use and ~30-40% battery use.

 

[Lukehluke]

Rebooted. In half an hour, maps is showing now usage at all. Maybe one of my widgets was just stuck or something and constantly using it. Anyway. Thanks.

I've found that an app called "System Panel" is the best of the so-called "task killers" at diagnosing what's going on on my Droid. It's a task killer for people who hate task killers. I seldom use it to kill tasks but it does a great job of identifying the phone's performance and the apps that are "active" versus those that are simply sitting in memory doing no harm.

Sounds like a good application.

Will have to check it out

 

[jsh1120]

I have the same problems, tried all the above solutions and nothing seems to work. Only thing that has seemed to work was uninstalling at reinstalling. If a program was natively using maps I don't believe it would report as ~5-30secs of use and ~30-40% battery use.

Well, let's see. I've had my Droid on for about five hours. During that time maps is shown as using 25 seconds of CPU. It doesn't show up at all on the percentage of battery use, largely because after five hours it's a tiny percentage compared to "media" (I've been playing Pandora for several hours) and the display.

On the other hand, had I checked it after an hour or so when I was doing nothing with the phone, it would no doubt have been a much higher percentage of a much smaller total battery use.

 

[rjax]

I've had this happen to me, too. And there was a thread or two in the Motorola Droid subforum about this. The one real eye-opening time was when, over the course a few hours of web browsing with the screen on, Maps was reported to have used the most battery, even though the GPS never turned on and Maps never used. However, my battery seemed about where it should be if I had been just web browsing, so I tend to think it's a reporting error instead of Maps actually eating all that battery.

I've noticed this happening a couple other times, but I'm not terribly compulsive about checking battery usage stats, so I can't really say there's any rhyme or reason as to when this bug shows up.

 

[vthokies1996]

This weekend we drove from Northern Virginia to Ithaca, NY. I left the house with a fully charged Droid. Put the Droid in the dock and plugged in the charger. Then setup up the Navigation to our destination.

It was about 60 degrees out with very little sun. After 1.5-2 hours, I noticed that the battery was down to 60%. A 40% drop in charge, with the charger plugged in.

I am using the Motorola charger that came with the dock. But is a 40% loss within 2 hours normal, or could there be something wrong with the phone? I have noticed considerable drops in battery % when using navigation in several cars with my phone, also using either the Motorola charger or a charger purchased from Best Buy.

 

[b00mb00mchuck]

System panel is awesome... love the real time data it gives...
Even themed mine just for kicks