Fordpass Android power drain -maddenly inconsistent

[Skip Towne]

Update after confirming I've implemented "The Recommendations" from @DevSecOps

At this moment, my phone (Samsung S10 on android 11) is in "hand-warmer" mode with Fordpass churning through 2% battery per hour.

I drove the car a few times today. 2 Trips with both the fob and phone in the car. My wife took a triip with just the fob in between those trips.

Thinking about the emphasis @DevSecOps has made on Notifications, I'd observe this anomoly - might be noteworthy, might be me never quite wrapping my head around all the different notification settings. But looking back, there may be synchronicity beteween these events and the high battery drain???

- The Fordpass homescreen icon shows 4 new messages.
- There are no new messages in the Message Center portion of the app, There are two read messages remaining there.
- There is one Android notification (swipe down) showing from fordpass that I cannot delete. This frequently happens. I episodically just delete all Andoid notifications, and the Fordpass one disappears then.

I jusr "cleared" all Android notifications. Now I have a "Silent notification" that Fordpass PaaK is trying to connect. (this was not visible until i cleared all notifications.) I cannot delete (swipe away) this notification

The Fordpass homescreen icon shows 1 new message. There are no messages in my Message Center.

So, there you have it. I need to go recharge my phone.

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[DevSecOps]

@Skip Towne ... Well that sucks now doesn't it?

So the persistent notification that you're talking about where it says "attempting to connect" needs to be there. If it's not there then it could be causing issues. If you look at the video I posted you'll see at the end when I go to turn off screen recording the notification that you're referring to. This persistent notification is the PaaK background service which is attempting to create the connection to the car. If it's killed then the FP app will attempt to re-launch the service.

A common misconception with Android is that you need to clear away notifications and force close apps to save battery. For apps that have a background service this is actually bad and a way to drain your battery as the OS, via user intervention, and the app are fighting each other. Leaving apps open often times uses less battery than if you close them due to startup processes. Of course if the app is misbehaving force closing it is more beneficial. There's always exceptions to the rules.

Unfortunately, Samsung has a million ways to try to make an app use less power and as I described above, can actual cause it to consume more. For example Samsung's "sleeping apps" is terrible for FordPass. Samsung also calls this "background usage limits". Some versions of OneUI also have a secondary layer of battery management similar to the native adaptive battery.

It's a complete sh*t show ... but it's not all the fault of FordPass. Could there be improvements with FP, yes and I think there's some coming.

Phones weren't made to be keys, bluetooth wasn't designed to be used in this way and if you search Google for "Android Telsa App Battery Drain" you'll see just as many complaints about their version of PaaK doing the same thing. It's a game of whack-a-mole and for those who don't have the patience and know how to disable everything, carry a FOB.

 

[RedDragon]

@DevSecOps - reporting back. Your changes have vastly improved my battery drain. Thanks! Again - I'm running android 12 on pixel 6 pro.

 

[mkhuffman]

@DevSecOps - reporting back. Your changes have vastly improved my battery drain. Thanks! Again - I'm running android 12 on pixel 6 pro.

So I reversed all the changes @DevSecOps recommended, except unlimited location services. It has been about a week now and no battery drain. Maybe I need a new phone? The Pixel 6 does look pretty awesome. So does the new Galaxy phones. Decisions...

 

[RedDragon]

Sad to report that the battery drain just came back over the last 36 hours. FordPass is using like 35ish% of my battery now.

If i get rid of PAAK will this solve the drain? Im happy to get rid of it and wait. Im a Job 2er, so I have two FOBs. I will miss the frunk button though....

 

[mkhuffman]

Sad to report that the battery drain just came back over the last 36 hours. FordPass is using like 35ish% of my battery now.

If i get rid of PAAK will this solve the drain? Im happy to get rid of it and wait. Im a Job 2er, so I have two FOBs. I will miss the frunk button though....

You can try what I did. Select all the battery restrictions but keep full location services enabled for FP. I still have not had a battery drain since doing that and it was occurring every few days prior.

 

[RedDragon]

You can try what I did. Select all the battery restrictions but keep full location services enabled for FP. I still have not had a battery drain since doing that and it was occurring every few days prior.

How does paak work w the batter restrictions?

 

[mkhuffman]

How does paak work w the batter restrictions?

Ha! What is that? Actually I gave up and carry a Fob now. PaaK still locks my doors sometimes, and if I have my phone in my pocket and walk near the car it senses me, but I cannot say how reliable it is. PaaK is still working, maybe just as well as before. Your experience may be different, but it is worth a try to prevent battery drain. BTW - location services is pretty important for successful PaaK, so if you mess with that, I think PaaK will break.

 

[RedDragon]

Ha! What is that? Actually I gave up and carry a Fob now. PaaK still locks my doors sometimes, and if I have my phone in my pocket and walk near the car it senses me, but I cannot say how reliable it is. PaaK is still working, maybe just as well as before. Your experience may be different, but it is worth a try to prevent battery drain. BTW - location services is pretty important for successful PaaK, so if you mess with that, I think PaaK will break.

haha...fair enough - i have a job 2 and PAAK works pretty well on mine. Well until FordPass started blowing up my battery.

 

[mkhuffman]

haha...fair enough - i have a job 2 and PAAK works pretty well on mine. Well until FordPass started blowing up my battery.

Yeah, mine is a GT so Job 2 also. I had PaaK working great for about two weeks but even then door unlocking often required several presses of the button, and I had to be sure the phone was sitting on the charging pad for the car to detect the key and start. I got tired of that, and then the battery draining came back intermittently. Fob is awesome though. Always works.

 

[RedDragon]

Moved into battery restricted mode on the app and drain appears to be gone now. I'll see how it works out e Paak.

 

[dtbaker61]

I posted in another thread that I though the recent update to Fordpass 3.35.2 on android solved the power drain problem.

my power drain issues were solved with FP 3.32.0 , and functionality has been solid, including Paak as long as I put phone on center console tray.

I've had auto-update off since 3.32 was working so well, but I thought I'd update FP this am.... system pulled v 3.35.2

I'll let it run a couple days and report results...

 

[dtbaker61]

Sorry for the inconvenience for all effected users on this. It has been tough to track down. As you said it is inconsistent, and finding the cause has been challenging. I have been trying to get developer logs on this issue for some time. I experienced it once myself, since the last update. Unfortunately, I wasn't using a developer build at the time and was unable to get logs. This is a big priority for us and something we have been trying to nail down. Again, I apologize to all those who have experienced this.


Some instructions for now to help with this:
When I pull my phone out if it feels warm for no apparent reason -> Check battery usage and see what's using my battery -> Ford Pass has lost it's mind -> go to Ford Pass app details -> force stop the app -> relaunch the application so that paak can start again.

If anyone is able to reliably reproduce this issue. Could you please share the steps with me? It would lead to a much faster fix for the issue.

shoot, I wish I'd read this before manually updating from 3.32 to 3.35.2 this morning

I have a Samsung Galaxy J7 running Android 9

prior to 3.32, running 3.25 I think, I had huge battery drain issues every day, and worked around it just by doing 'force stop on FP when I walked away, and re-starting upon approach. Paak worked fine.

3.32.0 - I had no problems with Paak/battery leaving FP up and running...

3.35.2 - no problems yet, but its only been a day.

I am wondering if there are any dependencies in communication with the version of sync4 running in the car? I have auto-update off there as well since I have seen no release notes regarding any specific enhancements I care about. I tend to avoid auto-updates whenever possible once I have a stable version running....

 

[PaaK_Android]

shoot, I wish I'd read this before manually updating from 3.32 to 3.35.2 this morning

3.32.0 - no problems with Paak/battery leaving FP up and running...

I understand the concern. There is no guarantee that you will have issues with battery drain. There isn't a glaring defect in 3.35.2 or anything like that. It's an obscure issue that some users have been having trouble with.

 

[mkhuffman]

I understand the concern. There is no guarantee that you will have issues with battery drain. There isn't a glaring defect in 3.35.2 or anything like that. It's an obscure issue that some users have been having trouble with.

I know this is not supposed to be the answer, but turning on all the battery management settings in my Samsung Note 9 has appeared to stop the battery draining issue. I am carrying a Fob so I cannot say the impact to how well PaaK functions, except that the other night I went to the car without my Fob to get something out, and I could not unlock it even though the phone was in my pocket. I had to use the keypad on the door.

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