The Nexus 5 smartphone has been noted to be affected by a new battery
drain issue, which Google claims is due to high CPU usage of the
'mm-qcamera-daemon' process that leads to the battery dying sooner than
expected.
A Google Project Member on the Android Open Source Project
forum, replying to 'Issue 60058: mm-qcamera-daemon cpu usage' post said, "We
believe we have fixes for the current high CPU reports on N5 (Nexus 5)
due to mm-qcamera-daemon, and they will be included in the next
maintenance update."
However, the project member did not provide
an estimate for when the maintenance update will be rolled out for the
Nexus 5. The Google
employee said, "Unfortunately, I can't provide an estimate for when the
maintenance update will be ready, due to all the testing we need to do
for this and other fixes. Until then, rebooting the phone is the only
way to stop the high CPU usage/lack of camera function once it starts."
According
to an IBTimes report, the Nexus 5's battery drain issue is because of a
software process on the Android 4.4.2 KitKat build that allows
applications to access the device camera. The mm-qcamera-daemon process
continues to run in the background even after the app using the camera
has been force closed, which leads to persistent high CPU usage and
battery drains faster, notes the report.
One of the forum members
complains, "This issue is happening to me as well. But when it does happen it
uses about 50% of battery like most others. I go down about 1% every 2
minutes in just stand by when this process is running. I have had my
Nexus 5 since November 17th. So only a couple weeks after it was
released. I never had this issue when I was on 4.4. It only started on
4.4.2."
The Google project member further explains that the Nexus
5's battery issue has been reported frequently in the recent past, and
claims might be related to a recent Skype update. According to the
project member, the new update to Skype allows the app to access the
device's camera continuously in the background and might trigger a bug.
The
project member notes, "Uninstalling Skype may substantially reduce the
likelihood of this bug appearing. Other camera-using applications may
trigger this bug as well, but that's been relatively rare."
It's
worth pointing out that the report
claims that the 'mm-qcamera-daemon' issue is affecting all Android
4.4 KitKat-based and Qualcomm-powered devices.
The project member
acknowledged, "I'd also like to note that instances of high CPU use of
mm-qcamera-daemon on other devices besides the N5 (Nexus 5) need to be
reported to their manufacturers - while those devices also use a
Qualcomm chip for their camera processing (and thus have a
mm-qcamera-daemon process), each has differences in their software and
issues with them do not necessarily mean the N5 has the same problem,
and vice versa."
Google is known for fixing issues with its Nexus
devices as quickly as possible; back in in December when some Nexus 5
users sent their
devices back to the company with certain issues that included noisy
buttons, a protruding SIM tray and "cutting-edge" display frame. Google,
later rolled out new batch of Nexus 5 which were said to come with more
flushed buttons to avoid noise and fixed protruding SIM tray.
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