YouMail Sleep issues

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I have been using YouMail's service on my phones for quite some time and was excited to see there was an app for Android, but after 2+ months of use (and several versions of the .apk, including the most recent Beta) I am still experiencing 100% awake time when the app is running.
If I kill it my phone will immedietly because to sleep normally. But each time I receive a phone call or open the app it will keep the phone from sleeping again.
I have been in contact with their support (which is how I received the Beta version) and have been sending Dumps their way, but was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this issue.

Info: Running Fresh 1.1 on a newly 1.56 RUU'ed hero.

Originally Posted by crunchybutternut

I have been using YouMail's service on my phones for quite some time and was excited to see there was an app for Android, but after 2+ months of use (and several versions of the .apk, including the most recent Beta) I am still experiencing 100% awake time when the app is running.
If I kill it my phone will immedietly because to sleep normally. But each time I receive a phone call or open the app it will keep the phone from sleeping again.
I have been in contact with their support (which is how I received the Beta version) and have been sending Dumps their way, but was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this issue.

Info: Running Fresh 1.1 on a newly 1.56 RUU'ed hero.

I stopped using the app because of this. I tried contacting support and was brushed off. I love the app but not the lack letting my phone sleep.

I am working with a developer of the app to fix the problem and have tested several versions. Will keep you updated of the progress.

Originally Posted by crunchybutternut

I am working with a developer of the app to fix the problem and have tested several versions. Will keep you updated of the progress.

That would be great. Thanks for helping him out with this as I would love to use the app.

I don't mean to thread jack this, but.

Whats the difference in YouMail and our Sprint Visual Voice Mail? I have never used youMail.

Originally Posted by Kcarpenter

I don't mean to thread jack this, but.

Whats the difference in YouMail and our Sprint Visual Voice Mail? I have never used youMail.

YouMail http://www.youmail.com/home/index.do is a service that replaces Sprint's (or any other provider) voice mail service with their own. It allows you to set custom "smart" greetings for each caller in your contacts, among other things. Check out the site for more info.

Here is the latest response from the developer I have been working with.

Hi [Name],

I did some more research and can confirm that I see the same behavior as you when I run the YouMail app ('active' @ 100%)

I'm not exactly sure what the cause is, as the application is indeed going to sleep when it has nothing to do. The problem also seems to be quite widespread, affecting what seems to be "most" applications that loiter around in the background doing nothing for most of the time.

Since you use 'Spare Parts' you should notice that in there is a way of viewing the 'Partial Wake Lock' usage of a given application. According to the Android developer documentation this is the ONLY way an application can keep the phone "awake" other than 'prodding' it every 30 seconds or so (and you'd notice that 'coz the screen would never go off).

As long as that "Partial Wake Lock" value is low (and it should be unless you're constantly hitting "Menu -> Poll") it means the application is indeed behaving correctly.

All I can offer is that we develop a new feature into the app so that you can tell it to automatically exit when all of the automatic polling settings are disabled - that way the phone would literally shut down the app "sometime" after you back out of the message list. Do you think that's worth it? Or should we wait for HTC/T-Mobile to fix the root cause of the problem?

Doug

And my response:

Do you mind if I share some of our conversation with a community forum? It might help get others involved and more feedback for you to use in further development.

As far as other apps loitering in the background, my understanding is that Android (using the same process as other Linux distros) keeps recently used applications in RAM to make them more quickly accessible to the user, and will clear them as the RAM is needed by other apps.

I have seen this issue in the past with other apps (i.e. the HTC messaging app locking the dialer and maintaining 100% awake time) but has all been resolved by updates to the apps themselves.

Lastly, his response:

Feel free, I don't think I said anything bad

I we get enough requests from "the community" I'll be given time to add the 'exit when done' option (basically it'll become a "dumb" app that only checks for messages when you start it up instead of waking up every so often to check [like after you miss a call])

And yes, Android is a little stranger than normal in that it tends to leave applications running for an unspecified time after you "close" them. (basically until it needs to run something else, or it runs out of memory, or .....)

The YouMail app is a little different in that it runs as a background service and schedules the phone to wake it up whenever "events of interest" occur (you get a TXT, your phone rings, it needs to poll, etc) - so even if the OS does close the app because you logged onto "hugebitmaps.com" and the phone ran out of memory, it'll start it up again as soon as it can.

I suspect the HERO OS is not allowing the phone to sleep, even though the application is literally doing nothing. I don't recall this problem on my trusty G1 when it had Android 1.5, so maybe some of HTC's customizations have broken something

Doug

I can post more of the conversation history if it would help. Anyone have any ideas what might be causing this beyond coding issues?

If anyone wants to send their YouMail log for inspection just enter this code in the dialer *#*#963867#*#* (*#*#YMDUMP#*#*) and it will let you send an email with the log's text.

Tried in 2.1 beta

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"I suspect the HERO OS is not allowing the phone to sleep, even though the application is literally doing nothing. I don't recall this problem on my trusty G1 when it had Android 1.5, so maybe some of HTC's customizations have broken something "

I also tried using this app on the 2.1 ROM that Flipz and company have been working on, and had the same issue. I do not know enough programing to determine if this is a problem with OS or the app. I can only give you my experience and try other stuff out to see what the results are. I hope this helps.

Kevin

Hi, Doug from YouMail here.

Just noticed my words and thought I'd give an update - although not much good news.

I basically spent the last 2 days completely reworking the YouMail app's back end code so that anything and everything that could possibly be shut down when it isn't actually doing anything is indeed shut down.

When it came time to test it out -- 100% awake time again (although I stand by my earlier comments that "its not just us").

If I run the same app on a HTC G1 the phone will last a good 2 days (maybe more) without battery issues. If I uninstall the app the difference is minor.

This information, added to all the discussion on the Sprint forums about how the HTC "extras" that this phone comes bundled with have caused the same problem leads me to think that there is something in the Hero that's not behaving properly.

I see other comments like "It does the same on my <insert phone model here>" - well, we don't have unlimited resources, so if you can put the small amount of effort in to dial the 'dump' code mentioned above (*#*#963867#*#*) then maybe we can start to find a pattern here (maybe it's all the Android 1.5 based devices for example).

I'd also like to thank crunchybutternut for all of his assistance and time in trying to sort this issue out.

Doug

Originally Posted by superman.namrepus

I also tried using this app on the 2.1 ROM that Flipz and company have been working on, and had the same issue. I do not know enough programing to determine if this is a problem with OS or the app. I can only give you my experience and try other stuff out to see what the results are. I hope this helps.

Kevin

If I can get in touch with someone who has access to the "guts" of the device and that can help me determine whats going wrong then that would be great. Neither the Android developer list nor the HTC forums are particularly helpful when it comes to tricky problems.