yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jhuff83:
I had the high usage as well. I'm on FreeGS3 Rom on Sprint. I renamed the file and hope that fixes the issue.

---------- Post added at 05:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:29 PM ----------

I was having issues w/Beautiful widget weather as well. Was showing the wrong days for me too. Seems to be fixed now after putting it back on Accuweather. It also would show me in an area 40 miles away from me.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tjb433:
Hadnt noticed till about a week ago, but UCCW weather does not update either, unfortunately there is no accuweather option for UCCW that I have found.

Well atleast we now know what gsiff does, obviously its used in Google weather update.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] lowg:
Good find guys on the weather service.

I have have had mine disabled as well and not have noticed anything but probably since I don't use Google's Weather service...
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] gadgetguy08:
Beautiful Widgets just got updated to remove Google Weather API. Must have been a problem with the service.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] J M L:
Google has killed Google Weather API.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] murdermonkey9000:
That's not what it does, or it would do it on every rom, it's only TW. Has anyone on the leaked JB tried forcing a hotboot to see if it's still there?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] storm81456:
Try using imoseyon's kernels if you're in vzw. I haven't had a gsiff runaway since I started using them.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] lordmorphous:
I don't know if this is related or not, but I had a runaway gsiff earlier and found this thread. I renamed gsiff_daemon to gsiff_daemon.bak, rebooted and started streaming music through Google Music. Everything was fine for an hour or so, then I started getting messages about my sim card being removed with the only option being to restart. Did it three times in a row, each time within a couple minutes of the reboot. I renamed the file back to gsiff_daemon, rebooted, and it hasn't popped back up yet. I'm running Aristodemos 09/11 release of JB (the one in the morning, not the later release). I searched that thread for the keywords sim card and found nothing.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tmagritte:
I recently upgraded to the new official ROM released for ROGERS (and other Canadian carriers), the LH1 build. It claims to fix numerous bugs. I had hoped this would be one of them. If anything, I think it's worse. The first day I updated it was fine. The second day I made heavier than usual use of Maps and got frequent hot reboots and Gsiff_daemon running wild, despite numerous manual reboots.

It seemed to settle down for a while but I've noticed the past several days high battery usage by "Android system". It wasn't so bad so I didn't make much of it but then decided to monitor and have found that this usage is primarily Gsiff_daemon. It isn't completely monopolizing one core and seems to not be draining the battery at full speed, but does seem to have a noticeable drain on the battery.

I'm disappointed this wasn't addressed in the update. I hadn't expected to see an update before Jelly Bean, so I was pleasantly surprised. But now I'm concerned if this major issue wasn't fixed it will still be present even in the Jelly Bean update.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tjb433:
thanks for this, I had no idea, uccw now has an update to remove Google weather API, looks like we still don't know what gsiff does after all.

---------- Post added at 04:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:36 PM ----------

I'm not sure its a large enough issue for Samsung to care, out of the thousands of xda members with the gs3, there's only a hand full of gsiff threads and last time I checked this was the largest one, so either people just don't realize what causes their random battery drain or its not happening on the vast majority of devices. Out of 20 million phones, if only a few thousand have this problem, I don't think they'd be too keen on fixing it right away.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jebise101:
I have the Bell i747M and this thing had me pulling my hair, I tried wiping and everything wasted a weekend on this and did not find a solution and made a thread which had no responce. I came across this thread by mistake and I was so revealed its happening to others and people found the cause. For me it started to happen every 12 hours and like others was forced to reboot. I wiped dalvik/cache and flashed the stock firmware and it seemed fine for a few days and was happy but then it came back and now it happens every 2 days or so and its very random and do not know the cause of the hot reboot, i keep wifi and gps on 24/7.

So happy i found this post, just going to wait for the phone to hot reboot to confirm if gisff daemon before i rename it. Yes I know I can force a hot reboot but meh.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] apostrophi:
I'm running a Verizon Galaxy S3 and have noticed this problem recently. I don't know what app exactly that I installed or updated but this has only been a major problem (occurring every few hours now) for the past week or so. One thing I do notice is that it seems to get worse (the hit on CPU that is) with more programs that cause notifications. I uninstalled a 3rd party messaging program (Handcent) and an exchange email client and now the phone doesn't seem to freeze; it's just very slow instead.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Deveron888:
Just to let you know I was informed and found out that when you rename it the system just makes a new one lol whatever it is needs to be fixed as the file cannot be moved, deleted or edited. I just wish someone could find a solution to this problem, i hope that when JB comes out for the S3 that they fixed that problem.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] bso44:
Are you positive about this? I renamed it and haven't seen it since. The only time it came back was when I flashed a new ROM so I just renamed it again.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] sKoWN_kAT:
Many of us have moved/edited/deleted it with positive results. I havent seen gsiff since I renamed it. You were misinformed.....

Make sure you have R/W permissions
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] storm81456:
Just wanted to mention this again, if you're on VZW the developer kernels are fixing this problem. I haven't had a single gsiff runaway since I stated using imoseyon's lean kernel. I'm still running just the plain stock ROM other than being rooted and unlocked.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Putrid Polecat:
If you install a cpu monitor in your task bar you will be able to know instantly if gsiff is acting up.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Deveron888:
I am not the only one running into this problem, I have talked to many people that have moved or deleted the file and when you restart your phone it will be right back where it was.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Slimegod:
How do I know if gsiff is in or not through cpu monitor?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Putrid Polecat:
If your phone is doing nothing but your cpu utilization remains high, it is 90% gsiff daemon.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] sKoWN_kAT:
Have you tried adding a file extension to it? That's how I did it.... (gsiff_daemon.not) Try that. It worked for me. Gsiff never came back after that.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Deveron888:
Tried that and the moment i restart my phone or it hot boots it just goes back to the way it was.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Slimegod:
Still not sure how I can tell whether gsiff is on or off. My bad if it's taking me a while to get it but I've never done this before so.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jyarborough:
Find the gsiff file and change the name..add a .Baker to the end of it and you will see an increase. Trust...:D
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] cackazn:
I think you may be on to something.

I've had my VZW Galaxy S3 for a couple days and after I had my battery drain at an alarming rate this morning I immediately hit google looking for the cause. I luckily found this thread.

My S3 was only off the charger for an hour or so. I hadn't used it much until I was in my car sitting in a mall parking lot. Upon waking the phone it asked if I wanted to join a wifi network it had found and I canceled out of that window. I browsed through the following apps for a few minutes. Facebook, Twitter, Fox News and I updated the stock weather widget for the current city I was in (based of GPS).

The next time I looked at my phone was about an hour later and my batter indicator had dropped about 10-12%. I checked the battery settings and noticed that "Android System" was on top the list of battery usage, instead of Screen and Cell Standby.

After checking this thread I saw that Gsiff_daemon was eating up my CPU and battery so I shutdown my S3 and started back up again. All's been good for the past hour.

My phone hasn't been Rooted or modified in any way.

Perhaps it's something to do with the stock weather widget using GPS to update it's forecast.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Slimegod:
How did u know gisff_daemon was eating your battery? How did you check it?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] putyournamehere:
Under "developer options" toggle -> show cpu usage

Then you can see what process is top most, gsiff will be second from top if it's running.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Slimegod:
Ok thanks.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] UT_Smokey:
I'm running Synergy r73 with the Trinity A7 kernel and have only had this happen to me twice. I have no idea what caused it the first time. The last time it appears a hot boot caused the issue, I accessed an app I use called Tripcase while in airplane mode and it worked fine in offline mode. Once I landed I accessed the app again, however it crashed when I attempted to get it to go online taking my launcher with it. Once it came back, sure enough gsiff_daemon was running hot. A simple reboot fixed it. I just wanted to throw my observation out. I can also tell you that I travel a lot and use Beautiful Widgets along with Accuweaher.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] cackazn:
Well, it's happened two more times since Friday. I disabled local forecast in the Weather widget so that it doesn't use GPS anymore so I don't think it's the weather widget causing it.

If I were to guess it'd be either Facebook or Twitter.

I guess I'll have to look into rooting my phone so that I can perhaps rename that file.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Putrid Polecat:
I don't have facebook or twitter installed and have had the problem.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] cackazn:
Well damn! This sucks...what's causing gsiff_daemon to go crazy?

Edit: Do you use Chrome?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] J M L:
Anything which causes a crash and hotboot will cause gsiff_daemon to go crazy. The at fault program may be different for different people. The real fault is gsiff_daemon, because it should not go crazy from a hotboot, but without source or anything, there is nothing that can be done to fix it, except hack the phone so gsiff_daemon won't run at all. Obviously, if you have a particular app which is causing frequent hotboots, removing that app will help decrease the frequency of hotboots, but they may still happen for other reasons.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] cackazn:
Got ya. Sorry, I'm new to all this so this definitely helped me understand what's going on.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] 98XJ:
In my experience I had no idea what gsiff was before I turned on the "increase ringer volume while in pocket or bag." Under phone settings. From what I concluded it dealt with gyroscope and proximity sensors.. turned it off and it's a thing of the past.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jamesino:
I've just today noticed my battery drying faster than normal and found that Android System has been eating up 20% of my battery life, when normally it only consumed around 2%.

I turned on the CPU monitoring tool in the Developer options, but it only shows "com.android.systemui" as the top consumer of CPU, with gsiff no where to be found.

Using Gsam battery, usually "kernel" is the top consumer of battery under apps, but today, Android System has overtaken it.

Am I suffering from the Gsiff problem? Or is mine something else entirely?

I am running on verizon GS3, with no Adblock, all motion sensor deactivated, all Accuweather app and daemon disabled.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Skelaratus:
I have no gsiff issues. It is only Android system. Can we stop pussyfooting around this issue and have the dev fix it? This issue was not here for a lot of us before 1.9. What other info do you need Phantom? Whatever you changed is draining the battery. You would know better than us what that is. And I am sick of useless threads running around in circles, pointing to non issues, and detracting from the real issue at hand.

---------- Post added at 01:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 AM ----------

We have been on this same issue for 10 days now...
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Putrid Polecat:
It has nothing to do with Phantom. Problem exists on freegs3 too.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] sly_guy069:
Im using blazer rom 1.9(on sprint gs3) with freezas all in one l13 flash, i never had this problem running stock rom rooted till i installed blazer. Is there a solution for gsiff or should i just flash a differnt rom?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] SirSparkles:
stock rooted having issue too

I'm stock rooted and having the gsiff_daemon issue too....can't figure out what is causing this...uninstalled apps, tried utilities that monitor services...grrrrr

I've never had any other rom on my device.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jyarborough:
THEY IS A THREAD on this gsiffs issue. The gsiffs is hiding behind android system.change the name for gsiff.daemond and you will see an increase in battery life.trust..

I'm on freesg3 as well. And i have no battery drain issues even before i read about the gsiffs thing. But following that thread i have been able to increase life a bit
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Lock-N-Load:
Noticed unexpected battery drain over night on my VZW SGS3. Started looking at process and there was this gsiff_daemon. Searched Google, found this thread, did a restart, seems to have killed it. I recall a hotboot a few days back. Interesting. No plans yet to rename the file, but at least I know now the battery drain I noticed was for real and that the resource causing it is confirmed by many and a clean restart can bring it back into line.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jyarborough:
Just to let you know that renaming that file by putting a .bak on the end of it will cause know problems on the phone being functional our stable. Imoe for the past month it has been changed and

Battery life is better
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
is this Gsiff_Daemon issue only for rooted users? I just got it too...after rooting...I never had this issue since june 30, since I've had the phone

I am running the stock ROM, since I just rooted

so does this happen to non-rooted users too?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
I don't have any of the motion settings on and i have autorotation disabled

I have had the whole motion thing always off and it still happened to me

I never had motion settings on and autorotation is always off, yet it still happens to me

I had my phone since june 30 on sprint...I rooted just yesterday .i NEVER had this issue until today.

---------- Post added at 03:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:36 PM ----------

looks like BW got rid of google weather all together

---------- Post added at 03:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:53 PM ----------

it's probably because the normal average user has no idea what's going on and how to search for it

---------- Post added at 03:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:56 PM ----------

is it better to name it as .not, or .bak?

---------- Post added at 04:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:59 PM ----------

hmmm....I turned this on for the first time since having my phone since june 30 and i got the bug

I also just rooted yesterday, so I can't conclude it is one or the other

---------- Post added at 04:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:02 PM ----------

this also happens on stock rom so it is not a ROM issue, but a TW rom issue
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Exel:
.bak means Backup Copy, doesn't matter what you add at the end.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Oh ok

Does anyone NOT RUNNING the following have this issue?

1. "turn up volume when phone in pocket" in phone-->settings

2. Motion settings ON

3. Autorotation ON

_____________________________________________________

I'm asking because I have had the phone since June 30 and finally turned on option #1 and i got the bug
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] J M L:
The gsiff_daemon runs away when the phone hotboots. It hotboots because one of several system processes has died or stopped responding. Those system processes may die or stop responding for any number of reasons, and probably for different reasons on different phones. If on your phone, #1 above causes a system process to crash resulting in a hotboot, then disabling it might correct your problem. On other people's phones other things cause hotboots, and on many phones, multiple things can cause hotboots. On my phone I got hotboots when maps was acquiring a GPS lock, when switching from WIFI to 3g, when streaming music over bluetooth, and when also doing nothing. It wasn't every time I did these things that I got a hotboot, but out of the hundreds of times my phone switched from WIFI to 3g, one of the times it hotbooted, etc. Were these related or coincidental? I have no idea.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Yea, but the thing is my phone has hot booted many times without this issue with all 3 options turned off

I haven't had this issue until I turned on option AND hotbooted while rooted
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tjb433:
havent posted in this thread in a while, but just wanted to say ive had gsiff_deamon renamed for a few months now and have not experienced any problems with it. Everything works as normal and battery life is great!
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] sKoWN_kAT:
Same here. Battery life has been MUCH better! :D
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Thanks for the updates guys.

Anyone else notice any issues with renaming the file?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eagle63:
I've only had it renamed for about a week but no problems so far.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ss4rob:
To everyone who has renamed this process - how fast is your GPS lock now? I use GPS Status and generally get a lock at 2 to 5 seconds, double digit number of birds, with around 10 feet of accuracy indoors:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.eclipsim.gpsstatus2

What are some of your results?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Same here. No gps issues after renaming file
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] ss4rob:
That's good. Do you have "increase ringer volume in pocket" and "smart alert" enabled? Trying to figure out what motion or GPS actions could be affected by the service no longer running.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
No and No

I also dont have any motion settings enabled and autorotation is off
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eagene:
I put an Elixir2 CPU meter in my status bar. Yesterday everything was fine and I was navigating with GPS & Maps. I noticed CPU had gone up to 90 - sure enough it was the gsiff_daemon. I killed it, CPU went down, and navigation continued without a problem.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] flipq88:
Where is this file located? I want to rename it and see if that fixes my battery drain recently

Sent from Flip's S3
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] RoryB:
I turned off the motion features and the auto rotate of homescreen and I no longer get Gsiff_daemon. Have been running well for a few days now. Averaging about 2.5% to 3.5% per hour each day.

I kept the two motion items at the bottom. Phone is not handy and I forgot what they are.

I leave WiFi on and have made several transitions to areas with and without WiFi available.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
I wonder if this problem has been solved with latest lj7 jellybean from sprint
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Slimegod:
How do I know gsiff isnt running?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] sKoWN_kAT:
/system/bin

You'll find it in there :thumbup:
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] liveandlearn_again:
On AT&T here...

Add me to the list of people who successfully renamed the file. Until someone can tell me why gsiff_daemon is so important, I'm OK with the renaming fix.

FYI, if you use ES file explorer, you are unable as far as I know to change actual file extensions. I initially changed the NAME of the file to gsiff_daemon.bak, but somehow it still ran (!). Perhaps because the beginning of the file name was the same... So I now changed the name to gxxxsiff_daemon and that has worked for weeks.

Seems like the only options are (while waiting for a Samsung fix, hopefully with JB since I like the stock functionality):

1. reboot

2. rename / kill app (requires root)

3. custom rom (requires root)
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Crapppp

Jellybean didn’t solve it. It just popped up for me. Just renamed it AGAIN.

Hopefully it won't pop up again
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tmagritte:
Are you using an official Samsung released rom? I was counting on Samsung to fix this in JB. If they haven't I think we need to start a Facebook campaign to publicly shame them or it will never get fixed.

When you rename the file, does it also prevent the phone from freezing and hot rebooting or just the runaway service after that happens? The freeze reboot is itself a very frustrating problem for me. It always seems to happen when I try to show something (video, and picture, feature) to someone else or when I'm driving and it messes up navigation...
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
Yep. I'm using a stock rooted rom. No custom roms

Renaming the file only stops the runaway gsiff_daemon process. Not sure if it stops hotboots
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] jhuff83:
Wife's phone has same issue. She is full stock non rooted on JB.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] themadproducer:
Here is a test I performed with multiple cross checking.

Some interesting results.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] BBBoT:
I too had renamed the file with no ill effects the past several weeks.

Then yesterday I named it back - upgraded to 4.1.1, and did a factory reset.

Then today at lunch time the phone was really hot - checked CPU usage and sure enough the gsiff_daemon issue again.

I hope they fix this soon.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] tmagritte:
If it hasn't been fixed in 4.1.1, what reason is there to believe it will ever be fixed? I'm not aware of any evidence of a planned 4.2 update nor of Samsung ever acknowledging this issue.

For what it's worth even after renaming gsiff_daemon I was getting increasingly frequent hotboots, especially during navigation, making me regret getting this phone. Since the 4.1.1 update (I haven't touched gsiff_daemon since the update) I haven't had any such problems. I have had relatively quick battery drain and periodic GPS activity. I'm not sure what app or process is causing this. But no hotboots yet. I could just have been lucky so far.

I'm hoping the 4.1.1 release will allow the cm10 developers to provide a really functional and stable cm10/10.1 as I suspect a custom ROM will be the only real solution, if any.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] liveandlearn_again:
Sorry to bring this thread back from the dead, but can anyone verify that the gsiff_daemon issue has been solved on the galaxy s4 (I believe it runs 4.2.2 correct)?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] Aerowinder:
Would that be the phone we don't have access to yet?
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] liveandlearn_again:
Depends. On At&t the phone came out on the 27th of April (in the US). Sorry for not clarifying.

I was just asking if anyone who has the new phone has seen gsiff_daemon run away on the stock touchwiz 4.2.2... Best case scenario and it is fixed.
[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] eyecon82:
i have the sprint version.....had it since saturday.......nothing yet