[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Teo En Ming:
Subject: Samsung Galaxy S5 Sluggish, High CPU Usage, Overheating, Rapid Battery Drain and Problematic Camera

Author: Mr. Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming

Country: Republic of Singapore

Document Versioning: 1.0

Timestamp: 13th April 2018 Friday 12:33 PM Singapore Time GMT+8

Good morning from Singapore!

I bought my used/second hand Samsung Galaxy S5 Android 5.0 phone for SGD$150 after the mobile phone shop in Singapore allegedly performed Factory Data Reset. I tested the used/second hand Samsung Galaxy S5 Android 5.0 phone extensively before purchase, from dialing to having a short telephone conversation to sending and receiving SMS messages to taking 16 MP photos and 4K Ultra HD videos. Everything is OKAY. I was satisfied with the outcome of my testing, paid SGD$150 and took the Android phone home. But of course I did not test the performance of the Android phone with an external microSD card inserted.

I went home and performed Factory Data Reset again for another three (3) times. The following day I proceeded to install close to one hundred (100) apps on my Samsung Galaxy S5 Android 5.0 phone.

Then I started noticing that my Samsung Galaxy S5 is sluggish (extremely slow), overheats and suffers from rapid battery drain problems. The phone battery would be flat after merely a few hours. After reading an online article, I suspected that Facebook might be consuming a lot of CPU resources, memory and battery power. So off I went to uninstall Facebook regular flavour and installed Facebook Lite. But that did not solve the problem. My Samsung Galaxy S5 is still sluggish (extremely slow) and suffering from overheating and rapid battery drain problems. Besides the 100 apps that I installed, I also observed that TouchWiz Home Launcher crashes from time to time. Fearing that Touchwiz Home Launcher was also causing problems for my Android phone, I went to install Nova Launcher and switched over to Nova Launcher. But that did not solve the problem as well. My Samsung Galaxy S5 still remains sluggish (extremely slow) and suffers from overheating and rapid battery drain problems. But somehow I liked the Nova Launcher interface over TouchWiz Home and it stayed on.

I was at my wits end. Subsequently I thought of checking the CPU usage on my Samsung Galaxy S5. After a quick search on the Google Play Store, I installed Simple System Monitor. To my horror, the overall CPU usage on my Samsung Galaxy S5 is almost 100% CONSISTENTLY!. Android.process.media (aka Media Storage) and DCMProvider came out at the top of the list, consuming 20% and 10% CPU usage respectively. I launched a Google search on android.process.media (Media Storage) and DCMProvider. After reading several online articles, I realized that inserting an external microSD card into my Android phone and having thousands of files on it was a MAJOR issue. The reason why I needed an external 64GB Samung Class 10 U3 microSD card and having thousands of files on it is because Samsung Galaxy S5 has only 16 GB of internal storage and my WhatsApp data storage requirements is 21 GB. I really have no choice but to root my Samsung Galaxy S5 using Chainfire Auto Root (CF-Auto-Root) and install FolderMount(Root) app to store my WhatsApp data (21 GB as of now) on the external 64 GB microSD card instead of the 16 GB internal storage. Without FolderMount(Root), I could never store my 21 GB WhatsApp data on the external 64 GB microSD card instead of the 16 GB internal storage. Android.process.media (Media Storage or Media Scanner) probably stuck/hanged/took forever at scanning thousands and thousands of files on my external 64 GB microSD card, consuming 20% (overall close to 100%) CPU usage, slowing down basically everything on my Android phone and causing rapid battery drain. I know I should not have used FolderMount(Root) to solve my massive 21 GB WhatsApp data requirements but it is a requirement.

As it turned out, I have no choice but to turn off android.process.media (Media Storage). Further research on the internet also shows that Samsung Link app (flagged by DCMProvider) consumes a lot of CPU resources and causes rapid battery drain as well. I had Samsung Link app turned off as well because I could not turn off DCMProvider.

After turning off android.process.media (Media Storage) and Samsung Link app (as flagged by DCMProvider), the situation started to improve. The overall CPU usage on my Samsung Galaxy S5 is no longer close to 100%. In fact, the overall CPU usage now hovers around 20% or lower. Sometimes it might spike above 20% but it is still bearable. Rapid battery drain issue has also improved. Previously my phone battery will be flat in a few hours. Now my phone battery could last longer provided that there is no heavy usage on my Android phone. In order to better monitor CPU usage on my Samsung Galaxy S5, I have also installed OS Monitor app as well.

Although turning off android.process.media (media storage) and Samsung Link app has resolved the sluggish, high cpu usage, overheating and rapid battery drain problems, it has also caused some other problems as well. (1) For example, I could no longer take screenshots on my Android phone. (2) And I could no longer review photos on the Default Camera app immediately after taking a photo.

How do I resolve problems (1) and (2)?

As of now, I am still having problems with the Default Camera and Timestamp Camera Pro apps. Despite alleviating high cpu usage on my Samsung Galaxy S5, Full HD (1080p) and 4K (2160p) videos taken with the camera on Samsung Galaxy S5 are jerky or pauses from time to time. This has nothing to do with the Smart Pause feature on my Samsung Galaxy S5. I have it turned off. Is the CPU (microprocessor) on my Samsung Galaxy S5 not powerful enough to take Full HD and 4K videos, resulting in jerky footages or footages which pause from time to time? Please help me to resolve the camera issue on my Samsung Galaxy S5, especially with regards to taking Full HD and 4K videos. My 64 GB external Samsung microSD card is already fast enough to take 4K videos, being a Class 10 U3 card itself. Maybe it has something to do with the filesystem on the external SD card? It was formatted with the exFat filesystem. But the thing is, recording videos on the INTERNAL STORAGE is also jerky and pauses from time to time.

Thank you very much.

PS. I could not afford to buy the all new Samsung Galaxy S9 for SGD$1500. So I had bought an used Samsung Galaxy S5 for SGD$150 instead.

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Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming's Academic Qualifications as at 30 Oct 2017

[1] tdtemcerts.wordpress.com

[2] tdtemcerts.blogspot.sg

[3] www=scribd=com=user=270125049=Teo-En-Ming

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