[altruizine]

I have seen /system/bin/switcher and its wake lock causing battery drain. Maybe switcher also plays a role in an USB issue where sometimes an USB plug / unplug event is not correctly handled (device thinks USB is still connected / disconnected when it's not, ADB connection cannot be established, freezes / crashes after USB unplug).

I'd like to understand what Switcher actually does and why it misbehaves. Maybe we can collect some observations about it and perhaps even come up with a fix?

Here's what I know so far:

Switcher is a system service run from /init.rc. When it's killed, init immediately restarts it.

Switcher seems to play a role in driving the USB port. I have experimented replacing /system/bin/switcher with a shell script that does nothing but sleep forever. This certainly solved the battery-drain issue, but also rendered the USB port unusable: The Reader couldn't detect host connections or chargers anymore.

From looking at the strings embedded within the binary, Switcher also seems to play a role in Adobe DRM activation over USB.

An strace reveals that Switcher listens on all input events: It registers all touch events and button presses. No idea why. Scary.

My workaround for the ADB and hang-after-USB-disconnect issues: After connecting the USB cable to the host PC, enter the application debugging settings screen, disable USB debugging, then re-enable it. Now ADB works. Before removing the USB cable, enter the settings screen again and disable USB debugging. Optionally, re-enable it after removing the cable (I usually do this because otherwise Titanium Backup sometimes complains and hangs.)