Removed phone.apk

Holtor · 01-29-2012, 02:53 PM

For whatever reason Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk were running on my rooted PRS-T1 and ate up almost all of the battery (as "cell standby" or something like that). I renamed both and successfully got rid of the processes. Now most Android guides strongly advice against removing these two apps because they are deeply connected to Android's inner working. Has anyone had any side effects when getting rid of them?

Has everyone else these apps taking 95% of the battery power? I did not pay close attention to when exactly they started running...maybe they run all the time even on an unrooted T!, maybe they got onto my system with Android Market, I do not know.

I should add that immediatly after renaming phone.apk, the reader starts a loop with annoying crash messages, but after holding the power button to restart (and quickly clicking the error messages away to get to the restart field) it was ok.

uboot · 01-29-2012, 03:20 PM

I'm not sure if these apps _really_ take that much battery power!

The item is named "cell standby". But maybe this just means that most of the power is consumed in standby mode of the device which is good because this mode consumes nearly no power.

soseono · 01-29-2012, 03:57 PM

But I've heard many similar tales of T1 battery being drained awfully fast because of cell standby/phone idle on another ebook user forum. The solution they share is to rename Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk to .apk.old (or something like that) and reboot. I'm also curious how come the unrooted T1 doesn't seem to be affected, and if this could be prevented from the beginning of rooting. My T1 is unrooted now, partially because of the battery drain issue many were complaining about.

Holtor · 01-29-2012, 04:44 PM

Well, before I renamed phone.apk, the power consumption (in the ADWlauncher prefs) always showed about 95% "cell standby" and 1% something else (which I forgot). Since then it shows a multitude of apps which I actually used, among them "display". I guess these were not shown before because they used far less power than "cell standby", and thus "cell standby" really did consume a lot of power.

Right now the power consumption info shows
"phone inactive" 91%
"display" 7%
"com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentmanagement" 2%

(no idea what the last one is doing, maybe it checks for new books on the sdcard?).

j0534ng31 · 01-29-2012, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Holtor

Well, before I renamed phone.apk, the power consumption (in the ADWlauncher prefs) always showed about 95% "cell standby" and 1% something else (which I forgot). Since then it shows a multitude of apps which I actually used, among them "display". I guess these were not shown before because they used far less power than "cell standby", and thus "cell standby" really did consume a lot of power.

Right now the power consumption info shows
"phone inactive" 91%
"display" 7%
"com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentmanagement" 2%

(no idea what the last one is doing, maybe it checks for new books on the sdcard?).

The right question is: And now, does your battery last longer?

I really don't know because I've deleted phone, bluetooth, demos and wallpapers from the day one...

Rand Brittain · 01-29-2012, 07:31 PM

Googling "delete phone.apk" finds a few forums suggesting leaving the device in airplane mode (although they were talking about phones). Think that would make a difference?

j0534ng31 · 01-29-2012, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

Googling "delete phone.apk" finds a few forums suggesting leaving the device in airplane mode (although they were talking about phones). Think that would make a difference?

Yes, I think so...

I "think" our device doesn't have a Radio, hence does not have a real airplane mode.

What do you think takes less energy... a TV in stanby mode (airplane mode) or a TV switched off?

I think that, as we have no radio, energy consumed must be "almost" the same... being the difference, the amount of memory and "hard disk" space wasted by the phone application (apk + odex + dalvik + preferences), plus a bit more of energy consumed by itself

goldencore · 01-30-2012, 09:53 AM

If you set Airplane mode on a rooted T1 it doesn't stay in it when you go to standby and back. That's what I've noticed.

Any side effects yet after removing phone.apk? I was thinking about doing that myself.

Holtor · 01-30-2012, 11:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by goldencore

If you set Airplane mode on a rooted T1 it doesn't stay in it when you go to standby and back. That's what I've noticed.

Yes, Airplane mode is not selectable. The checkbox stays gray, the settings are not saved at all; when you check it, leave the prefs and return right back to them, Airplane mode is unchecked.

Dark Morelia · 01-30-2012, 05:37 PM

I removed both Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk with Titanium backupa few days ago. I did get the FC loop upon removing Phone.apk as Holtor describes, but after rebooting, everything's been running fine since.

uboot · 02-07-2012, 04:55 AM

Confirmed. Removing that crap seems to be safe.

Did not face any incompatibilities with any app.

Call settings is now grayed out in Settings app.

I just wonder if there are apps on the market that will not install because they somewhat have phone api as requirement...

rubentje1991 · 02-09-2012, 04:45 AM

Already some indications on (longer) battery life?

tayseidel · 02-10-2012, 01:15 AM

I removed Phone.apk and telephonyprovider.apk two days ago. So far, I've not seen a percentage drop. Though, as of right now, claims of a longer battery life are inconclusive. If my PRS-T1 still has greater than 80% on the fourth or fifth day on the battery, then I would have to say that removing the .apk's in questions does the trick.

rubentje1991 · 02-10-2012, 02:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tayseidel

I removed Phone.apk and telephonyprovider.apk two days ago. So far, I've not seen a percentage drop. Though, as of right now, claims of a longer battery life are inconclusive. If my PRS-T1 still has greater than 80% on the fourth or fifth day on the battery, then I would have to say that removing the .apk's in questions does the trick.

The tests are taking too long.... that itself already indicates something

Thanks for the reply

Holtor · 02-10-2012, 06:17 AM

I do not really know how long the battery lasted before, but since the deletion of these apps it lasted about 10 days. Which IMHO is not exactly spactacular for maybe 1 hour reading ebooks per day and sleep mode for the rest of the time.

Oh yes, and it froze two times, which always seemed to cost quite a bit of energy.

01-29-2012, 02:53 PM	#1
Holtor Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: PRS-T1	Removed phone.apk For whatever reason Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk were running on my rooted PRS-T1 and ate up almost all of the battery (as "cell standby" or something like that). I renamed both and successfully got rid of the processes. Now most Android guides strongly advice against removing these two apps because they are deeply connected to Android's inner working. Has anyone had any side effects when getting rid of them? Has everyone else these apps taking 95% of the battery power? I did not pay close attention to when exactly they started running...maybe they run all the time even on an unrooted T!, maybe they got onto my system with Android Market, I do not know. I should add that immediatly after renaming phone.apk, the reader starts a loop with annoying crash messages, but after holding the power button to restart (and quickly clicking the error messages away to get to the restart field) it was ok. Last edited by Holtor; 01-29-2012 at 02:59 PM.

02-10-2012, 06:17 AM	#15
Holtor Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: PRS-T1	I do not really know how long the battery lasted before, but since the deletion of these apps it lasted about 10 days. Which IMHO is not exactly spactacular for maybe 1 hour reading ebooks per day and sleep mode for the rest of the time. Oh yes, and it froze two times, which always seemed to cost quite a bit of energy. Last edited by Holtor; 02-11-2012 at 04:49 AM.

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01-29-2012, 03:20 PM	#2
uboot Evangelist Posts: 425 Karma: 75216 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: old europe Device: Kobo Mini, Tolino Epos 2	I'm not sure if these apps _really_ take that much battery power! The item is named "cell standby". But maybe this just means that most of the power is consumed in standby mode of the device which is good because this mode consumes nearly no power.

01-29-2012, 03:57 PM	#3
soseono Connoisseur Posts: 62 Karma: 36180 Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: US East Coast Device: Kobo Aura HD, Kindle 4, Sony PRS-T1 (formerly PRS-500 & 505), iPad Air	But I've heard many similar tales of T1 battery being drained awfully fast because of cell standby/phone idle on another ebook user forum. The solution they share is to rename Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk to .apk.old (or something like that) and reboot. I'm also curious how come the unrooted T1 doesn't seem to be affected, and if this could be prevented from the beginning of rooting. My T1 is unrooted now, partially because of the battery drain issue many were complaining about.

01-29-2012, 04:44 PM	#4
Holtor Member Posts: 11 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: PRS-T1	Well, before I renamed phone.apk, the power consumption (in the ADWlauncher prefs) always showed about 95% "cell standby" and 1% something else (which I forgot). Since then it shows a multitude of apps which I actually used, among them "display". I guess these were not shown before because they used far less power than "cell standby", and thus "cell standby" really did consume a lot of power. Right now the power consumption info shows "phone inactive" 91% "display" 7% "com.sony.drbd.ebook.contentmanagement" 2% (no idea what the last one is doing, maybe it checks for new books on the sdcard?).

01-29-2012, 07:31 PM	#6
Rand Brittain Bookmaker Posts: 433 Karma: 2143650 Join Date: Sep 2010 Device: Cybook Opus	Googling "delete phone.apk" finds a few forums suggesting leaving the device in airplane mode (although they were talking about phones). Think that would make a difference?

01-30-2012, 09:53 AM	#8
goldencore Enthusiast Posts: 51 Karma: 14 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Germany Device: PW 2 FW 5.4.5.1 (JB)	If you set Airplane mode on a rooted T1 it doesn't stay in it when you go to standby and back. That's what I've noticed. Any side effects yet after removing phone.apk? I was thinking about doing that myself.

01-30-2012, 05:37 PM	#10
Dark Morelia Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 11100 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: near Sydney, Australia Device: PRS-T1	I removed both Phone.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk with Titanium backupa few days ago. I did get the FC loop upon removing Phone.apk as Holtor describes, but after rebooting, everything's been running fine since.

02-07-2012, 04:55 AM	#11
uboot Evangelist Posts: 425 Karma: 75216 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: old europe Device: Kobo Mini, Tolino Epos 2	Confirmed. Removing that crap seems to be safe. Did not face any incompatibilities with any app. Call settings is now grayed out in Settings app. I just wonder if there are apps on the market that will not install because they somewhat have phone api as requirement...

02-09-2012, 04:45 AM	#12
rubentje1991 Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: Sony PRS-T1	Already some indications on (longer) battery life?

02-10-2012, 01:15 AM	#13
tayseidel Zealot Posts: 146 Karma: 189664 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Glo HD, Aura H20, PRS-T1	I removed Phone.apk and telephonyprovider.apk two days ago. So far, I've not seen a percentage drop. Though, as of right now, claims of a longer battery life are inconclusive. If my PRS-T1 still has greater than 80% on the fourth or fifth day on the battery, then I would have to say that removing the .apk's in questions does the trick.