🧠 Investigating Nothing OS CPU Idle Behavior — Wake Locks & Background Services

JochieSantiago · 2025-11-04T00:09:49+00:00

Hey everyone, I’ve been testing my Nothing Phone (Nothing OS 3.5) with ChatGPT (GPT-5) to understand why the CPU doesn’t seem to enter deep idle — even when the screen is off and nothing’s running in the foreground. We went through a full diagnostic session using ADB to identify which services or apps might be holding wake locks or background jobs that keep the CPU partially active ⚙️ Background The issue started with unusually high idle CPU usage (20–29%) and noticeable overnight battery drain (around 6–8%). After checking dumpsys power, several partial wake locks were visible — mainly from Smart Center (com.nothing.smartcenter) and occasionally other apps using Firebase (like WhatsApp, Messaging, or TubeMate). Smart Center’s BLE notification service in particular (NothingNotificationService) seems to stay active even when the phone should be sleeping. 🧩 Steps & Methods 1\. Checking active listeners adb shell settings get secure enabled_notification_listeners Found Smart Center’s BLE notification listener constantly enabled. 2\. Restricting background activity We temporarily limited Smart Center’s permissions to see if it affects CPU sleep states: adb shell am set-standby-bucket com.nothing.smartcenter restricted adb shell cmd appops set com.nothing.smartcenter RUN_ANY_IN_BACKGROUND ignore adb shell cmd appops set com.nothing.smartcenter WAKE_LOCK ignore adb shell cmd appops set com.nothing.smartcenter POST_NOTIFICATION ignore adb shell cmd jobscheduler cancel com.nothing.smartcenter 3\. Forcing deep idle manually adb shell cmd deviceidle force-idle adb shell cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq CPU frequency started dropping from \~1.9GHz down to \~441MHz, showing that deep idle can be reached manually. 4\. Testing third-party apps Some third-party apps (like TubeMate) were also seen holding KeepAlive jobs: adb shell cmd appops set devian.tubemate.v3 RUN_IN_BACKGROUND ignore adb shell cmd appops set devian.tubemate.v3 WAKE_LOCK ignore adb shell am force-stop devian.tubemate.v3 📊 Current Observations With restrictions in place, CPU frequency does fall lower during idle, sometimes reaching 441MHz. dumpsys power shows significantly fewer active wake locks. Still under testing to confirm long-term battery impact and if Nothing OS automatically re-enables those background services over time. 🔄 Reverting the Changes To restore everything: adb shell cmd appops set com.nothing.smartcenter RUN_ANY_IN_BACKGROUND allow adb shell cmd appops set com.nothing.smartcenter WAKE_LOCK allow adb shell am set-standby-bucket com.nothing.smartcenter active There’s also a revert_all_changes.bat script prepared to reset all settings at once. 💬 Closing Notes This doesn’t appear to be an app bug — it’s likely a system behavior tied to Nothing’s background daemons, Smart Center, and Firebase sync routines. We’re still testing whether these restrictions improve idle drain over time. Big thanks to ChatGPT (GPT-5) for helping me trace and document each step clearly. Please, feel free to drop any suggestions or ideas. Keep in mind that my device was not directly bought with Nothing, so it does not have warranty. At this point, I'm just trying different stuff out to see if anything helps with the battery life problems and the apparent causes of it. (At least for me)

Anonymous993

I noticed on my baby monitor that my 3a proximity sensor is active ALL night, even aeroplane mode and locked.

Kind of odd - would have thought it would eventually turn off without movement etc? Wondered if that is a possible source of battery drain/unnecessary CPU usage?

JochieSantiago

Anonymous993 it possibly can be.

Try running a live adb test for 10 minutes with airplane mode on and screen off. And don't touch the phone.

If that's wakelock comes up in the test even without you moving the phone, then there's one cause.

CMF1_hacker

I guess I use my flashlight a lot as it's darker now.

Because of this:

JochieSantiago

CMF1_hacker damn, that sucks 😂 hope you could fix it

CMF1_hacker

JochieSantiago after deleting one or two apps that were battery hogs and likely don't work with A16, it looks about standard again, around 10h SoT.

Anonymous993

CMF1_hacker Maybe you use it in the background - but Chrome seems to have way too much background usage here.

I always toggle off background usage, and in Settings > Site Settings there is a "Background Sync" you can disable which I think also triggers background usage.

Slightly annoying all of the Google apps do not behave well as they are system apps and seem to do whatever the fancy at times

CMF1_hacker

Anonymous993 yeah, I always have it sync so the machines at the two house and two offices are always synced up with my phones. I assume this is Google checking the sync. I don't want to mess with it. I also have 2 TiB Google One that the machines access. I'm OK with Google having free reign is my data is present when/where I need it.

JochieSantiago

Haven't been using my NP3 that much since I got the Xiaomi. Yesterday I got 13 hours of SoT with it and still had 13% battery. (Battery saver turns on at 10%)

Anonymous1004

CMF1_hacker What would you if you were me with ADB?

Uninstall all google apps that have tracker-free alternatives (Revanced and/or MicroG). Removing the telemetry makes a lot of difference. Unfortunately Gemini won't work properly without the google app

JochieSantiago That's crazy, I don't think I could drain that in a single day

Stats for removing my phone from charge at night to turning it off during school. It is in deep sleep but not for long enough. My alarm was at 6:30 but it exits sleep at 5.

10% per hour when just listening to music on vlc can't be good…

JochieSantiago

Anonymous1004 I used adb to disable some stuff. The commands are in the post and in the folder linked in it.

Also. This is from my 15T Pro. Number that my NP3 will never reach 😂

CMF1_hacker

JochieSantiago got it fixed now on my NP3

JochieSantiago

CMF1_hacker what settings did you change?

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