Droid X - Contact selection keeps crashing, MotoBlur process at 100% CPU, and other inconveniences

[Sgoldsby]

Running  DroidX System Version 1.13.604.MB810.Verizon.en.US, Firmware 2.1-update1, Kernel 2.6.29, ERI 5 PRL 51926

I got my unit synced to the corporate exchange server, gmail, facebook, etc. and started updating my favorites for my phone contacts.  It was excruciatingly slow (10-60 seconds to come up), and the contacts selection interface crashes 8/10 times.  I have ~ 4800 contacts syncing from my corporate exchange Server.

I also noticed that my phone was DRAINING the battery in 3-4 hours.  I downloaded a CPU monitoring tool to find out that the process motorola.blur.service.main was running at 90%+ all the time - even from the home screen in most cases.  In another CPU monitoring tool, the offender is "Settings Storage / Sync Feeds / Android System".

And when I selected the "search" function in the contacts list and typed the first key into the search box, the unit hangs for 30-60 seconds then goes back to the home screen.  I'm assuming that Motoblur is having trouble keeping up with all of the contacts, but can't be certain.  

I've done some creative things with JuiceDefender to maximize my battery life, but I'm still under 5 hours even with minimal use.  

Is anyone else having these problems?  If so, how can I debug / fix this issue?  It's terribly annoying to wait 30-60 seconds to go from screen to screen and have your battery drain so fast.

[crb79]

Try taking the Contacts tab off of your home screens.  When an app or widget is on your home screens the motoblur process will activate it in the background..  

Also for your contact list, not a whole lot you can do to get around that other than weed out non-essential contacts.  Its just the shear volume of contacts that you have that is eating up resources when opened.  Any phone is going to have issues with 4,800 contacts.

[Sgoldsby]

Thanks for the tip.  I had already removed the contacts applets from all the home screens.  I concur that 4800 contacts is a bit much, but it shouldn't overwhelm motoblur.  My blackberry had no problems doing instant search through ~5000, and even the iphone 3g could handle it after searchlight had time to index it.   This is a defect, not a "feature" or "limitation".  I appreciate the concept of motoblur merging all that info, but when it ends up crippling the phone (which is what I bought it for), that's just not acceptable.

[tucker973]

Do you seriously need 5k contacts on your phone? That seems WELL more than excessive. But, hey, far be it from me to judge!

[crb79]

I think the problem with the motoblur is that it attempts to match info between contacts and facebook, email, or other networks.  When it's sorting through nearly 5k names and trying to link all the matches you run into problems.  I've had blackberrys that crapped out with 200 contacts and I've seen Iphone 3's go spastic with the same number.

I'd look at not syncing these contacts to your phone, or selectively syncing those you will use.  

[Sgoldsby · Accepted solution]

I don't know if this is a fix, but Here's how I got to a level of performance I can live with.  

I was syncing to my corporate server using motoblur's "corporate email" account (~5000 contacts).  I was also using motoblur's gmail (~5000 contacts), click the "copy to phone memory" checkbox (~5000 contacts) and facebook.    And I loaded Touchdown to get full feature MSexchange support (~5000 contacts).  So we're looking at motoblur trying to manage and merge ~20,000 contacts.  This was causing motoblur process to use 100% CPU until the battery died.  I could rarely make or accept phone calls or make or view text messages because those processes would block on  motoblur trying to reconcile the target phone number to  a contact name (touchdown/gmail/corporate email), photo (facebook), etc.

I reset the phone to factory and minimized my "accounts" configuration to:  gmail (email sync only, no contacts or calendar); facebook (~350 contacts); and loaded touchdown for  MSExchange support (contacts, email, calendar, tasks, ~5000 contacts).  

The phone runs like a champ.  It's a little slow reconciling phone numbers but doesn't run at 100% CPU all day or hang the interface.  

Watching the processes run, it looks like Motoblur would benefit from building a local index and updating it when contacts are added/removed/modified.  Right now it appears to build that stuff every time you perform an action on a contact, a phone or txt message comes in, etc.

Love this platform!

[crb79]

I don't know why I didn't mention this earlier, but with WinMo there was a way to add your contacts to your SD card.  I'm pretty sure there should be a way to do this with the Android OS.  This will clear up some of your system memory.