awdd process

I'm curious about this too. After a week my 4S shows hundreds of these entries and I can't determine what this process does or why it's (presumably) crashing. I have a 3GS onto which I installed iOS 5 and I intend to check that log as well to see if these sorts of entries are common or not.

I second that - I have hundreds of awdd crash reports and getting quite bad battery life.

I'm finding this too… lots of awdd entries.

Diagnostic info is automatically sent to Apple if you enabled that when you first setup the phone. To disable it:

Settings > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Don't Send

oceanhug wrote:

I second that - I have hundreds of awdd crash reports and getting quite bad battery life.

I have hundreds (thousands?), all sent to Apple, and good battery life.

I have noticed this list of diagnostic data entries for the first time with iOS 5 on my iPhone 3GS. I have noticed that after I upgraded my iOS to 5.0, that my iPhone lags in performance at times. For example, there would be a split second pause when typing text, a split second break in music playback when switching apps, etc. On several occasions, I would immediately look at my diagnostic data and observe a "low memory" entry made at time of the lag performance. On past entries, I also have seen "awdd" entries as well on my diagnostic data list. When I spoke to Apple about the "low memory" entries, I was told that it is the iOS's way of noticing that my memory space is approaching its limits and that I shouldn't have anything to worry about. My iPhone 3GS is a 16G and has about 4G left.

When I spoke to Apple about the "low memory" entries, I was told that it is the iOS's way of noticing that my memory space is approaching its limits and that I shouldn't have anything to worry about. My iPhone 3GS is a 16G and has about 4G left.

You're confusing storage memory and RAM runtime memory. The "low memory" state refers to RAM - the phone automatically clears out RAM as needed. The 3GS has 256 MB RAM, and the 4 and 4S have 512 MB RAM

Thanks Modular747. I did have that mixed up. So I understand then that the iOS is clearing out RAM for current apps that are running. Wow, 512 MB on the 4S! 🙂

Wow, 512 MB on the 4S!

Actually, that was seen as a disappointment by some who expected 1 GB RAM, like some Androgynous models. Actually, adding more RAM uses more battery, and the iOS is more efficient in RAM usage so that it's both faster than other phones with more RAM and higher clock speeds, and at the same time using less current.

I don't know if it's a coincidence but I'm not suffering bad battery usage now that I've disabled sending diagnostics data. My iPhone is still generating several awdd file per day but I guess that's OK.

Thanks for your help, modular747.

My iPhone 4S is also generating hundreds of these AWDD errors in diagnostics and I'm getting absolutely terrible battery life. I seem to have phantom usage as in when the phone is sitting idle (locked) the phone still reports its still in use.

In the office I can leave the iPhone on standby for 6 hours, not touch the phone and still have 5 hours "usage".

This is absolutely ridiculous as I feel I can't leave the safety of a power plug anymore!

You're welcome.

I wanted to chime in on the crash reports. Specifically that there are two parts in the process: 1) the app crashes, creating a report, 2) the report is sent to Apple.

Turning off #2, the sending of the crash report, is maybe *not* what we want -- because this is how Apple learns of the problem, to be able to fix it.

(If the sending of the reports does anything at all -- from posts above, it doesn't seem definitive -- and they are awfully small reports.)

So just a vote to say maybe we want to take a collective hit on battery life to be able to have the root cause remedied as quickly as possible.

I have the same thing and my suspicion is that this is part of the network problems and battery problems some of us have with the iPhone 4s - my 4s often produces one of those each minute over a time of 1-2 hours, no wonder it eats battery like cookies. And in some of those files I have seen messages that point to data communications (essentially what I have seen have been AT commands failing with timeout, which are used to setup comms hardware).

The logs are there to catalog occurrences and send them to Apple for review. They do not represent crashes, those are filed under specific crash reports (SIGSEV, SIGABUS, etc.). The awdd logs are tied to the awd daemon (awdd) and have nothing to do with battery performance and everything to do with data collection. Disabling "automatically send diagnostic and usage data" to Apple stops the awdd process from running and the subsequent logs from being generated. The logs typically record anomalies in iOS, not explicit crashes. These anomalies generally can lead to systemic problems (like iTunes failing to find your device during a wireless sync) that fall outside of a specific service crash.

I believe the logs are permanently stored to help Apple technicians should they ever service the phone. I have been unable to clear them out (a sync with iTunes transfers the crash logs to your Mac).

In any case, the files are tiny (byte sized), and help Apple collect data to better tailor their software. They are also anonimized so you shouldn't worry about privacy. Leave the awdd process active or not entirely depends on you, but don't worry about the logs. They have no relevance to battery performance.