Have you recently noticed that your smartphone battery is draining faster than usual, even though you haven’t changed anything about how you use your device? The problem could be due to Google Message, the Mountain View company’s SMS application, installed natively on millions of mobiles.
Several Android users have indeed reported on Reddit that they discovered that Google’s SMS application was subject to a bug that would drain their device’s battery. This is in any case what emerged from the information provided by the battery management module integrated into the Android Settings.
9to5Google journalists have had the same experience. And they were able to find the exact cause of this problem by using the privacy function of Android 12. They discovered thanks to the latter that the camera and the microphone of their smartphone continued to be used by Google Messages even though the application was closed.
Google’s messaging application includes, like all similar applications, an option to share images in a message. But it has the particularity of integrating an option that activates the smartphone camera in order to take a photo on the fly to share it in a message. And it is precisely this functionality that would be responsible for all these evils. After being used, the smartphone camera continues to rotate in Google Messages, even when the function no longer appears on the screen. Even worse, the camera is still being used in the background by Googles Messages even though the app is closed.
To regain autonomy worthy of the name, the victims of this strange bug will have no other solution than to “kill” the application by closing it in the multitasking view, or by deactivating the authorization given to Google Messages from access the smartphone camera.
Source : 9to5Google