Xopoz

The issue

While the Xopoz map screen is open, Xopoz is always in active mode. It asks Android for a GPS position every 10 seconds and keeps that request open for as long as the map is visible. Android shows the location icon in the status bar while an app uses GPS, so with the map open, the icon should be there the whole time.

On an Honor 9, we saw something different. When the map screen opened, the location icon appeared for about 10 seconds and then disappeared. Xopoz stayed on the map screen and never closed its GPS request. To the user, it looked as if Xopoz had stopped using GPS.

This article follows the investigation with ADB, step by step. It shows what Xopoz, the location service, the GPS hardware and the operating system were each doing when the icon disappeared.

Test device

All values below were read from the phone with adb shell getprop and adb shell uname -a during the investigation.

adb shell getprop ro.build.fingerprint
HONOR/STF-L09/HWSTF:9/HUAWEISTF-L09/9.1.0.220C432:user/release-keys
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.emui
EmotionUI_9.1.0
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.release
9
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.sdk
28

What the user saw

This screenshot was taken 1 minute 24 seconds after Xopoz requested GPS. The map screen is still open, and the location icon is gone:

How Android 9 decides to show the location icon

Android keeps a record of what each app does with location, called app-ops (app operations). Three of them matter here:

Xopoz cannot set or clear these app-ops itself. Android sets them when an app opens a location request and clears them when the request ends, or when Android decides the request is no longer high-power.

Investigation step by step

The phone was connected with USB debugging. The commands below are standard ADB commands that anyone can run. Personal data (coordinates, account identifiers) is masked or removed from the outputs.

1. Does Xopoz have an open GPS request?

adb shell dumpsys location
    gps:
      UpdateRecord[gps com.tbr.xopoz(10141 foreground) Request[ACCURACY_FINE gps requested=+10s0ms fastest=+10s0ms lowPowerMode=false]]
...
    com.tbr.xopoz: gps: Min interval 0 seconds: Max interval 10 seconds: Duration requested 675 total, 675 foreground, out of the last 1773 minutes: Currently active

Finding: yes. Android’s location service shows an open request from Xopoz on the gps provider, every 10 seconds, with the app in the foreground. The request is currently active.

2. Is the GPS chip powered on?

adb shell dumpsys batterystats --history | grep -E "[+-]gps"
    +1d05h29m35s239ms (2) 048 -gps +top=u0a72:"com.huawei.android.launcher"
    +1d05h29m36s874ms (2) 048 +gps +top=u0a141:"com.tbr.xopoz"
(no -gps line after this one, checked again at 20:59:03)

Finding: yes. The battery history logs every time the GPS hardware turns on (+gps) or off (-gps). Times are offsets from the last reset of the battery statistics (2026-10-03 15:21:55), so +1d05h29m36s is about 20:51:32, give or take a second or two. The chip turned on when Xopoz came back to the front and was never turned off afterwards.

3. Does Android still count it as high-power location use?

adb shell dumpsys appops
  Uid u0a141:
    state=top
    Package com.tbr.xopoz:
      GPS (allow / switch COARSE_LOCATION=allow):
          Access: top   = 2026-10-04 20:51:33.464 (-1m36s615ms)
          Running start at: +1m36s615ms
      MONITOR_LOCATION (allow / switch COARSE_LOCATION=allow):
          Access: top   = 2026-10-04 20:51:42.121 (-1m27s958ms)
          duration=+8s656ms
      MONITOR_HIGH_POWER_LOCATION (allow / switch COARSE_LOCATION=allow):
          Access: top   = 2026-10-04 20:51:42.122 (-1m27s957ms)
          duration=+8s657ms

Finding: this is the key contradiction.

• GPS is still Running, started at 20:51:33.464.
• MONITOR_HIGH_POWER_LOCATION is no longer running. It lasted 8.657 seconds and ended at 20:51:42.122. MONITOR_LOCATION ended at the same millisecond.

8.6 seconds matches what the user saw: the icon appeared for about 10 seconds, then disappeared.

4. Did Xopoz change anything at 20:51:42?

adb exec-out run-as com.tbr.xopoz cat files/…/Logs/xopoz_2026-10-04.log
[20:51:33.450] [LocationPower] PowerMode: MODE_POWER_SAVE → MODE_ACTIVE (mapVisible:true)
[20:51:33.456] [LocationServ ] ---- requestLocationUpdates: Gps, Period=10s
[20:51:33.466] [LocationServ ] ---- NETWORK requesting updates as indoor fallback
[20:51:33.478] [LocationServ ] ---- Continuous GPS + NETWORK updates started successfully
[20:51:35.985] [LocationHand ] ---- LocationCallback: [network] lat=…, lon=…, acc=100m
(no Xopoz location call between 20:51:33.478 and 20:51:42.122)
[20:52:15.988] [LocationHand ] ---- LocationCallback: [network] lat=…, lon=…, acc=100m
[20:52:56.001] [LocationHand ] ---- LocationCallback: [network] lat=…, lon=…, acc=100m

Finding: no. Xopoz opened its GPS request at 20:51:33 and did not stop, change or renew it. After that it received network positions only (100 m accuracy) and no GPS position at all.

Note: run-as works only with a debuggable build of Xopoz. With the Play Store build, use Send a support ticket with Include log files from the left menu instead.

5. What happened in the operating system at 20:51:42?

adb logcat -d -v time -b all
10-04 20:51:33.465 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gps_start: called.
10-04 20:51:33.470 I/FusionD (  772): (fd_start_gnss:1070):gnss start.
10-04 20:51:40.091 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gnss_sv_status_cb: called. num_svs(4)
10-04 20:51:42.097 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gnss_sv_status_cb: called. num_svs(4)
10-04 20:51:42.099 E/gpsd    (17648): ASSERT in GlGpsdInterface.cpp:1423: Abnormal GlEngine stop. Initial time estimate was bad#ERR4
10-04 20:51:42.117 D/libgps  (  756): reset_wakelock: called.
10-04 20:51:42.187 D/        (17775): gps client init!
10-04 20:51:42.243 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gps_start: called.
10-04 20:51:42.243 I/FusionD (  772): (fd_start_gnss:1061):gnss start again.
10-04 20:51:42.380 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gps_xtra_download_request_cb: called.
10-04 20:51:42.893 D/libgps  (  756): proxy_gnss_sv_status_cb: called. num_svs(0)

Finding: 23 milliseconds before Android cleared MONITOR_HIGH_POWER_LOCATION, the GPS daemon gpsd (process 17648) hit an internal assertion and stopped: “Abnormal GlEngine stop. Initial time estimate was bad”. A new gpsd process (17775) started and the GNSS engine was started again (“gnss start again”), with 0 satellites in view.

6. Is it a one-off?

adb logcat -d -v time | grep "ASSERT in GlGpsdInterface" | grep -v "We find"
10-04 20:50:17.754 E/gpsd (17024): ASSERT in GlGpsdInterface.cpp:1423: Abnormal GlEngine stop. Initial time estimate was bad#ERR4
10-04 20:50:53.537 E/gpsd (17203): ASSERT …
10-04 20:51:18.311 E/gpsd (17450): ASSERT …
10-04 20:51:42.099 E/gpsd (17648): ASSERT …
10-04 20:52:11.932 E/gpsd (17775): ASSERT …
10-04 20:52:35.762 E/gpsd (17891): ASSERT …
10-04 20:52:59.567 E/gpsd (17926): ASSERT …
10-04 20:53:23.385 E/gpsd (17978): ASSERT …
… 17 crashes in total between 20:50:17 and 20:59:00, each with a new process ID
10-04 20:59:00.155 E/gpsd (19147): ASSERT …

Finding: no. The GPS daemon was in a crash loop, restarting about every 24 seconds. After each restart the number of satellites in view starts again from 0 and never went above 4, so no fix was ever produced. The system log on the phone goes back to 12:35 that day and contains no such crash before 20:50:17.

Timeline

Conclusion

• Xopoz requested GPS and kept the request open the whole time (location service, app-op GPS running, Xopoz log).
• The GPS hardware stayed powered on (battery history: no -gps).
• The icon disappeared because Android ended the high-power flag, 23 ms after the OS GPS daemon crashed. Xopoz made no call at that moment.
• The cause is inside the operating system: the vendor GPS daemon was crashing in a loop with an internal assertion about a bad initial time estimate.

So on this phone, the location icon may not appear even though Xopoz needs GPS and has asked for it. Its absence comes from an operating-system fault, not from a decision by Xopoz. In this state the phone also delivers no GPS position, so Xopoz falls back to network positions.

After a reboot

The phone was then restarted. After the restart, with Xopoz open on the map screen, the location icon stayed in the status bar the whole time, as expected.

This is consistent with the analysis. A restart starts the GPS daemon from a clean state and ends the crash loop. As long as gpsd does not crash, Android keeps MONITOR_HIGH_POWER_LOCATION running and the icon stays visible.

Known issue? Firmware update?

We searched public sources for the exact error (GlGpsdInterface.cpp:1423, “Abnormal GlEngine stop. Initial time estimate was bad”) and found no report of it. gpsd is closed, manufacturer-supplied software, so its error messages are rarely published. Users have reported general GPS problems on Huawei and Honor phones after updating to EMUI 9.0, 9.1 and 10 (signal lost, positions jumping), but no single fix has been found.

Result: the test phone runs the newest firmware we could find, or a newer one. The Honor 9 no longer receives updates, so no firmware fix for this crash should be expected.

Sources: Huawei Central, XDA Forums, Wikipedia: Honor 9, GSMArena, firmware.center, mobilebaz.

What this analysis does not show

• Why gpsd crashes. The message points to a bad initial time estimate in the GNSS engine. Automatic date and time were on. The daemon is closed vendor code.
• How often it happens. It was seen once, on one Honor 9, during a 9-minute session. Earlier the same evening the same phone delivered GPS fixes of 11–13 m accuracy without any crash.
• Every case of a missing icon. The same user also saw no icon earlier that evening while GPS was working normally. The app-op record for that moment had already been overwritten, so that case could not be analysed.
• Other phones. Other Huawei, Honor or Android 9 phones were not tested.

Check it on your own phone

With USB debugging on and Xopoz open on the map, run these commands. If the first two show Xopoz using GPS but the third shows MONITOR_HIGH_POWER_LOCATION with a short duration instead of Running, look for the GPS daemon messages with the fourth.

Related articles

See “System killed Xopoz”: Crash or Not? for the battery settings Huawei and Honor phones need, Android GPS Configuration for general GPS setup, and Location Providers for GPS versus network positions.