android - Detect Volume Button Press when Screen off

Question

I have a service that detects when the display of my Android phone is turned on or off. When turned off, the service calls an activity that uses dispatchKeyEvent to detect when the volume up button has been pressed. Unfortunately, apparently the activity can't do this when the screen is off. (See this post.)

I've noticed, though, that something at some level is detecting that event, since the following LogCat message appears when I press the volume-up button when the screen is off: "CatService: Return current sInstance". The message seems to be device specific, since on a different device something different appears in the log, but I'm really only concerned about the first device.

I've done some research into CatService, but haven't found much and can't figure out how I might be able to use it, or whatever is generating the log message, to detect the volume up button press. I'd appreciate any light that anyone can shed on this.

Answer 1

The only way to keep detecting things like this when the screen is off is to acquire a WakeLock that will allow the screen to turn off, and still let your app function. However, this drains the battery life quite a bit, and should only be used when absolutely necessary.

In this case, you will need a PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK.