still plagued by battery problem?

By LaBoheme, 16 March, 2014

Forum

iOS and iPadOS

i am shocked nobody has mentioned the cause! it is simple, dictation is the problem. whenever you use dictation, iphone won't lock properly. you can verify this by listen to the speaker port when your phone is locked, there is a hissing sound coming out of it, reproducible 100% on iphone 4, 4s, 5 and 5s. you can fix this temporarily by reboot your phone, but fortunately for vo users, you just need to turn vo off and on again to fix this. just tell siri "voiceover off", tap the "listen" button, then "voiceover on", you're all set. do this again whenever you use dictation again, till apple fixes it. so now go tell apple about your finding, thanks. p.s., siri won't cause the problem, only dictation does.

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Battery issues

I rarely use the dictation feature in my iOS devices. Unfortunately I'm still facing battery issues in my iPhone 5S.

Still hissing

I have noticed the hiss before but hadn't attributed it to dictation. I tried both methods you suggested here, VoiceOver off and reboot, but unfortunately the hiss remains?

the hiss

as long as there is residual power, there will be hissing sound, it should disappear within 30 seconds or so. does the hiss go on constantly? you can also check on settings > general > usage. if the phone is not properly locked, the ratio between battery usage time and stand-by time won't make sense. for example, say you usage time is 5 minutes and stand-by time is 1 hour 5 minutes and you lock your phone. unlock your phone 20 minutes later and you'll see the stand-by time is 1 hour 25 mins and the usage is 25 mins, then you know you have a problem.

interesting

For myself, I'm starting to notice that the battery drain happens a lot more when I have certain apps open, apps that used to be fine open. Solara is actually an example of this. However, I tested out this dictation thing, because I do use it a lot, and it does, in fact, continuously hiss after the phone is locked. This may account for the major discrepancy in what it says in usage, and how long I actually used the phone. Turning voiceover off and on does not work for me. The hiss continues. However, if you play any other sound on the phone, it fixes it. This is actually really annoying, because I often use dictation to text. I'm not sure if this was causing all of my battery issues, but I do think it's a contributing factor. Now that I'm aware of it, I'm going to use dictation, and let the hissing go on for an hour or so and check my battery. Then I'll fix the hissing issue, and test it again. I'll let you know if I find anything.

Actually the hissing has

Actually the hissing has been an issue since I have been using iOS, since 2010. I'm quite surprised that apple has not fixed the problem. I just tested this and the hissing does after about 30 seconds go away so maybe they did fix it in in ios7.0.6

Take care.

results

I don't think this is the only battery issue, but this is definitely a huge factor. Under normal circumstances, if my phone is sitting for an hour, my battery level is usually the same, though after several hours pass it will obviously go down. However, after using dictation, and allowing the hissing to continuously happen for an hour with the phone locked, the battery went down 3 percent in that hour. I should also note that my usage went up by an hour during that time as well, even though the phone was locked. I also figured out that it's not the turning off and on of voiceover that fixes the problem. If you tripple click the home button to turn it off and back on, the hissing continues, even after the phone is locked. However, playing a sound fixes it, which is why turning voiceover off and on via siri works, because the siri sound plays. I just tried it by activating siri, but giving her no command. The siri sounds played, then I locked the phone, and the hissing has stopped. I never had this problem using iOs 7 before, until this update. This is really annoying because I use dictation a lot. Guess I'll just use siri.

old hissing problem

i can assure you the old hissing problem of 2010 has been completely fixed since ios 4. the hissing in ios 3 was caused by some apps could not suspend properly. i was still jailbroken at that time, so i could see what was going on. today's problem is more complicated. as far as i can tell, all apps are properly suspended, meaning they are not running in the background when they are not supposed to. it's a problem of the operating system itself.

you won the award!

"I also figured out that it's not the turning off and on of voiceover that fixes the problem. If you tripple click the home button to turn it off and back on, the hissing continues, even after the phone is locked. However, playing a sound fixes it, which is why turning voiceover off and on via siri works," wow, that's something.

Even though the probable in

Even though the probable in 2010 is fixed he hissing still occurs for a different reason, but it is still nevertheless the same problem so to me the problem is not fixed at all. It just has roots in a different part of the code.

not fixed

i reckon nobody reported this to apple? when i said you should report it, i meant it, because i certainly cannot do it myself.
more bad news: i have concluded this particular bug only affects voiceover users, so unless you let apple know, it will never be crushed.

A quick solution

It may have been mentioned here before, but the problem can easily be solved via the following: After using the dictation feature and/or your phone, simply hold down the home button for Siri. Once you hear the two tones that indicate Siri is on, press the home button again. At this point, you should hear the two lower tones that occur if you have not said anything. Return to the main screen of the device, and the problem should be solved when you lock it. Hope this helps.

Not Fair to Blame Others

LaBoheme,

I think it's quite unfair for you to blame the AppleVis community for iOS 7.1.1 not containing a bug fix for the battery life issue--and for you to expect that others will contact Apple about a problem that you yourself are having. How would you feel if other community members blamed you because you were unable to contact Apple?

Just because iOS 7.1.1 does not have a fix for the battery life problem, what evidence do you have to suggest that people have not reported the issue to Apple? For the record, I spent most of my free time last week trying to troubleshoot this very problem on my iPhone 5S--going so far as to take the phone to the Genius Bar and have it swopped.

Michael Hansen

Hi,

Hi,
I agree with certain points. Personally, from what I can see, my battery issue seems to be fixed on my 5S. Wierdly, over last weekend, I would have the phone unplugged from power overnight and the battery would only drop 2% or so, not a big problem. To the users of 7.1.1, could you confirm my thoughts that the battery drain bug has been fixed? I don't know if is fixed for certain phones or not, but I haven't had trouble with this lately.
HTH and take care.

i did not blame the community

i merely surmised nobody reported this bug to apple and stated the fact that i could not do this myself. if you want to construe it anything else, it's your own freaking problem.

LaBoheme

LaBoheme,

I am not sure how else one was supposed to interpret "when i said you should report it, i meant it, because i certainly cannot do it myself"? It sounded as though you were blaming other community members for not contacting Apple about the issue.

Justin, I am still experiencing the battery life bug in iOS 7.1.1.

i blame you

it was not fixed because you didn't report it, it was all your fault, now that's blame.
i surmised no one reported it and i said i couldn't do it, and you were blaming me blaming the community?

Michael,

Hi Michael. I am guessing when you swopped the phone at the genius bar, the problem persisted?
I've been thinking whatever is causing this problem, could it be related to Cell data? What I mean is, if you turn off the data will the problem go away?
TC.

Problem Persisted

Hi Justin,

Yes, unfortunately, the problem persisted after swopping out the phone. I did not restore from a backup initially and still noticed rapid battery drain. I did some experimentation with restoring from a backup, then setting the device up as new again...and each time I noticed consistent battery drain. Given that using my device without restoring from a backup did not seem to help things, I went ahead and restored the device from the backup and have left it that way since.

Michael

Battery Drain due to a bug on iOS 7.1?

LaBoheme,

Just my honest opinion but the statement did come across a bit harsh I had the impression that you couldn't do it all alone and if anybody really want this to be fixed. That we get off of our tush and let them know about it.

From what I've seen. I am seeing this all across the board. VoiceOver on or off. A lot of my sighted friends are having the very same problem.

For me I am seeing a faster than normal draining when I am out and about. So my cell usage seems to be draining it faster than when I am at home or on Wi-Fi. It will then at that point slow down. However, it is still draining quite a bit. I still think it is an iOS 7.1 bug that hasn't been resolved yet. If there are this many people just on this site having the very same problem. I'm sure they already know about it. Don't get me wrong. I always will tell everyone to please report it to Apple. Just drop a simple message to them. This battery drainage is very apparent. There has been a lot of mainstream articles to support the fact there is some sort of problems on this matter. To me this yet another sign it is way more than just for VoiceOver users.

I have tried all of the things like turning the Airplane Mode to OFF, Location Services to OFF, Background App Refresh to OFF, and/or resetting the devices frequently. Nothing seem to be the silver bullet for me. It still persist.

So as I hope others will agree. We just need to be patience. I think we aren't done with all of the updates quite yet. Well I least hope not.

Some things to keep in mind

I have participated in beta testing for software in the past, so I know something about how bugs are, or sometimes are not, resolved. It's not as easy as, "Report it, and it will be fixed."

The time it takes to resolve an issue varies on a lot of factors, including how easily the problem is reproduced under controlled circumstances, the amount of work required to discover the underlying cause, or causes, of the problem, and the amount of effort it takes to implement a resolution. Additionally, sometimes issues remain unresolved simply because there are too many other items on the To Do List for the developers with a higher priority.

I will also point out that the release notes from Apple for iOS 7.1.1 do not say anything about battery drain issues. Given the widespread nature of the battery issues, I would expect that Apple would include mention of battery drain fixes if they were present in the update. Therefore, I am not at all surprised that people are continuing to experience problems with their battery usage with this new update.

As was stated earlier, have patience. Don't expect everything to be fixed overnight.