The Battery Issue
For the last few months I was very unhappy with my iPhone 13 Pro battery.
It was discharging way too quick. How quick? After 10 hours after unplugging I usually got "battery low" alert. I didn't feel my usage throughout the day would be enough explain it.
I tried to troubleshoot it, but to no avail. The only hint I got was "Find My" app, that was using 100% of the battery when inspecting part of the available battery slope. I tried various strategies but wasn't able to fix it.
One day I barely touched my phone but it still drained whole battery. There was an StackOverflow post about someone using Instruments to figure out what was happening.
So, I installed XCode, put phone it in development mode (so I could connect to it), and ran Instruments with ActivityMonitor log:
`AccessibilityUIServer` seemed off. While it's "at point" CPU usage was small it contributed to 50% of CPU time. I wasn't sure what it might be, but due to further investigation decided to check Accessibility configuration.
When I opened the pane I immediatelly knew what was happening: Sound Recognition.
Long story short for unaware, iOS has Sound Recognition feature whichallows it to recognize sounds like coughs, baby cries, alarms and such. It's a fun feature I toyed with to get some data to look at or when I wanted to listen to music while waiting for someone.
...and I forgot to turn it off 🤦♂️
Unfortunately iOS keeps shows only last 24h with detailed data, so I don't have a lot to show, but that's how the Screen Time/Battery usage wasreported for the 10 days.
Day | Screen on | Screen off | Battery usage (approx) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | 1h 54m | 13h 55m | 80% |
2 | 1h 34m | 22h 22m | 100% |
3 | 2h 27m | 3h 41m | 95% |
4 | 2h 29m | 5h 21 | 110% |
5 | 3h 36m | 3h 38m | 125% |
6 | 47m | 27m | 95% |
7 | 1h 40m | 39m | 95% |
8 | 1h 43m | 2h 8m | 90% |
9 | 4h 4m | 1h 1m | 125% |
10 | 1h 19m | 28m | 20% |
I was resolving issue on day 9th and day 10th is the one with feature disabled. Problem solved!
Summary would be that it was me, the user (what a surprise), who got into situation that drained energy from their device.
I believe, however, that issue also lies in Screen Time / Battery Report which didn't include system-provided yet optional features in the report which made it very hard to find.