iPhone SE battery drain after iOS upgrade 12.2 -> 13.3. Guilty app: Camera (audio)

Last night I did an online chat with Apple support. I copied my story above. The agent had me initiate an online diagnostics on my iPhone, which was received at Apple in minutes.

The agent did some checking, pronounced my battery in good shape, and claimed to have found an “internal document” with a remedy to my problem. The fix was to disable “performance management protections”.

That’s interesting for a couple of reasons. First, this “protection” has been set automatically by iOS previously when a sudden shutdown had occurred. I remember I was trying to use Google Maps with the phone at < 12% charge.

Second, it seems quite ironic to have an iOS bug that drains the battery, in a feature which is supposed to save the battery!

Also, note that this is a workaround, not a fix. Quite remarkable also is that Apple Support was actually able to help me!

My battery performance is back to pre-13.3 levels, which is still rather poor, but I’ll make do.

Thanks Sergekills for the reply. I have already done a restore.

The upgrade process had failed twice connecting to iTunes on my Mac Mini (latest software). Each time iTunes advised me that it could not update my iPhone due to an unknown error — a helpful message if ever there was :-/. Each update attempt took about 15 minutes. The phone sat there with only the logo and an unmoving progress bar.

I rebooted MacOS, reconnected to iTunes and opted for “Restore” from backup. This process completed, and voila, my iPhone was at 13.3 after this. I assume this does the same thing as the factory reset, is that right?

My battery health reports at 91%.

I’ll take it to my local store if no more help shows up here, thanks!

Greetings from Montreal QC.