Q: Siri is draining my iPhone battery
I have an iPhone 4S running iOS9.3.2. Several days ago, I was skulking around playing a podcast to my Bluetooth headphones. As I shifted to another podcast, I noted that my iPhone was oddly warm. I looked at the battery charge and it was down to 50%. This NEVER happens. So I plugged it in and did a few other things. I also asked Siri what was wrong. Siri would not say. (I should point out that I NEVER use Siri.) I did a number of other things, and then I plugged the iPhone into iTunes and it said I had to update the system. I set it to download the new software. After a while I came back and it said that the download had failed. So I hit upgrade and it said I had the latest system. So I proceeded to go through all of the preferences and turn off all of the location things and background things. And then I went and found that 55% of the battery was being spent on Siri. So I turned off Siri (which I never use anyway) and turned off the Siri voice thing. I got up this morning with the phone fully charged, I took a shower and it was down 20%. I charged it again and set it to low power, put it on a table and after 2 hours, only 3% was gone. Yet a little later today, I reached over and it is warm. I am using the phone less, and NOW Siri is using 75% of my phone battery.
Now here is another funny thing. Many months ago, my phone speaker stopped working for many applications--such as podcasts. It worked for phone calls and speaker phone stuff, etc. After I did all of these alterations, and removed a couple of Gigs of audio files, suddenly my speaker is working again for podcasts and NPR etc.
And yes, I have done some reboots and I guess the only thing left is to blank it out with restore iPhone and then restore the backup.
I have trolled around and I have found many threads dealing with the issue of being unable to turn off Siri. By the way, under the Battery listing for Siri, it says "low signal." Now why should that be when I am almost always in a very strong WiFi area and I have turned off most all data access.
So why can't I delete Siri?
iPhone 4S, iOS 9.3.2
Posted on Jun 22, 2016 3:28 PM
