iPhone battery drain

My iPhone battery mysteriously drained 10% in 20 minutes

iPhone battery drain
This morning, my iPhone suddenly got warm in my pants pocket. 20 minutes later, its battery had drained 10% in 20 minutes. At this rate it was going, my iPhone’s battery would be flat within a few hours. I had to stop that from happening!

I was furious!

So, what was the cause of this mysterious battery drain? Which background app is responsible? If I found out which app it is, I would not hesitate to delete it immediately and give the app developer a piece of my mind in the App Store review.

It turned out that the cause was yet another bug in Apple’s iOS 13.2.3 operating system. The offending app was Apple’s own Music app. Upon launching that app, I saw it repeatedly trying to sync my iCloud Music Library. The syncing failed, and instead of aborting, it tried again repeatedly, thus draining its battery.

At this point, you can perhaps blame the bad mobile phone reception as the cause of the sync failure. But that has been ruled out. I had excellent phone reception and the mobile broadband in my iPhone was working.

So, where was the bug?

Well, I did not have any Apple Music subscription! I used to have an active subscription, but not anymore. Without an active subscription, there was no music library in the first place. And when the Music app tried to sync to a non-existent music library, no wonder it will fail.

To stop the syncing, I had to go to Settings > Music and turn off the “Sync Music Library” option. That option should not exist in the first place because I don’t have an active Apple Music subscription. After that, I went back to the Music app and confirmed that it had stopped trying to sync.

Later, when I went back to Settings > Music, guess what? The “Sync Music Library” option disappeared!

Apple, if you are reading this, please get your act together! iOS 13 is full of show-stopping bugs. I rather have LESS FEATURES in the upcoming iOS 14 than have one that is full of new features and full of stupid bugs like this!


Terence Kam

I am a Technology Consultant, whose passion is to help small businesses reach their full potential through mastery of digital technologies, strategies and marketing.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *