iPhone – Fix Siri Draining Battery on iPhone SE (iOS 12.3.1)

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About 4 days ago I noticed a firm and steady battery drain on my iPhone SE, that the Settings attribute to Siri (see screenshot below).

I did not (or don't remember doing) do any changes in settings at that time.

I installed a few apps recently, so I deleted some of them and offloaded the rest.
I also disabled some Siri related settings (like suggestions).
Apparently (some of) the above stopped the drain for about an hour, but then it continued. So… looking for solutions.

I almost never user Siri. Like once a week maybe, usually even less. (I use it mostly for testing as in "I wonder if Siri can do this" – the answer is usually "no, it can't")

screenshot

Best Answer

Non-solutions:

  • turning Siri Suggestions off
  • turning Siri off "completely"
  • playing a song in iTunes/Music (suggested here by DRH255)

These made no change.

Solution:

  • disable the option Settings / General / Keyboard / Enable Dictation (got the hint here and in the above link)

Funny thing, I did not have that option at all, because it appears only when a keyboard language that supports it is added. So I had to add "English (United Kingdom)" to my keyboards, then the dictation option appeared, I turned it off and... the problem is gone.

PS: This post on reddit suggests it is not really draining the battery, only the indicator is showing the wrong value....

*edit*: this seems to (also) be the case. I left my iPhone to drain the battery completely and when it reached 1% it kept going for 5 more hours, always showing 1%. Before that it decreased by 2-3%each hour.

PPS: It still uses about 15% during night, which is too much according to some, but that is probably a separate problem.

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