iPad iPadOS 13.4 (and 13.4.1) auto brightness stopped working and iPad running hot

[felixen2121]

Hi

I am using an iPad mini 5. For some reason the auto brightness stopped working when I installed 13.4 and 13.4.1 did not fix it. Does anybody else here have this problem?

In general 13.4 has not been very good for this device. It runs very warm and is also loosing battery very quickly. This is with Siri and location services off.

I tried a hard reset, reseting settings and setting up as new. Nothing seems to fix it. My hope is that 13.4.5 will have some bug fixes.

This is the first time I have had major issues with an iPadOS/iOS version, and I have been using iOS since iPhone 3GS and the original iPad.

I also have an iPhone 11 Pro and iPad Pro 11" 2018. I am not experiencing any problems with 13.4.1 on those devices.

Any suggestions? I am considering signing up as a beta tester to try 13.4.5. Never tried a beta before though.

Thank you all in advance.

 

[aakshey]

With iOS 13.3 auto brightness stopped working on multiple iPhones and iPads in our household. No iOS update nor multiple DFU restores nor All Settings Reset have fixed that. On some devices these things have helped a bit. On others there has been no impact. On at least one device it has caused a hardware defect. On other devices it may or may not be hardware yet.

 

[felixen2121]

With iOS 13.3 auto brightness stopped working on multiple iPhones and iPads in our household. No iOS update nor multiple DFU restores nor All Settings Reset have fixed that. On some devices these things have helped a bit. On others there has been no impact. On at least one device it has caused a hardware defect. On other devices it may or may not be hardware yet.

That sounds pretty horrible. I guess I am not the only one. Thanks for letting me know.
It sounds bad that it actually caused a hardware defect. What kind of defect is it?

 

[aakshey]

That sounds pretty horrible. I guess I am not the only one. Thanks for letting me know.
It sounds bad that it actually caused a hardware defect. What kind of defect is it?

Auto brightness doesn’t work.

 

[Isamilis]

With iOS 13.3 auto brightness stopped working on multiple iPhones and iPads in our household. No iOS update nor multiple DFU restores nor All Settings Reset have fixed that. On some devices these things have helped a bit. On others there has been no impact. On at least one device it has caused a hardware defect. On other devices it may or may not be hardware yet.

After DFU restore, do you restore from backup? If you don’t, usually this fixed the issues, with the expense effort to reinstall everything and losing non-iCloud data.

 

[aakshey]

After DFU restore, do you restore from backup? If you don’t, usually this fixed the issues, with the expense effort to reinstall everything and losing non-iCloud data.

Didn’t restore from backup. Started afresh. It’s a hardware issue.

 

[felixen2121]

Well, I am starting to think it is a hardware issue as well. I did a DFU restore this morning. Clean install from scratch via iTunes. It has been laying on my desk for 5 hours and the battery has gone down 19%.

I just got off the phone with Apple support. They ran a remote diagnostic, but of course it revealed no software problems. I guess that makes sense, as the install is clean. That is all they could do for me.

He suggested that I take it to the store where I bought it, which is unfortunately a third party reseller. Now I will have to explain the problem to them, and I suppose they are not exactly technical geniuses. Anyway, the stores are closed now due to COVID-19. Sucks.

By the way, the first thing the guy on Apple support did was to look for battery health under "Battery" in settings (via screen share). This is the second time I've had to explain to an Apple employee that battery health is not something you can look up on iPad, just on iPhone.

 

[aakshey]

Well, I am starting to think it is a hardware issue as well. I did a DFU restore this morning. Clean install from scratch via iTunes. It has been laying on my desk for 5 hours and the battery has gone down 19%.

I just got off the phone with Apple support. They ran a remote diagnostic, but of course it revealed no software problems. I guess that makes sense, as the install is clean. That is all they could do for me.

He suggested that I take it to the store where I bought it, which is unfortunately a third party reseller. Now I will have to explain the problem to them, and I suppose they are not exactly technical geniuses. Anyway, the stores are closed now due to COVID-19. Sucks.

By the way, the first thing the guy on Apple support did was to look for battery health under "Battery" in settings (via screen share). This is the second time I've had to explain to an Apple employee that battery health is not something you can look up on iPad, just on iPhone.

Ya. Can’t you take it to an Apple store? Isn’t it under warranty?

 

[felixen2121]

Nah. Unfortunately we don’t have Apple Stores here in Denmark. It is under warranty though. We have two year warranty here. So that is at least something, but I still presume it will be a challenge to make the reseller understand and accept the problem.

I just noticed something really weird. The auto brightness toggle is missing. Seems like there is a software issue.

It should be under “reduce white point” right.

 

[aakshey]

Nah. Unfortunately we don’t have Apple Stores here in Denmark. It is under warranty though. We have two year warranty here. So that is at least something, but I still presume it will be a challenge to make the reseller understand and accept the problem.

I just noticed something really weird. The auto brightness toggle is missing. Seems like there is a software issue.

It should be under “reduce white point” right.

If you’ve already done DFU, feel free to try once more. But this is a hardware issue, not software issue. iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues.

 

[felixen2121]

If you’ve already done DFU, feel free to try once more. But this is a hardware issue, not software issue. iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues.

Crazy. Never heard about that before. I wish Apple would just admit that the problem is made by them.

 

[aakshey]

Crazy. Never heard about that before. I wish Apple would just admit that the problem is made by them.

It is pretty common. Just search around.

 

[Todd Booth]

i woke up this morning with very dim screen on 13.4 update how I got it working on ipad Air 3rd gen since u also have a physical home button hold your power and home button untill you see Apple logo worked for me After a hard rest. Hopefully this will work for u

 

[duggram]

Worked for me this morning. Moving the brightness slider had no effect at all. Hard reset and it's back to normal.

 

[Lisa Snook]

All I had to do this am after the 13.4.1 update was power down, not hard reset. Thankfully!

 

[macstatic]

Reading these experiences are scary. Especially this:

iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues.

I'm currently at 13.3.1 on an iPad Mini 5, but have been holding off due to reports like these. Are these likely newly introduced bugs (fix some, add some new bugs) or is it Apple's efforts in making their devices less attractive as time goes by so we have to buy new devices (from them of course)?
Long posting made shorter: is it worthwhile updating the iOS to this version (and in general) or is it a safer bet to go along with "if it works then don't fix it"?

 

[aakshey]

All of this is very rare. Updating almost never causes such issues. But in exceedingly rare cases such stuff does happen. I still update. Day zero. I don’t wait.

 

[macstatic]

I'm a little confused as you said yourself that "iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues" (see quote below) and I read all the time about people being disappointed with lower battery life after certain updates.

If you’ve already done DFU, feel free to try once more. But this is a hardware issue, not software issue. iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues.

 

[FeliApple]

I'm a little confused as you said yourself that "iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues" (see quote below) and I read all the time about people being disappointed with lower battery life after certain updates.

Dunno about permanent hardware issues. What I can tell you is that every single iOS update to date has decreased battery life and impacted performance on every single device when compared to the original version, except for some select first major version updates (6s to iOS 10 or 5s to iOS 8, for example). Want to have a good iOS device regardless of what Apple launches? Never update, you’ll be fine.

 

[aakshey]

I'm a little confused as you said yourself that "iOS updates are known to cause permanent hardware issues" (see quote below) and I read all the time about people being disappointed with lower battery life after certain updates.

I don’t understand your question. There is no contradiction here.

 

[macstatic]

Dunno about permanent hardware issues. What I can tell you is that every single iOS update to date has decreased battery life and impacted performance on every single device when compared to the original version, except for some select first major version updates (6s to iOS 10 or 5s to iOS 8, for example). Want to have a good iOS device regardless of what Apple launches? Never update, you’ll be fine.

It's that bad?
So basically the rule of "if it works don't fix it" applies here.

I did hear of a lawsuit against Apple where the issue was Apple slowing down older devices performance with every new update, forcing people to replace their devices every few years because of that. So this is still going on?

 

[aakshey]

It's that bad?
So basically the rule of "if it works don't fix it" applies here.

I did hear of a lawsuit against Apple where the issue was Apple slowing down older devices performance with every new update, forcing people to replace their devices every few years because of that. So this is still going on?

The last I heard Apple was settling for $0.5 billion.

 

[FeliApple]

It's that bad?
So basically the rule of "if it works don't fix it" applies here.

I did hear of a lawsuit against Apple where the issue was Apple slowing down older devices performance with every new update, forcing people to replace their devices every few years because of that. So this is still going on?

Yeah, if it works, don’t fix it. I’d say that’s a good approach.

 

[aakshey]

So far the AB issue has been resolved on: (touch wood, fingers crossed, early impressions only)

iPhone 11 Pro
Both iPad Pro 11
iPhone 7

Hasn’t yet been resolved on the iPhone SE (but I’m confident I can fix it if dad allows me to )

Here’s how it was fixed:

iOS 13.5. It did momentarily fix some issues. But they returned within minutes.

So here’s what I did next.

On the iPhone 11 Pro - Reset All Settings did the trick.

I had done this numerous times before including after DFU. But it never worked till iOS 13.5.

On the iPhone 7 - just Disabling and enabling AB again fixed the issue.

The above didn’t work on my iPad Pros. So I DFUd one and set it up again from scratch. That fixed it. Again, had done thing numerous times before iOS 13.5. But the issue never got fixed before. This time that fixed it.

Then the other iPad Pro I again DFUd and restored from the first one’s new backup. Again, fixed.

@Vitali @James, Your Engineers might not have publicly accepted the fault. However it’s possible they went out of their way to fix the issue in the iOS version thay was about to be released. And although just updating to iOS 13.5 directly didn’t fix my issues. But some troubleshooting post iOS 13.5 (all of which had failed earlier, Many times), was what did the trick.

So I’m grateful and I am thankful that my issue was resolved. I hope it stays this way.

On a side note, a new tempered glass helped fix my iPhone 11 Pro Face ID. And Reset All Settings also fixed the video recording issue I had with my iPhone Pro.

Thanks so much. God Bless!

Aakshey

——
Aakshey Talwar
Founder, GaiaQ.com - Building an ROI-centric Marketing Concierge

 

[aakshey]

Woke up and AB is again not working correctly. On any of my devices.