High battery consumption (10 times higher) when connected via BT to car (BMW MINI 2017)

[mpiet]

Plan

Free and Premium

Country

Germany

Device

(iPhone 12 Mini)

Operating System

(iOS 14.4.)

Car

(BMW MINI Clubman F54, Navi professional with Spotify support and Harman soundsystem)

My Question or Issue

When my iPhone connects to my car via BT, then on iPhone the Spotify app is started in Background and hast high activity which i can see on the battery consuption, see attachment. It is not possible to deactivate the Spotify feature in car, so even if i kill the app on iPhone, on next Connection the Spotify app is started again in Background and discharge my battery even if i playing a local FM Radio Station. I do not like apps that have high battery usage when they are not used.

[Ver]

Hey @mpiet,

Thanks for posting here on the Community 🙂

In case the app is started in the background, some battery usage is expected. 

It's a good idea to check if the background app refresh setting on your iPhone is enabled for Spotify. If so, we'd suggest you disable it.

In case nothing changes, it's also a good idea to check if you can close the app after it launches in the background.

Keep us in the loop! If you have questions, you know where to find us.

[mpiet]

Sorry, but when a app is in background and is not used, it should not use so much battery as in my case.

I tried a lot of, disabled background actualization, disabled mobile data usage for Spotify, activated the battery saving modus, set Spotify to offline playback but nothing helps.

Only to closes Spotify after its started helps, but this is totally unpracticable. I was also looking for an iOS automation but the iOS Shortcuts do not have a possibility to close an app.

[Ivan]

Hey @mpiet, 

Thanks for getting back to us.

We can confirm that according to our data and reports received the battery consumption indeed may vary, but communicating with a car's infotainment systems, even when in the background, falls between the acceptable consumption reported.

We'll keep optimizing the Spotify app to find the best balance between battery usage, comfort and functionality, but for now it looks like the app is behaving as expected. We understand this might not be the expected consumption and we hope we'll be able to improve this in future updates.

Hope this helps. Let us know if you have any questions. 

[mpiet]

Please let me know when there is a fix regarding this issue. From technical point of view it is only acceptable, that after the BT connection the spotify app on phone is started and an initial communication is performed and then only a "keep-alive" communication between car and spotify app on phone should be active.

Now there must be much more because the spotify power consumption is too high and this damages the iPhone battery over weeks and month. My temporally sollution is to deactivate BT in car, but i can not use the hands-free function for phone calls 😞

[mpiet]

I measured now the higher power consumption via a USB power meter.

Preconditions:

iPhone battery is since hours fully charged, iPhone is connected to charging cable. BT is not connected to car audio system. Screen is off.

Action / Result:
The average power consumption is at 0,102 Watt (without BT connection).

After automatic connection to car audio system by turning on Ignition the average power consumption is between 0,600 and 1,020 Watt. Of course i checked and observed the power consumption after some minutes the connection was established because of some sync processes between car and iPhone.

And even after driving around over 40 minutes the Spotify power consumption did not change.

This is a 6 to 10 times higher power consumption just in standby without any playback, an absolutely NoGo. This behaviour forces that my iPhone battery will be empty within ~10 hours just during driving around with locked screen, a real battery wasting disaster.

The power consumption changed to 0,102 - 0,020 Watt after i killed the app in background.

The Spotify customer support stopped supporting me after they ask 15 mail question which i all answered exactly.

A good customer support should request debugs and check what is going on in the background and then fix this issue.

I observed the same issue on the iPhone 11 from my wife, so it is not an single case.