Question by Fliperamma · Oct 19, 2016 at 07:59 AM · audio bug mobile bug report battery

Constant white noise on all mobile games, possibily causing battery drain

Hey all, I would like to confirm with you guys if you also have this problem. So far I could confirm with everyone here at the company (100% confirmed so far). I'm not sure if this is a major bug or not, but I think it would be nice for Unity to check it out ASAP.

We received a report, with a screenshot, reporting a battery drain related specifically to Audio. Our game ir consuming 44% of battery and has an "Audio" tag above it on iOS. I'm not sure about the accuracy of the battery report on iOS but we don't have music or any constant playing sounds. I made tests with our other games and also with some other Unity games from the app store and they all have the same behaviour. I've also made a test on Android devices and the behaviour was also reproduced (So I could reproduce it on iOS and Android):

Compile or download a game to a mobile device, does not matter if it is a tablet or phone.
Make sure your device/'native' volume isn't on 'mute'
Open the game
If the game has any constant sound (i.e. music), stop it in the game. *The game should not be playing any sound
Put the device speaker onto your ear (touching your ear / very close), don't use headphones as some has noise cancelling
You should hear a white noise (i.e. 'shhhhhhh' sound)
Close the game or put it in background and the white noise should stop.

I've just filed a bug report which has the ID 843082

This image shows the screenshot on the iOS report that we received. Our game is the first one in the list. I've painted the games icons as I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share them here or not.

alt text

Thanks!

Fabio

screen-shot.png (87.3 kB)

Add comment · Show 7

txzeenath · Oct 19, 2016 at 09:27 PM 1

Confirmed here. Essentially bare build with no sound set up at all. Very faint white noise.

Fliperamma txzeenath · Oct 20, 2016 at 07:27 AM 0

Thanks! I was able to confirm on some other Android devices as well. I'm not sure about the relation to battery drain, but the iOS user report had a tag "Audio" to it on the device battery status report so perhaps that's a good clue. No answer from Unity so far though.

doublemax · Oct 19, 2016 at 09:40 PM 1

Can you post a link for the issue? I didn't find a way to search for that ID.

Fliperamma doublemax · Oct 20, 2016 at 07:23 AM 1

Hey Doublemax, I've tried to find it using the Issue Tracker but its not visible there yet (I guess it will eventually appear there, if Unity finds a way to reproduce the bug). I'll post here if it gets to the Issue Tracker but for now I only have the bug report #.

Fliperamma · Oct 21, 2016 at 01:22 PM 0

Received the answer from support today:

Hi,

I have talked with our developers about this issue. The battery usage you are seeing is not necessarily caused by audio, as those showings are probably not quite accurate. When we run our own battery usage tests, audio makes up for only a small fraction of the total battery usage.

If you don't use sound at all, you could go to Edit > Project Settings > Audio and check 'Disable Unity Audio'. This will disable all plugins that play sound.

So, according to this, iOS battery reporting is wrong.

tanoshimi · Oct 21, 2016 at 01:38 PM 0

Upvoted for such a thorough, well-explained question. Was the response from Unity talking about audio only accounting for a very small proportion of battery usage for your particular game in questions, or was that a general response?

Fliperamma tanoshimi · Oct 25, 2016 at 07:15 AM 0

Thanks Tanoshimi! I believe that was a general response.