Massive Slowdown & Non-Responsiveness While Charging

[skmwrp]

First time I tried this and twice it happened. I needed to charge my iPad and while it was hooked up to standard outlet charger, I worked in AD for iPad. But then, after a while, the UI became slow and non-responsive. Two-finger tapping wouldn't Undo, two-finger rotate wouldn't rotate the canvas, pinch didn't zoom half the time. Buttons became non-responsive. Brush drawing lagged the pencil.

Both times, I unhooked the lightning cable but the problems persisted. I then dumped AD from memory and started it again, but still a problem. I tried Procreate, but had no issues, though I didn't try much else because I pretty much use the iPad only of AD. The only way to fix this was to restart my iPad (which I did with the home-power force restart on startup to make sure anything funky was out of the way.)

Still can't figure if this was an AD issue, or a iOS issue. Will keep trying to figure this out when I have time, but wondered if anyone else has seen the same.

iPad Air 3 with latest iOS & AD.

And it happened the third time I tried it.

[Dan C]

Hi @skmwrp,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble!

On 4/16/2021 at 6:52 PM, skmwrp said:

Still can't figure if this was an AD issue, or a iOS issue. Will keep trying to figure this out when I have time, but wondered if anyone else has seen the same.

I'm in the process of testing this here, however I require a little further information in order to investigate this further.

Can you please confirm for me:

1. When charging the iPad and the device becomes slow, do you notice the iPad is particularly warm/hot to the touch?
2. Does this happen in any document, or only a certain document? It may be that the document you're editing is causing this issue and the fact the iPad is charging may not be related.
3. What steps are you taking in the app whilst it's charging? Are you using any specific features? I'd like to try replicating your workflow as closely as possible.
4. How long after starting charging the device do you notice these slowdowns?
5. After restarting your iPad, you mention the issue appears to be resolved, which could indicate a memory bug rather than one related to charging - if you plug the iPad back in right after restarting, does the issue return immediately?
6. Are you charging the device from a particularly low charge point (ie under 10% battery) or does it not seem to matter what the battery charge value is?

My apologies for the extensive list, simply the more information you can provide the easier it will be for our team to investigate and log this, as required.
Many thanks in advance 

[skmwrp]

We haven't been able to test this again the past few days, as we're preparing on the Mac the files we'll be working with on the iPad. But this is what we can give you so far…

1. When charging the iPad and the device becomes slow, do you notice the iPad is particularly warm/hot to the touch?
   • iPad's on an aluminum laptop stand, and is covered across the back by a fairly thick case, so we wouldn't noticed that, but we'll check next time. As far as the surface, no one remembers it seeming particularly warm.
2. Does this happen in any document, or only a certain document? It may be that the document you're editing is causing this issue and the fact the iPad is charging may not be related.
   • Always the same kind of document, which is an AD file with multiple layers, because that's the only documents we're working on at the moment. We do most work on the Mac, but actual inking on iPads. We're inking, so we're adding many, many brush strokes, but this has never been an issue when using iPad unplugged. And the battery didn't seem to drain particularly fast when used unplugged, so it doesn't seem like any sort of constant resource usage. That's why we're leaning towards thinking it's an iOS issue, but we need to try using other apps when this happens to see if they're affected as well. If they have problems, iOS issue; if not, AD issue. The problem just seems to creep up on you.
3. What steps are you taking in the app whilst it's charging? Are you using any specific features? I'd like to try replicating your workflow as closely as possible.
   • Vector brush using Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon, pressure is off, we manually select brush thickness using the calculator interface (which is why we really wish the Enter & Delete key were working in that interface) using a paired bluetooth numpad.
4. How long after starting charging the device do you notice these slowdowns?
   • About 2-3 minutes? We'll pay more attention.
5. After restarting your iPad, you mention the issue appears to be resolved, which could indicate a memory bug rather than one related to charging - if you plug the iPad back in right after restarting, does the issue return immediately?
   • We'll test.
6. Are you charging the device from a particularly low charge point (ie under 10% battery) or does it not seem to matter what the battery charge value is?
   • Charging from 60% or higher. This was never an issue before because the iPad iss on its own special artist table and to charge it, it had to be moved to the charger on the desk, so we weren't using it while charging. Have since run charging cable to the table so now it can be charged while being used, and the first time we tried this, the issue appeared. Using a standard 5w Apple adapter back then with standard Apple USB-A-to-Lightning. Now have USB-C adapter and matching Apple cable, but haven't used it yet. If the problem doesn't appear with this new charger, we'll try switching back to the slower charger and see if it occurs.

That's about it. We just about have a whole boatload of files we'll be working on the iPad, so we'll be able to do further testing shortly.

[skmwrp]

Okay, we got it to happen again, this time using the new charger. It wouldn't happen at first, but the iPad was already at 100%, so we thought maybe it has to be actually trying to charge it up, so we unplugged it. Then after working for a while, running down the battery to 97%, we plugged it in again, but this time we were in AD. Maybe that's how it starts, by plugging in the charging cable while in an app. The non-responsiveness was almost immediate, seen primarily in attempts to zoom & rotate using two fingers.

Switched to Apple Pages, had no issue, but you really can't do much there. Then switched to Procreate and while we could draw fine (raster vs vector), the gestures to zoom & rotate also became non-responsive, sometimes taking multiple attempts to rotate as nothing but an Undo when it finally came back.

Had to restart iPad to get it to stop.

Anyway, this seems to be an Apple issue, not specific to AD, though we're in AD 98.16% of the time, madly zoomin'n'rotatin', where it's more pronounced because we're trying to do something, you know, useful & productive.

So not you! Sorry about the kerfuffle, but we couldn't get this to happen in Procreate until we realized the two-finger gestures were the key.

(Now if y'all'd just get that Deselect key working.😉)

[Dan C]

Thanks for the further information provided here, it's certainly appreciated!

On 4/19/2021 at 1:47 PM, skmwrp said:

we plugged it in again, but this time we were in AD. Maybe that's how it starts, by plugging in the charging cable while in an app. The non-responsiveness was almost immediate, seen primarily in attempts to zoom & rotate using two fingers.

I've tried this here and although the app didn't immediately become unresponsive for me, I certainly did notice the app felt a little more 'sluggish' than usual after around 5-10 mins of use.

On 4/19/2021 at 1:47 PM, skmwrp said:

Switched to Apple Pages, had no issue, but you really can't do much there. Then switched to Procreate and while we could draw fine (raster vs vector), the gestures to zoom & rotate also became non-responsive, sometimes taking multiple attempts to rotate as nothing but an Undo when it finally came back.

Thanks for confirming that, as you've mentioned this sounds like an issue (or at least caused by) iOS - interestingly enough a colleague of mine who I was discussing this with mentioned his iPhone slows down when he connects it to charge and believes this is due to the background downloading/updating that iOS does when a charger is connected.

Using a resource manager app on iOS, I do see the CPU usage increase around 10-15% when no apps are running after connecting a charger, so this might explain the slowdown you're seeing.

I can suggest connecting the iPad to charge with your WiFi / internet data switched off, so the iPad cannot connect to any network - do you still see a slowdown when the charger is connected but these options are off?

On 4/19/2021 at 1:47 PM, skmwrp said:

Anyway, this seems to be an Apple issue, not specific to AD, though we're in AD 98.16% of the time, madly zoomin'n'rotatin', where it's more pronounced because we're trying to do something, you know, useful & productive.

So not you! Sorry about the kerfuffle, but we couldn't get this to happen in Procreate until we realized the two-finger gestures were the key.

No problem at all, thanks for bringing this to our attention! 

On 4/19/2021 at 1:47 PM, skmwrp said:

(Now if y'all'd just get that Deselect key working.😉)

I'll 'bump' the development log for this issue now!

[skmwrp]

22 hours ago, Dan C said:

I can suggest connecting the iPad to charge with your WiFi / internet data switched off, so the iPad cannot connect to any network - do you still see a slowdown when the charger is connected but these options are off?

Turned off WiFi (in Settings, not the bogus swipe-down shutoff) and the problem still occurred, though it came & went, and took a bit longer to start. Still, rotating & pinching came to a complete stop for about 10 seconds, while opening & closing studios using keypad was unaffected. Had to restart iPad. (Well, maybe didn't have to, but the problem was still occurring after I unplugged it and I'm just too impatient otherwise.)

[Dan C]

Thanks for trying that and I'm certainly sorry to hear this hasn't helped!

I've found a few other reports online from customers experiencing similar issues on iPads - the majority of the suggestions are such:

Restart your iPad - which we know can help but certainly isn't ideal

Ensure you are using the correct wattage charger - in a few threads customers reported iPads running slowly when charging using a 5W charger, but when using the provided 10W charger the same slow down did not occur.

Have your iPad checked at a Genius Bar - in one thread a customer confirmed that Apple Genius Bar tested his iPad both connected and disconnected and found there to be an issue with the iPad and therefore replaced it. I appreciate this requires the device still being under warranty and it may not be defective, but it could be worth a trip to an Apple store if possible.

Failing this we can only hope that iOS will release an update to address this shortly 

[skmwrp]

21 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Ensure you are using the correct wattage charger - in a few threads customers reported iPads running slowly when charging using a 5W charger, but when using the provided 10W charger the same slow down did not occur.

We're using a 20W Anker Nano Charger. If it actually charges at that speed, we don't know.

Anyway, more information to give others.

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "[iOS] Hardware keyboard issue: Deselect command doesn't work for objects, only pixel selections" (REF: AF-1092) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.3.0.2139".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.