[GUI-Talk] Voice Over responsiveness decreased on IOS 14 and iPhone XS Max and new iPhone 11. It feels Sluggish.

[Santiago Velasquez]

Good day to you all,

I hope you are doing well.

I am hoping that somebody in this list hast come across this issue> Google has not been much help. And, I am not really sure where to go from here.

i have an iPhone XS Max. The iPhone was purchased at the beginning of 2019, and up until now, I have not had any issues with the phone. However, I upgraded to the public version of IOS 14, and after the update, Voice Over feels much slower to respond to inputs. Just so that there is no confusion: I am not referring to the speed of the voice. I am referring about how long Voice Over takes to speak based on my fingers moving across the screen. I also tried voice over on a 6 day old iPhone 11, and the responsiveness of voice over has also decreased. This behaviour occurs through the iPhone’s built in speakers, using wired earphones and with Bluetooth headphones: plus the delay that Bluetooth headphones add.

With that out of the way, here is what I have noticed and what I have tried on both phones.
1. The iPhones have never had any beta versions of IOS installed. They have all been public releases.
2. THe battery health for the iPhone XS Max is at 89%. However, the phone states that “Your battery is currently supporting normal peak performance”. For the iPhone 11, the battery health is 100%.
3. No new apps have been installed, the apps on the phones are the same as when they were running IOS13. And, the phones are not, and have never been jail broken.
4. I have restarted the phones multiple times, as well as closing all apps.
5. I have not reset, or deleted the iPhone XS Max yet. Due to work that is just not an option at the moment. Everything is backed up, but with so many online meetings happening and other reasons, I cannot afford the downtime. And, the iPhone 11 is not mine.
6. When I ask sighted individuals to play with the phone to see if it feels sluggish, both phones are performing normal. This is with Voice Over off.

With the aforementioned points, here is more info about the sluggish behaviour of Voice Over in IOS 14. Most of the time it is not terrible, but it is not good either. As you move the finger across the screen. It is as if you were wearing bluetooth earphones, and the delay that they introduce. If you own AirPods and or other bluetooth headphones, you know that the delay is somewhat tolerable, but it is quite annoying and frustrating when you are trying to move quickly through the phone, or when typing. However, over less than 3 days, there have been more than 9 times when Voice Over seems to trip over itself, and it just needs to catchup to the user’s input. Another very unusual scenario has happened when using the screen curten. If I turn the screen curten on, it turns the screen black as it is meant to do. However, in a few occasions, the screen curten turns off for a few seconds before turning back on. This is without turning voice over off, or performing any gestures similar to the 3 finger quadruple tap to activate and deactivate the screen curten. It has happen when I active a link in Safari, scrolling on the home screen, ETC. It usually last the time that it takes a page to load: 2 to 3 seconds. And the tripping over itself can last between 2 to 10 seconds. If anybody is currently running IOS13, have the Disney Plus app install and uses the app with Voice Over, the delay that Voice Over experiences when using the app: that is pretty much the same delay as I am experiencing when using Voice Over on IOS14.

If anybody knows why this might be happening, any info is greatly appreciated.

Regards
Santi