Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Poor battery life after 4.2.1 update

R

raymondkerr

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 6, 2008
211
36
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Has anyone else noticed their battery not lasting anywhere near as long, after upgrading to 4.2.1 ? I fully charged my ipad last night (overnight) and I have been using it for about 2 hours now, light reading and web browsing, and my battery already is at 52%. I used to get days worth of general use from my ipad, but since upgrading to 4.2.1, I notice that the battery is not lasting anywhere near as long. Could it be to do with multitasking ? the fact that most apps are staying open in the background ?

Anyone else had similar experiences ?
 
I too am having similar problems although not as severe. I notice the battery life just clicking down after a few minutes from a full charge. I had that happen yesterday, I did a hard reset and when it came back up, the 92% that showed before the hard reset changed back to 100%! BUT, the drain remains. Not sure what to do about it. I am not jailbroken on my iPad, nor did I put any of the betas on there. I waited for the official version via iTunes.
 
I was actually running the first beta version of 4.2 before the release and can't say I noticed the problem then, only after updating to the official release, the battery problem appeared. I haven't tried a hard reset yet.
 
I've got the iPad 16GB Wifi only, just did the update today and have not noticed anything yet. I do have the "Ask to Join Networks" slider off. I did noticed that after I did the update a good percentage of my images in Photo were gone.
 
I also noticed decreasing of the battery life. Indeed it is 20-40% less then it was… However I noticed this even with 4.2 betas.
 
My battery went from being awesome to flat out bad after 4.2.1.


I tried closing everything in the tray, thinking things were running, but it didnt help much at all.

Hope there is a fix for it soon.
 
I'm noticing same thing as the OP, after 4.2.1 update

I've even turned off notifications, enabled Airplane mode but still battery seems to drop much faster. Need to do some more exact testing but generally speaking, after full overnight charge I used to be a able to go several days - now on 4.2 after only a few hours of browsing/reading I get down to 50% or less

EDIT:

here's a data point - after posting the above, I took note of my battery indicator and then went about some general browsing - e.g. reading this forum, Twitter app, reading in iBook, some google map lookups, a couple dedicated newspaper apps. NO video playing, youtube, or games, etc.
Notifications off. Airplane mode ON, but WiFi enabled. Bluetooth off. Brightness slider just below the halfway mark. Email accounts disabled (so no push emails).

battery dropped 20% in about 95 minutes. this seems so much worse than prior to 4.2 update.

I will try the recalibration idea, although earlier in the week I did let the iPad run down to 1% before plugging in - I had never seen the indicator that low before after just 1 day's use! - but I'll let it run completely down this time and try the recalibration process...
 
Last edited:
There has been many posts about this since iOS 4.x betas were released, myself and other found if you do a recalibration the battery life returns to normal. Let your iPad run down till it shuts off on it's own then recharge it overnight..
One member goes so far as:
"Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go."
 
Pinger said:
There has been many posts about this since iOS 4.x betas were released, myself and other found if you do a recalibration the battery life returns to normal. Let your iPad run down till it shuts off on it's own then recharge it overnight..
One member goes so far as:
"Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go."
Click to expand...

That's funny. I actually did this after I installed 4.2.1 because I hadn't done it in the two months prior I owned my iPad. (I can't put the thing down!). Anyway, I did the battery calibration because I had read post mentioning a possible battery drain with the betas. My drain started after the calibration. I'm going to try it again to see if this fixes my problem. I keep the multitasking bar basically empty to try to keep that from being an issue, if that's a cause, but that's not working. I wanted multitasking, I'm just not sure I use it more than I appreciate the longer life of an iPad battery before updating the software.
Thank you for the tip, I will try this again.
 
Don't any of you have iPhones? You now have multi-tasking. Which is wonderful, but if you keep apps open that you aren't planning on going back to, then yes, you are going to lose battery life. Occasionally i'll forget how many apps I have open on my iPhone and i'll wonder why i lose half my battery life by 4 o clock and I'll check and I have 20 apps in my multi-tasking bar.

Close the apps, regain some battery life.
 
Well after researching this issue some more for my iPhone 4 that is sucking battery life, it seems to be a problem after doing an update, the process itself. The fix seems to be to restore the software, as new, not the included backup. That should fix battery drain issues. Here is the post as it relates to an iPhone 4:

Lawrence Finch wrote:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2659278&start=150&tstart=0

You must restore as new; if you restore and reload your backup you are just putting the problem back on the phone.

Here's a graduated set of steps to resolve high battery drain. Only go as far as necessary; it is rarely necessary to do all of the steps. After each step reboot the phone (hold HOME and SLEEP until an Apple logo appears, ignoring "Slide to power off"):

1. Settings/General/Reset - Reset network settings (you will lose WiFi passwords, but nothing else)

2. Settings/General/Reset - Reset all settings (you will need to reset some additional settings, but will not lose data)

3. If you have Push email accounts: Settings/Mail,Contacts,Calendar - tap on the account name and switch it off (the account, not Push). Open the email app; verify the account is gone (and let the mail app know it is). After rebooting, go back to Settings and turn the account back on. Wait an hour before testing to give it time to sync back to the server.

4. Turn off Notifications in Settings. Test for a day. If the problem has gone away you have an app that is using data when it shouldn't be.

5. If you have EVER launched Game Center go to Settings/General/Restrictions and disable Multiplayer games. You will have to set a passcode to do this; DO NOT FORGET IT.

6. Look at the apps currently in the quick launch bar. When on the Home screen double-press HOME. tap and hold any app so "-" signs appear. Kill any apps that might use background such as Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, music streaming apps, etc.

7. If you have gotten this far and not fixed it you probably need to restore as New.
Click to expand...
 
Spontaneous switch-on in shoulder bag

I noticed an increase in battery usage with the 4.2.1 update ----then found that it was switching and apparently staying on in my shoulder bag as I traveled. Has anyone experienced that problem? Any fixes? i have a standard Apple cover on it.

Thanks for any help you can give me on this

Michael
 
If I restore as new, how will I get my purchased apps back? Especially apps that I bought during the sale? Coz I don't want to click on buy again in case I get charged. Thanks
 
Muscleflex said:
If I restore as new, how will I get my purchased apps back? Especially apps that I bought during the sale? Coz I don't want to click on buy again in case I get charged. Thanks
Click to expand...


In iTunes right click on your device and choose "Transfer Purchases"
 
I am very pleased with my iPad. The battery life is legendary. I spent an hour in Reeder, 30 minutes in Instapaper, an hour in Angry Birds and I am at 88%.
 
Am having the same issues with battery life after I upgraded. I am trying to remember to close all apps after I'm done with them, but then that defeats the whole multitasking aspect. :rolleyes:
 
pdawg said:
Am having the same issues with battery life after I upgraded. I am trying to remember to close all apps after I'm done with them, but then that defeats the whole multitasking aspect. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...


Unless your leaving an active app like Skype or Pandora running in the background, multitasking is not the source of major battery issues. I never close apps in the "multi-task" tray and I can usually go several days between recharges while logging 3-4 hours a day of heavy websurfing, reading, and editing documents. After the upgrade, I have noticed NO decrease in my battery life.
 
Glad to see I'm not alone. I came here about to post a thread on this and found this one first.

My drain, regardless of apps left running in the background, is almost the same while staying idle as it was prior to the update when using my ipad! My iPad would lose like 1-3% per day if not used for the day, but not it's losing about half its charge by sitting idle.

This sucks. My battery life has been reduced by at least 30% overall given my usage.

I read the post about restoring as new, but then how do I get all the data for apps back? I'll lose all the completed levels of games as well as data in things like "Poker Track" etc.

Restoring as new is not a valid solution. I hope they fix this soon!!
 
Scott-n-Houston said:
I read the post about restoring as new, but then how do I get all the data for apps back? I'll lose all the completed levels of games as well as data in things like "Poker Track" etc.

Restoring as new is not a valid solution. I hope they fix this soon!!
Click to expand...

I have verified this worked. I backed up my iPhone, restored as new, then applied a backup and it worked!
 
pcunite said:
I have verified this worked. I backed up my iPhone, restored as new, then applied a backup and it worked!
Click to expand...

Just to clarify...
1. Backup iPad
2. Restore 4.2.1 firmware in iTunes
3. Restore from backup made in step 1
This process doesn't result in any data loss, and also solves the battery issue?
 
abstraction said:
Just to clarify...
1. Backup iPad
2. Restore 4.2.1 firmware in iTunes
3. Restore from backup made in step 1
This process doesn't result in any data loss, and also solves the battery issue?
Click to expand...

Correct, in my case anyway... something to note is that for some people the battery issue is caused by an app, if that is the case for you, then when you restore, your just restoring that misbehaving app. For me, the problem was the 4.2.1 update procedure was bad and therefore had to be done again. The give away for me that I had a battery problem was my usage was the same as my standby times. The phone just never quit working...
 
I've been using my 4.2.1 iPad for about an hour, playing games, surfing the web and using a bluetooth keyboard.

I've gone from 100% to 95%. I find I get 10-12 hours of use, at minimum, still.
 
I am having the same problems. Never thought that it was the software update but now that you mentioned it.....
 
abstraction said:
Just to clarify...
1. Backup iPad
2. Restore 4.2.1 firmware in iTunes
3. Restore from backup made in step 1
This process doesn't result in any data loss, and also solves the battery issue?
Click to expand...

I tried this and it still doesn't solve my problem. It turns out that it's not the OS or the hardware. I did a blank restore of the OS and haven't added any apps. I've only connected to mobileme and gmail. So far, my battery is operating like it used to.

So I've ruled out the OS in particular, but likely, the OS and an App I have doesn't work together.
I have dozens of Apps!! How am I going to find which one it is?

I'm thinking of taking the next step of deleting all apps that have no historical data that I care about and start there.

Then, if it persists, I'll have to start deleting apps with historical data one at a time until it's not sucking battery.

My iPad loses about 20% overnight while just sitting there 'off' right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back