Battery drain while off on iPad3

[hfg]

My current generation iPad (64GB, 4G LTE), after working fine since new, has started excessively draining the battery while turned off. It will totally drain the battery from fully recharged state in about 2 days while off and not being used. It may be total coincidence, but it may have started after the latest IOS update. Battery life seems normal when using the iPad, it just drains when off.

I have performed a total reset/restore of the OS and apps with no change.

I have made sure that all apps have fully shut down and nothing is running, cellular is turned off. It seems to happen when powered off by the power-button, or by the smart-cover.

Is there something in IOS 5 which runs in the background that could be causing this?

Thanks for any help you can provide...


-howard

 

[drambuie]

Are you really turning it off? To turn it off, you hold the power button until the red power off slide button appears at the top of the screen, then slide to turn it off. If you close the cover, or press the power switch briefly, you're only putting into sleep mode. Even in sleep mode, the battery should discharge very slowly, much longer than 2 days. Make sure cellular, Wi-Fi, and location services are turned off.

I have a 3G 64GB iPad 2 with IOS 5.1.1, and fully off, it takes almost a week for the battery to drop by 1%.

 

[hfg]

No ... perhaps I used wrong terminology ... it is in the sleep mode, not totally turned off. But, as you say, it used to last for weeks in sleep mode, now the battery will go dead in a couple of days.

 

[drambuie]

Do you have bluetooth turned on?

 

[hfg]

Do you have bluetooth turned on?

Bluetooth is not on ... but wouldn't that be inactive if the iPad was sleeping?


I see that "Location Services" is on ... does the GPS monitor location even if the iPad is in sleep mode ... that could be a significant drain?

 

[drambuie]

If bluetooth is ON, it's always active even in sleep mode. It's monitoring for bluetooth activity, to wake the iPad. I think the GPS chip is active in sleep mode if "Location services" is on.

 

[hfg]

Help ... Does anyone have any insight on this new development?

I requested a return/repair on this iPad and in preparation, I reset all settings and content (I had done this once before including a restore of IOS on it), and gave it a WiFi hookup to load the basic out-of-the-box application suite.

I then fully charged it in preparation for shipping it back.

However, it has been sitting in "sleep" mode for some time, and is showing no battery discharge characteristics as I had seen previously. I am now wondering if some app or game I had installed was consuming power when the iPad is sleeping ... is that even possible?

I had about 130 apps installed, pretty much a generic mix of news, weather, games, etc. plus some photographs and a few books/pdf references. Nothing very fancy.

I am now thinking of postponing the return for repair and reinstalling the apps in small groups, starting with the earliest purchased (when I had no problems) and see if at some point the battery discharge issue reappears.

Thanks for any suggestions you may have ...

-howard

 

[hfg]

Do any applications (iCloud, Mail, App Store) have push notifications even if they are not active while the iPad is sleeping? If a app was doing this periodically using WiFi 24/7 would this not consume battery life even when the iPad is not being used?

 

[Ashwood11]

Do any applications (iCloud, Mail, App Store) have push notifications even if they are not active while the iPad is sleeping? If a app was doing this periodically using WiFi 24/7 would this not consume battery life even when the iPad is not being used?

My Mail will push through when my iPad is in sleep mode.

 

[hfg]

My Mail will push through when my iPad is in sleep mode.

I have suspected so since I find the mail is already populated with new emails immediately when I turn it on.

I have also noticed that the App Store is already showing updates available when the iPad is first turned on.

So... something is running in the background even when sleeping ... but probably not enough to discharge 30% per day with no actual usage.


-howard

 

[drambuie]

I thought you said that the cellular and wi-fi were turned off. If they, along with bluetooth are turned off, no connections should be made during sleep. If you suspect that an app can somehow be enabling the wi-fi, enable airplane mode. With airplane mode ON, the RF devices are locked out and cannot be accessed through manual settings or software.

 

[hfg]

I do normally leave WiFi "on", even in sleep mode, which I would think most all users do. I do not have bluetooth on, so it shouldn't be receiving any wake-up signals.

I did enable my mail accounts today, including iCloud mail, and I am now starting to see the battery gauge slowly drift down when I check it after several hours of standby. I am trying to recall if my battery drain problems started when I recently enabled iCloud on my computers and iPad.



-howard

 

[hfg]

More information for anyone interested and following this thread:

I have done some experimentation and it appears that my standby/sleep battery drain is related to enabling iCloud and the push updates and locating features introduced in a recent IOS 5+ update. Turning these features off seems to eliminate the excessive power drain and restores my iPad standby battery life to that of a month ago (pre iCloud membership).

Doing a bit of research led me to an Apple Support Community discussion forum with others having the same problems:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/16680224#16680224

Hopefully it might be fixed in the next release!


-howard

 

[hfg]

Thanks for the response ...

I did finally get it fixed with several resets and 2 total reinstalls (plus there was an IOS upgrade in there).

Somehow, it all started working again with normal "sleep" battery life. So I cancelled my repair ticket and it is working fine now.


-thanks