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Consumer Reports Finds New iPad Gets Warm, Can't Charge Under Heavy Loads

"During our tests, I held the new iPad in my hands. When it was at its hottest, it felt very warm but not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period.

We also noticed that the new iPad wasn't charging while the game was running and it was plugged in. In fact, the battery continued to drain. It charged normally, however, when we weren't running a game."

THIS IS A PR NIGHTMARE. THE IPAD GETS HOT TO THE POINT WHERE IT'S NOT ESPECIALLY UNCOMFORTABLE

Sensationalism at its finest.
 
I've never been able to charge either my iPad 2 or my new iPad off the USB port on any of my computers - I plug the dock connector in and it says "Not Charging" next the to battery.... It doesn't really seem to lose battery % when plugged in this way, but it definitely doesn't gain any either...

Even my iPhone 4 charges veeeeeery slowly when it is plugged into the usb port on my sony car stereo if I'm using TomTom at the same time, so this is hardly a new phenomenon...

I have no problems with a longer charge time as the battery more than gets me through the day and then it gets charged overnight...
 
thai4life said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

Does Apple manufacture the batteries themselves or are they 3rd party? I've got an idea. With that $100B in cash laying around why don't they start-up their own battery research and development arm of the company since its obviously the battery technology that's the real issue here!!!
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Apple has never had a battery problem until now, and that depends on if you define problem as "not particularly uncomfortable"
 
WestonHarvey1 said:
CR didn't just "ding" Apple on the iPhone 4 antenna - they went as far as to specifically recommend *no one purchase* what became the greatest selling and most loved phone in history. It was an absolutely baffling move by CR.
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That's not what they said. CR typically reserves "Don't Buy" stamps for products with safety defects. In fact, they made the iPhone 4 the highest-rated smartphone at the time. The only thing they withheld was their "recommended" stamp.

http://news.consumerreports.org/ele...m-issues-signal-strength-att-network-gsm.html
 
Let's Get Real

While running your basic quad-core graphics game stunningly on the Retina Display, the iPad will get warm if you are trying to charge it, and it won't charge up at the same time.

Well, don't be an idiot. Of course it will have those problems. If you want to play the game, you will shed some battery life. Will you maintain the level you were at while playing the game? I suspect so. If you plug it in and then start charging it while playing the most GPU-shredding game possible, it won't charge.

If you want to charge, play a video. It charges while doing that. It charges while using Pages or Numbers. It charges while playing podcasts. Getting the news from the New York Times. Doing 99% of what you're already doing. But I guess you have to postpone your 3D animation game until you're better charged.

I remember a while ago reading about an Android phone that lost charge while you're talking on the phone and it's in a car charger. That's a serious flaw.

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DaveMcM76 said:
I've never been able to charge either my iPad 2 or my new iPad off the USB port on any of my computers - I plug the dock connector in and it says "Not Charging" next the to battery.... It doesn't really seem to lose battery % when plugged in this way, but it definitely doesn't gain any either...

Even my iPhone 4 charges veeeeeery slowly when it is plugged into the usb port on my sony car stereo if I'm using TomTom at the same time, so this is hardly a new phenomenon...

I have no problems with a longer charge time as the battery more than gets me through the day and then it gets charged overnight...
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You might have a bad cable. My car charger gives me 15%-20% on the way to work. That's about 20 minutes.
 
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This is worrisome. Can I return and buy the iPad 2 until these issues are sorted? I'm sure a firmware upgrade will fix.
 
Swift said:
You might have a bad cable. My car charger gives me 15%-20% on the way to work. That's about 20 minutes.
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I've tried several cables, and it's absolutely fine when not running TomTom.... to be fair even with TomTom running it does charge, just a lot more slowly than if it is just streaming music through the dock connector with the screen off...
 
fupresti said:
The charging thing is accurate in my own experience. I was watching a movie on Netflix while the iPad was plugged into my MacBook Pro (Mid 2010 model) and the charge percentage remained constant through the 2 hours it was playing.
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I've seen a few people now say that they were using their iPad to watch Netflix, play a game, etc...and their battery percentage remained constant throughout the entire time. You do realize it's still charging though right? If it wasn't, your battery percentage most definitely would not remain constant...it would be much less.
 
Great Article...I agree

This was a great finding by CR. I, in fact, have had the same problem when running my "new" iPad. In fact, when I've played word with friends, it literally would stall in charging or decrease the battery. Worse yet, it gets very warm. For those of you who say this article was a diss, you either don't currently own the iPad or your misguided in your following of Apple (the company that can do no wrong).

I've been working for Apple now for 5 years and we know when we do something good and when we need to work on something to make it better. As a Apple retail employee in NYC, we need to make this better.
 
nippyjun said:
The newer macbook pro's don't charge up while under heavy load.

But keeping it charged while under heavy load, like the ipad 3, prevents the battery's charge from dropping much.

It's a non-issue.
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I have a new MacBook Pro. I've done heavy work with it; converting 8gb video files into 2.5gb file sizes using the x264 codec via Handbrake using high profile, a process that can take more than several hours to complete with all cores at nearly 100%. At no point did my battery power drain while being plugged in. Unfortunately, this is not the case for some users with an iPad.

If youre going to dismiss this as a major fault, I would have to question if you are either in denial or are exhibiting strong devotion to a brand.
 
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Unless CR put the screen on 100% brightness and ran Navigon in the background while routing to a destination or used a computer USB port or iPhone charger to charge their iPad, I don't see how this is possible.

I just ran Infiniti Blade II at standard 50% brightness while plugged into the 10W charger that came with iPad and I gained power while playing the game. In a matter of minutes I went from 69% charge to 70% charge while dueling with some big nasty monsters.

Apple's standard battery test is at 50% brightness so I simply mimicked that (also, that is my standard iPad brightness level indoors). Incidentally, the iPad is barely warm to the touch. I could keep this up for 45 minutes, but I have better things to do with my time than vet CR's tests. That's there job.
 
I thought i was the only one with the charging thing. My iPad actually started discharging when i had it on full brightness watching Youtube vids even though it was plugged in!
 
Boo hoo

Maybe we should all just move back to typewriters and pads and pencils?

Seriously. End of the day, technology moves forward, we want more pixels, more performance, better battery life, etc etc etc, heat has always been the downside of performance.. on pretty much everything ever made.

And although the charging via the 10w adaptor under heavy loads cutting out is concerning, Apple probably did the right thing here.. Give everyone a 20w adaptor and you'd still have a million idiots walking into Apple stores with their iPhone chargers and third party $2 chargers from China ranting about how it's not charging their iPad 3.

If anything this product reeks of SJ... If he was still around he'd just email you "working on it" and miraculously nothing would change except people's expectations, and it will all be forgotten. :p
 
This issue isn't exactly new. The older iPads also had trouble charging via USB. If you had a standard USB, you could only sustain charge if you had the screen on. High-powered USB ports could charge it while in use, but very slowly. Now the new iPad is even more power hungry so it shouldn't be surprising that USB ports can't keep up with the power demand.

As for the wall charger, maybe Apple should have provided a higher powered charger. But, in normal conditions it manages to keep the iPad charging in use and only in extreme use would cause a slow drain. Even the chargers with apples laptops can't satisfy the power needs. That is why it takes energy from the battery to help meets it needs when you are doing something power intensive. And why as mentioned earlier if you remove the battery from the MBP's that had removable batteries, it would underclock the CPU since at full speed, there wouldn't be enough power available to get 100% out of the CPU at its regular speed.
 
Good.

If the stock takes a hit, it'll be another buying opportunity.

BTW, I noticed the same USB-charging thing with my 1st generation iPad.
 
Steviejobz said:
This is worrisome. Can I return and buy the iPad 2 until these issues are sorted? I'm sure a firmware upgrade will fix.
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You most likely can. Most places have a return policy.

But I truly believe that doing so would be a severe overreaction. I haven't had any actual problems aside from "oh hey that's kinda warm."

Like someone said...it's not any warmer than my MacBook.
 
TheBronx said:
Not being able to charge under heavy load sucks. The heat thing is still a drama queen induced hysteria.

Apple will still sell millions :D
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I am a reformed drama queen;), but the heat issue is very real, and can be uncomfortable in a non-hysterical sort of way, but not bad enough for me to want a replacement. There is hope that software will fix it by reducing cpu load. They definitely need to up the power of the charger to 20W.
 
Did anyone think that perhaps the warmth and charging issues are really features?

-as most wealthy nations are in northern areas,this warmth feature will really come in handy...think about how your fingers would get cold and make it hard to move around...but apple figured this out and keeps are fingers toasty warm...well done!

-taking a long time to charge is a built in feature so that we don't spend to much time on the ipad..this allowing us to reconnect with our family on a personal basis...apple the family friendly company!
 
Who Cares

When I play infinity blade on my iPad 2 while charging at the same time it barely charges so this is nothing new except that the iPad 3 loses a little charge. So the horror of it all...you have to charge the iPad 3 while not playing infinity blade. Life is no longer worth living. ;)
 
It charges fine for me even while I'm watching Netflix. I guess I just can't play infinity blade two for more than 10 hours. Oh well, I guess I'll get over it.
 
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