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Ipad 3 Battery is Awesome

M

Mikekan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 31, 2012
130
1
Athens, Hellas!
It seems that although it takes very long to charge (6-6.15 hours) the ipad 3 battery is awesome and considerably better than my ipad 2. I am 100% certain of this. With the same use I think I am getting around 1.5-2 hours more use. I have only charged it 4 times, since last Friday I bought it. Just an observation...

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue...
 
Mikekan said:
It seems that although it takes very long to charge (6-6.15 hours) the ipad 3 battery is awesome and considerably better than my ipad 2. I am 100% certain of this. With the same use I think I am getting around 1.5-2 hours more use. I have only charged it 4 times, since last Friday I bought it. Just an observation...

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue...
Click to expand...

I've charged it 3 times in 2 weeks.
 
I only mentioned how many times I charged to show that maybe the battery is not even optimized yet and not to support my point, everybody is using his ipad in a different way.
 
I can get through about two or three days of use before I have to charge it.

This is with using it to stream movies from iTunes on home sharing sharing and watching movies on Netflix, surfing the Internet on Safari and using some productivity apps.
 
Mikekan said:
It seems that although it takes very long to charge (6-6.15 hours) the ipad 3 battery is awesome and considerably better than my ipad 2. I am 100% certain of this. With the same use I think I am getting around 1.5-2 hours more use. I have only charged it 4 times, since last Friday I bought it. Just an observation...

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue...
Click to expand...

Although not nearly as good as the iPad 2 imo, my 3 has got much better since day one and a calibration. I can go just about 2 days easy using it easily 4-5 hours a day
 
I was just thinking the same thing yesterday. I took my iPad off the charger at 6:00 a.m., used it throughout the day for surfing and light reading and by the time I went to bedd close to midnight it had only dropped to 80%. It's far better than my iPad 2 battery.
 
How much is apple paying you guys to say that?

My iPad 3 battery life is way shorter than my iPad 2. I would play games for an hour and it would drop 20-25%. On my iPad 2, it was around a 10% drop.

What gives??
 
Battery usage has certainly witnessed a decline over the iPad 2. It's still decent but iPad 2 rules the roost.

It's most notable from 100 to 80 percent, iPad 2 would drop to 90% with equal usage.
 
I think brightness is the single most significant setting that affects battery life. If you use yours at 100% brightness it will drain the battery like crazy and it heats up too, but I found that if I lowered the brightness to about 50 on auto it would always pretty much stay cool and a could get a good 10h of battery no problem. I wonder if the power consumption for the backlight is exponential...
 
rz-jacks said:
I think brightness is the single most significant setting that affects battery life. If you use yours at 100% brightness it will drain the battery like crazy and it heats up too, but I found that if I lowered the brightness to about 50 on auto it would always pretty much stay cool and a could get a good 10h of battery no problem. I wonder if the power consumption for the backlight is exponential...
Click to expand...
Could be the duller iPad screen is forcing some people to crank up the backlight higher than they did for the iPad2.
 
It's much better than my iPad 1 but I think that's also a side effect of everything being so much faster. I can get way more done on less battery now! =)

Though I don't have an iPad 2 to compare to most of the independent sites that tested the battery showed it didn't last as long as the 2 running the same tests at the same brightness.
 
VFC said:
Could be the duller iPad screen is forcing some people to crank up the backlight higher than they did for the iPad2.
Click to expand...

Odd, even with the PS AG film, I found I had to tick my brightness down the slider's width from center.

I agree on batt., at the end of 3 days I still had 22% battery left, and decided, hrmmm well I suppose I should charge it LOL. Incredible.
 
Mikekan said:
It seems that although it takes very long to charge (6-6.15 hours) the ipad 3 battery is awesome and considerably better than my ipad 2. I am 100% certain of this. With the same use I think I am getting around 1.5-2 hours more use. I have only charged it 4 times, since last Friday I bought it. Just an observation...

I would like to hear your opinion on this issue...
Click to expand...

That's wonderful. Which apps and how was your usage? Is the battery life as legendary on Infinity Blade, Real racing or any other game?

----------
VFC said:
Could be the duller iPad screen is forcing some people to crank up the backlight higher than they did for the iPad2.
Click to expand...

I dont think its duller. I think the retina has been calibrated to iPad 2's levels. Mine looks the same although I keep it as dim as I can get away with. The A5x is a bigger hog will use what it needs and you cant do anything about that.
 
MacAttacka said:
That's wonderful. Which apps and how was your usage? Is the battery life as legendary on Infinity Blade, Real racing or any other game?
Click to expand...


It doesnt really matter what I use, it only matters that I am using the same things as with my previous ipad which is what I am comparing to...:)
 
yeah the battery is better than the iPad 2. I have to charge every 3-4 days, and thats with heavy usage. At first it wasnt so great but calibrating it fixed that.

Considering the hardware its pushing Im impressed.
 
5aga said:
yeah the battery is better than the iPad 2. I have to charge every 3-4 days, and thats with heavy usage. At first it wasnt so great but calibrating it fixed that.

Considering the hardware its pushing Im impressed.
Click to expand...

Agreed. For about a week I tried out a 1 then a 2 before opting for the 3, and the battery lifespan is really good. I know its not a close comparison, but my brand new dell laptop at work gets like 2.5 hours of time, and even with pretty heavy daily usage streaming movies at 85% of the brightness level I'm getting between 9-11 hours of usage time - pretty amazing.

Speaking of the battery, do you people constantly "top-it-off" and frequently charge the battery, or do you just drain it down to like 10% and then fully charge all the way back up in a single cycle?
 
rz-jacks said:
I think brightness is the single most significant setting that affects battery life. If you use yours at 100% brightness it will drain the battery like crazy and it heats up too, but I found that if I lowered the brightness to about 50 on auto it would always pretty much stay cool and a could get a good 10h of battery no problem. I wonder if the power consumption for the backlight is exponential...
Click to expand...

I can understand light consuming a lot of power, but producing so much heat, how? It's not like there's a huge halogen bulb in there.
 
Battery life is better because the stand by time is significantly longer. If you measure by usage time it's slightly worse. But through out a normal day people turn off their screen for various reasons... For example, I bring my iPad to work and just have it with me to push all my personal/side work email, screen off 80% of that time. Only drop 5% in a 9 hour shift with LTE on. But on days where I'm using it for hours at a time I can take the battery down to 50% easily.
 
People are on to something. I have it a bit brighter around 45% where in my 2 I had it lower. My 2 lasted forever. The 3 is acceptable good even but not as good as the 2.
 
lowering brightness to 50 impairs your ipad display to poop status. I can't bring myself to lower brightness to anything less than 100 as viewing pleasure decreases dramatically.

I am sure running brightness at 100 draws much more power from the battery pack. No, there is no halogen, but if you haven't checked out ifixit's ipad tearaway, take a look. The battery pack is nearly the size of the ipad.

However, I don't believe the heat to be an issue at all. I own an android phone that reaches 117 degrees F when using gps and hooked up to my car charger. So the ipad is just luke warm in comparison for me at least.
 
Dangerous Theory said:
I can understand light consuming a lot of power, but producing so much heat, how? It's not like there's a huge halogen bulb in there.
Click to expand...

Ever play a graphics intensive video game on a ps3 or Xbox and you hear the fan start going nuts? Pretty much the same reason the new iPad gets hot. A lot of work to push a screen like this.
 
MrXiro said:
Ever play a graphics intensive video game on a ps3 or Xbox and you hear the fan start going nuts? Pretty much the same reason the new iPad gets hot. A lot of work to push a screen like this.
Click to expand...

I know that strain on the GPU creates a lot of heat. I'm referring to the guy's comment that said that increasing the brightness has a drastic effect on temperature, which I find odd, as LEDs don't exactly get that hot.
 
MrXiro said:
Battery life is better because the stand by time is significantly longer. If you measure by usage time it's slightly worse. But through out a normal day people turn off their screen for various reasons... For example, I bring my iPad to work and just have it with me to push all my personal/side work email, screen off 80% of that time. Only drop 5% in a 9 hour shift with LTE on. But on days where I'm using it for hours at a time I can take the battery down to 50% easily.
Click to expand...

Very true, didnt think it like this.
 
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