Hi, purchased a used iPad Air 2 64GB (Wi-Fi only) on eBay last week, good condition. I tested the battery today, and the iPad (on 15.7) streamed continuously for a bit more than 8 hours outputting audio on my HomePod at 20% volume, . Is this is what is expected on this iPad?
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iPad iPad Air 2 - battery expectation
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Hi, purchased a used iPad Air 2 64GB (Wi-Fi only) on eBay last week, good condition. I tested the battery today, and the iPad (on 15.7) streamed continuously for a bit more than 8 hours outputting audio on my HomePod at 20% volume, . Is this is what is expected on this iPad?
Regardless of battery health, you can’t expect much of a device that has been updated 7 times (if counting major versions), and is on its eighth major version. The processor load and the requirements of iPadOS 15 are too much for the device. It’s the iOS device with the most updates, ever.
I got a similar Air 2 that I bought new back in 2016. The battery does start to deteriorate significantly after a high number of cycles. Then it's time to replace.
Ouch that's bad. Mid 60s is approaching the area where the battery won't even last an hour without being plugged in. (There's usually a sharp drop in usable run time around that point - Batteries drop into the 80s fairly fast and then stay there a very long time before dipping into the 70s and 60s)
That being said, ipad batteries are good for 1000 full charge cycles while retaining 80% capacity so that battery must have been abused pretty badly (heat, kept at 100% all the time, etc)
Could technically get it changed at the apple store (don't go 3rd party) but not sure if it's worth it at this point
I reckon this depends on, like I said in my other comment, the iOS version. I have an iPhone 6s with 63% health (original battery since 2016), and battery life is superb, almost matching like-new battery life with light use.
I did not even notice a difference when browsing with full brightness and LTE! That would obliterate a 100% health iPhone 6s on iOS 15, I reckon it wouldn’t even get 2 hours. I was totally impressed, I extrapolated it and I would’ve gotten about 5 hours on screen-on time at 100% brightness and LTE web browsing. I typically quote 6.5-hours of web browsing on LTE, but that’s closer to 50% brightness. I don’t use it at full brightness unless I need to, but frankly, I was impressed by that. Even if I can’t get 5 and get 4.5 hours, that’s still insane. I tried an iPhone 6s on iOS 13 and 94% health and I got 1.5 hours of screen-on time with 66% remaining... on Airplane Mode, and 0% brightness. Appalling. My 6s on iOS 10 obliterates that number even with full brightness and LTE.
The only activity in which I noticed a huge power draw was 4K filming with LTE and full brightness. The battery meter dropped astonishingly quickly, decreasing about 3 to 4% after a one-minute video. That would give about 25 minutes of full brightness, LTE filming. That has never been any iPhone’s strong suit (especially not 4.7-inch iPhones and earlier), but I do reckon it would be better with a new battery. How much, that I do not know.
Regarding iPads and capacity: I know that it depends on usage. I know that it depends on a million factors (charge patterns, temperature, and a long list of etc that you already know), but in my experience - and most importantly, unlike iPhones - I’ve never had a single iPad reach that spec. Once again, yes, it depends on a million factors, but the vast majority of the iPhones I’ve had - if not all - (and the ones I’ve been able to check) were well within spec, even when usage and charging patterns varied wildly. iPads... not at all. My iPad 4 had 77% after only 530 cycles, and my 9.7-inch iPad Pro has 84% after about 650. A family member’s iPad Mini 1 now has over 1000 (1050 I think) and stands at about 70% health. Check the OP’s Air 2: 65% health after 832 cycles. Yes, battery age is a factor (and as iPads have better battery life, it takes longer to get to very high amounts of cycles), but iPhones retain health a lot better! My iPhone 5c has over 1000 cycles (must be close to 1100) and it is above 80% (twice over spec), my iPhone 5s on iOS 8.2 (with a broken screen, pain) has about 800 cycles with 85% health even after almost 8 years (it is now unused in a drawer). So, even comparably old iPhones retain health better. I asked here about that once, three years ago, but I didn’t get many high cycles replies: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...share-your-battery-health-and-cycles.2170724/
@rui no onna do you still have any of the iPads you mentioned back then? If you can, may you please give an update on cycles and health?
PD: Admittedly, as iPhones are more popular, my sample size on iPads is a lot smaller. Regardless, like I said, I haven’t seen any iPhone off-spec, and I haven’t seen any iPad within spec. Maybe I need a larger sample size, maybe iPads’ battery decays faster with age (like I said, in my experience, iPhones retain health a lot better even after the same amount of years as iPhones), I frankly do not know the reason for that.
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My experience with iPhone and iPad batteries has been the opposite.
Our iPhone 5s, SE 2016, 6, 7 and SE 2020 all degraded at the 2-3 year mark requiring multiple charges a day with random shutdowns, battery gauge jumping all over the place, etc.
On the iPad, standby battery went down a lot on newer iOS versions but onscreen time was only reduced by maybe 20% or so after several years.
I don’t pay much attention to battery cycles as that can be all over the place. I find battery health to be a much more useful metric.
I don’t have quick access to my other iPads right now but I did save the logs on iCloud when I last checked battery health.
iPad Air 2 86% 372 cycles on 2022-03-16
iPad Pro 9.7 87% 494 cycles on 2022-03-16
iPad Pro 10.5 84% 459 cycles on 2022-03-17
Our iPhone 5s, SE 2016, 6, 7 and SE 2020 all degraded at the 2-3 year mark requiring multiple charges a day with random shutdowns, battery gauge jumping all over the place, etc.
On the iPad, standby battery went down a lot on newer iOS versions but onscreen time was only reduced by maybe 20% or so after several years.
I don’t pay much attention to battery cycles as that can be all over the place. I find battery health to be a much more useful metric.
I don’t have quick access to my other iPads right now but I did save the logs on iCloud when I last checked battery health.
iPad Air 2 86% 372 cycles on 2022-03-16
iPad Pro 9.7 87% 494 cycles on 2022-03-16
iPad Pro 10.5 84% 459 cycles on 2022-03-17
I reckon that the case with your iPhones has been like that due to increased load with subsequent iOS updates. Typically at the second or third year it worsens significantly. This has been the case since the beginning, and frankly, I don’t see it changing. My 6s on iOS 10 is six years old with 63% health and the gauge doesn’t jump, it just drops fairly quickly (yet not astonishingly quickly) under extremely heavy load (like I said, even web browsing on LTE with full brightness does nothing significant).
The impact of iOS updates on your iPads is very, very interesting to me. I have only one case, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro from iOS 9 to (forced by Apple) iOS 12. Screen-on time was obliterated, from 13-14 hours to barely scraping 9-10, but standby time remained (and remains) extremely good. I’m surprised. That said, I only have a single data point, I have access to two more iPads which weren’t updated, ever, and are too new for the charge cycles to be at any meaningful number.
That said, like I said 3 years ago, battery health seems too low on your iPads for them to be able to reach 1000 cycles before 80%. Just like in every single case of mine, every single case I’ve seen, and many cases shared in that 3-year-old thread I shared earlier. I’d love to see a single data point showing otherwise; so far, I haven’t found it. The only ones which don’t show signs of that are new iPads, with very little charge cycles. When they reach the 500-600 mark it always seems they won’t be able to reach 1000 before 80% (that said, I have only seen one iPad with over 1000 cycles (like I said, it’s at 70% health).
Interestingly, the iPhone with the most charge cycles I’ve ever seen is an iPhone 8 with 1500 cycles (as of February) and... 84% health. That would be 3000 cycles for an iPad if Apple’s spec is to be believed! That would definitely be impossible, though. It can’t reach 1000, it’s not reaching 3000. Furthermore, I reckon it now has around 1700 cycles and iOS’ battery health meter still shows 81%, it’s very intriguing (all of the previous measurements mentioned were made with Coconut Battery).
Thank you for providing the data points!
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I kept iOS versions synced on iPhone and iPad. Besides, battery life was already poor before updating.
Also, sometimes, even the battery health isn’t a good indicator of user experience. My iPhone SE2 reports 87% 426 cycles but it has to be charged twice a day even when it’s mostly on standby.
Mind, even brand new, I was getting just around 10 hours onscreen time on the Pro 9.7 (cellular), iirc. Mostly reading and web browsing at 0-20% brightness.
For what it's worth, the Apple Store will still replace the batteries in these (I suspect they just device swap, but still) for $99. Like you I grabbed a 64GB gold model a few weeks ago, and I'm taking it in this week to get it swapped while I still can.
That said, as others have noted, this *is* eight year old mobile hardware - a lot of apps and the web work those poor A8 cores pretty hard.
That said, as others have noted, this *is* eight year old mobile hardware - a lot of apps and the web work those poor A8 cores pretty hard.
In my experience (at least if you’re on the original version of iOS which I almost always am), battery health is almost completely irrelevant. Controversial, I know, but that’s what I’ve found. The main predictor of battery life is the iOS version followed by brightness (and usage, of course, but I meant things that affect it with the same usage, even if it is light).
My 9.7-inch Pro was worse than my iPad 4 when the former was on iOS 9, but it wasn’t that bad. I got 14 hours with a very similar usage to yours. Mine is Wi-Fi only, maybe that’s the reason. Cellular is a large factor when predicting battery life (albeit not as large as the iOS version or brightness).
Thanks for great input. So, the ‘faith’ of this iPad is sealed; a) plugged in 24hrs, b) stream news channels, c) Informal FaceTime/Teams calls and d) play music. For that use (which was originally intended) it appears to work just fine.
