iPad iPad Air 2 battery issues

[mrdeluxe]

Hi everyone,

I just got a new iPad Air 2, Wifi + LTE, and this is my first iPad ever, so I don't know what to expect.

What I find, however, is that battery is a little disappointing.
Everywhere I read it praised its 10 hours of battery life. What I find is that it's more around 6 hours of actual use. Right now, in battery information, I have usage of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with 15 hours of standby, and the battery is at 62%. I can literally watch the battery go down 1% every 5 minutes or so.

Is this normal? I have already down a full-cycle calibration.

Thank you!

 

[zhenya]

Generally you need to let a new device cycle in for a week or two before making definitive statements around battery life. It could be that there is still a lot of background activity happening.

Also, what brightness setting are you using? What are you primarily doing on the iPad?

 

[mrdeluxe]

Thanks zhenya,

I've been reading a little bit on the subject and it seems that the biggest drain on the battery was the brightness at 100% (which mine was).
I did a full charge yesterday and since then I've played some games (for around one hour) and watched some video streaming for 20 minutes.
Since then I've used it for, mostly messaging (granted, with brightness at 100%).

The big question is: if you leave your ipad at 100% brightness, wi-fi only, can you visibly watch your battery go down you you just watch it for a few minutes?

 

[colodane]

OP, please just get in the habit of setting your brightness less than 100% and you will be much happier. Do you live under a spotlight or sit outside all day under the noonday sun?

I usually keep mine at 30 to 40 % with automatic brightness turned ON. I can see the display just fine and typically get 13 hours per battery charge (rMini). You should get at least 10 hours with the new iPad Air when using a similar setting.

 

[Vandam500]

OP, please just get in the habit of setting your brightness less than 100% and you will be much happier. Do you live under a spotlight or sit outside all day under the noonday sun?

I usually keep mine at 30 to 40 % with automatic brightness turned ON. I can see the display just fine and typically get 13 hours per battery charge (rMini). You should get at least 10 hours with the new iPad Air when using a similar setting.

I don't think that is the way of "Solving" this. I'm pretty Apple did not say "10 hours of battery life on low brightness". We have this amazing screen on the Air 2 and why have it looking all dim? I actually tried to use the Air 2 on around 50% brightness and could not stand how dim it looked. I use it anywhere between 90 - 100% brightness and have never been happier. And to the OP, I generally get around 8-10 hours of usage (Crazy amount of standby time).

 

[Charliebird]

I use auto brightness and I think it works great. You can calibrate it by turning it off in a very dark room adjust the brightness to your liking and turn it back on. I honestly find 100% too bright for me in most cases. Under setting --> usage you can see what using up your battery. Don't stress about the percentages it's not always very accurate.

 

[zhenya]

I don't think that is the way of "Solving" this. I'm pretty Apple did not say "10 hours of battery life on low brightness". We have this amazing screen on the Air 2 and why have it looking all dim? I actually tried to use the Air 2 on around 50% brightness and could not stand how dim it looked. I use it anywhere between 90 - 100% brightness and have never been happier. And to the OP, I generally get around 8-10 hours of usage (Crazy amount of standby time).

It is well known and understood that battery life is not rated at full brightness. Nor is it rated at 100% cpu usage. Good testing involves calibrating each display to a constant value using an external measuring device.

It's just like your car which will not get the rated mileage on the race track when you are running wide open throttle most of the time.

 

[Vandam500]

It is well known and understood that battery life is not rated at full brightness. Nor is it rated at 100% cpu usage. Good testing involves calibrating each display to a constant value using an external measuring device.

It's just like your car which will not get the rated mileage on the race track when you are running wide open throttle most of the time.

Of course that is known but do you think having the screen at 30% brightness is what Apple intended/tested for all day usage to claim 10 hours of battery life? I'm pretty sure no.

 

[zhenya]

Of course that is known but do you think having the screen at 30% brightness is what Apple intended/tested for all day usage to claim 10 hours of battery life? I'm pretty sure no.

No, they intended 50% as the target, it says so right in the footnotes on their tech specs page. The fact that I generally am below 50% is probably why I tend to get an extra 20-30% over their rated times as the screen is by far the biggest power draw.

http://www.apple.com/ipad-air-2/specs/

 

[Pipper99]

I returned my first iPad Air 2 at the end of the 14 day return period because I was only getting about 7 hours of usage time when the battery is down to 1% and at 75% brightness. I had all of the typical battery saving tips employed except for setting the brightness very low (turned off push notifications, turned off lock screen notifications, etc). My replacement iPad Air 2 is getting 10 to 12 hours of usage time with the same settings.

Under normal lighting, any brightness setting at less than 50% is too dim for my eyes. 75% is just about right for me most of the time.

 

[manizzer]

I can feel less battery in my ipad air 2 than in my old ipad 3. In the old one i got mire than 15 hours...in the new air 2, the most i have got using the brightness around 35%, is 12 hours. I have left it drop to 0% to make a full charge, to check if it improves with more charging cycles. Anyway, they say that this battery has less capacity than the old ones. So nothing to worry about it.

 

[Rodster]

OP, if you haven't already done so. Turn off app background refresh, bluetooth if you don't need it and automatic downloads. They all impact battery life.

 

[Lloydbm41]

Hi everyone,

I just got a new iPad Air 2, Wifi + LTE, and this is my first iPad ever, so I don't know what to expect.

What I find, however, is that battery is a little disappointing.
Everywhere I read it praised its 10 hours of battery life. What I find is that it's more around 6 hours of actual use. Right now, in battery information, I have usage of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with 15 hours of standby, and the battery is at 62%. I can literally watch the battery go down 1% every 5 minutes or so.

Is this normal? I have already down a full-cycle calibration.

Thank you!

1. Battery needs a few power up and down cycles to calibrate
2. Kernel needs a couple of days to 'settle'
3. iOS needs a few days to 'learn' which apps are background priority
4. Smaller battery on Air 2 vs Air
5. Apple battery rating of 10+ hours is in a lab, at a specific room temp, humidity, pressure, no other apps running, brightness optimized for high ambient light levels, etc.
In other words, don't ever expect to match lab results to real world use.

That said, you will notice battery improvements after a few days of use and battery cycles.

 

[mrdeluxe]

Thank you all for your help and advice!
I'll wait a few more days and report back.

 

[BoxerGT2.5]

Battery life sucks on this thing. Dropping 10% in 20min is the norm.

 

[NJHitmen]

Battery life sucks on this thing. Dropping 10% in 20min is the norm.

That's not the norm. I'm getting 12 hours easy, so are lots of others. Sorry you aren't, but don't think your experience is normal. Get that thing exchanged.

 

[ReallyNiceGuy]

Battery life sucks on this thing. Dropping 10% in 20min is the norm.

I'm having much better success. This is based on my first usage. Almost 23 hours and I still have 51% left. You might want to look at getting it replaced.

 

[AnthonyS621]

App,e actually bases their battery life off of 50% brightness, I keep mine on my air 2 between 50% and 60% and I don't see a problem with it.

 

[manizzer]

Really nice guy...listenting to the radio with the screen off...makes more hours in the account, as you see u have spent 24% battery listenting to the radio. So that is why u have got alot of hours...

 

[Newtons Apple]

Of course that is known but do you think having the screen at 30% brightness is what Apple intended/tested for all day usage to claim 10 hours of battery life? I'm pretty sure no.

I will bet that APple is not using 100% brightness either. I find that 50% is good for both iPhone 6 and iPad Air 2. I just tried 100% and it is ridiculous bright to me.

To each his own but you will not get near 10 hours at 100% brightness but it will keep your coffee warm!

----------

Battery life sucks on this thing. Dropping 10% in 20min is the norm.

No way it is the norm.

 

[sethlution]

I usually get 12-16 hours of usage on my iPad. This is with background app refresh off, gps/bluetooth off all the time.

 

[Bafflingbs]

Hi everyone,

I just got a new iPad Air 2, Wifi + LTE, and this is my first iPad ever, so I don't know what to expect.

What I find, however, is that battery is a little disappointing.
Everywhere I read it praised its 10 hours of battery life. What I find is that it's more around 6 hours of actual use. Right now, in battery information, I have usage of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with 15 hours of standby, and the battery is at 62%. I can literally watch the battery go down 1% every 5 minutes or so.

Is this normal? I have already down a full-cycle calibration.

Thank you!

Same problem. I had the iPad 2, and loved it, until I did the ios8 update. It killed my performance. But the battery still blows this new one away. I have it set below 50% with auto brightness activated, and I can still see my battery dropping like a rock.

 

[ZipZap]

1. Battery needs a few power up and down cycles to calibrate
2. Kernel needs a couple of days to 'settle'
3. iOS needs a few days to 'learn' which apps are background priority
4. Smaller battery on Air 2 vs Air
5. Apple battery rating of 10+ hours is in a lab, at a specific room temp, humidity, pressure, no other apps running, brightness optimized for high ambient light levels, etc.
In other words, don't ever expect to match lab results to real world use.

That said, you will notice battery improvements after a few days of use and battery cycles.

I have never found 1 thru 3 to be true.

Yes periodically a deep discharge is helpful, but frankly I have never seen any improvement from doing so. I think this just mis-information that continues to be perpetuated.

On the other hand…

Turn down brightness - Yep
Kill Of Background stuff - Yep
Turn off Update checking - Yep
Forget about Bluetooth…never made a bit of difference to me. I leave it on all the time and get great battery life.

With IOS 8 live background apps are killers of battery life.

 

[Traverse]

I don't think that is the way of "Solving" this. I'm pretty Apple did not say "10 hours of battery life on low brightness". We have this amazing screen on the Air 2 and why have it looking all dim? I actually tried to use the Air 2 on around 50% brightness and could not stand how dim it looked. I use it anywhere between 90 - 100% brightness and have never been happier. And to the OP, I generally get around 8-10 hours of usage (Crazy amount of standby time).

I assure you that Apple's battery tests are not using full brightness because that simply isn't practical.

I believe I read somewhere that they use 75%, but I'm not sure.