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LadyX

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Mar 4, 2012
2,374
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I purchased the new iPad Air (4th gen) last month. I don’t know if this is normal but I usually have to charge it every other day or every 2 days max. When not in use I always enable airplane mode and I make sure to close any apps in the background.


Anyway, my iPad was at 100%, I was watching Crunchyroll yesterday afternoon in offline mode for I think 1-2 hours with airplane mode enabled, that’s all I did on my iPad yesterday. This morning I wake up and I’m surprised to see that I had to hold down the power button to open the iPad which meant the battery is drained and sure enough it was at 1% and in less than 24 hrs while airplane mode is on. Why and how? I’m guessing this is not normal? What should I do? I don’t know what could’ve drained the battery like that.


Device: iPad Air (4th gen)
Software version: 14.4.2


I took this screenshot as soon as I opened my iPad:

8b28710c75b5121586bed0a00468f561.jpg
 
I purchased the new iPad Air (4th gen) last month. I don’t know if this is normal but I usually have to charge it every other day or every 2 days max. When not in use I always enable airplane mode and I make sure to close any apps in the background.


Anyway, my iPad was at 100%, I was watching Crunchyroll yesterday afternoon in offline mode for I think 1-2 hours with airplane mode enabled, that’s all I did on my iPad yesterday. This morning I wake up and I’m surprised to see that I had to hold down the power button to open the iPad which meant the battery is drained and sure enough it was at 1% and in less than 24 hrs while airplane mode is on. Why and how? I’m guessing this is not normal? What should I do? I don’t know what could’ve drained the battery like that.


Device: iPad Air (4th gen)
Software version: 14.4.2


I took this screenshot as soon as I opened my iPad:

8b28710c75b5121586bed0a00468f561.jpg
Is it possible that the battery could be defective?
 
Is it possible that the battery could be defective?

I contacted Apple Support and they’ve run diagnostics on my iPad. They said everything looks fine. If the battery is defective they would’ve known that from the diagnostics test they did right? They then said to perform a hard reset (press volume up button, then volume down button then power button until the iPad restarts). And now I just have to use my iPad as normal and observe the battery performance. They said if the issue persists I should contact them again and they will need to “update the iOS version with the help of a computer” as the next step. My iPad is already running the latest version so I didn’t really understand what they meant by that and I was too tired to ask.
 
Do you have any apps running in the background? Are you using the GPS? Are any apps keeping the GPS always on?

These can lead to battery drain.
 
Re. Updating with the use of a computer.

They are referring to restoring your iPad. Writing a new copy of iPadOS to your iPad at a low level. That would rule out a software cause of your battery drain unless this issue is baked in to the current iPadOS...
 
Bluetooth too. Headphones, peripherals, suck the battery. Plenty of cheap, good, lightweight portable batteries out there. I can use my 4 year old iPad Pro for work - running Pages, Safari, Wikipanion, Dictionary.com, and a few other apps simultaneously, with my Bluetooth headphones connected throughout - non-stop for about 6 hours, then I need a top up.
 
Uncle and return his iPad drained while in AIRPLANE MODE. That’s not normal AND you shouldn’t have to turn off every single feature just to get acceptable standby time - if it’s a hardware defect that wouldn’t help anyways. Apple is already good at managing everything In the software with the user not having to worry about it. I don’t purposely turn off anything on my iPhone 11 Pro and now my (2nd) Air 4 and am getting perfect standby on them both.

OP I would just use your factory warranty and get it exchanged at Apple seeing as you’re past the return period most likely after a month.
 
I would look into Crunchyroll as the first possible suspect. Force-close it, charge your iPad to a 100% and then try using it as normal for a day, perhaps watching some Netflix stuff by the end. Then see how the battery holds overnight.

Alternatively, check your battery with CoconutBattery (you will need a Mac for it):

 
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I would look into Crunchyroll as the first possible suspect. Force-close it, charge your iPad to a 100% and then try using it as normal for a day, perhaps watching some Netflix stuff by the end. Then see how the battery holds overnight.

Alternatively, check your battery with CoconutBattery (you will need a Mac for it):


Yup it was Crunchyroll. I charged my iPad to 100% and used it as normal (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) and battery life is great when I don’t use Crunchyroll— the most battery draining app I’ve ever used.
 
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