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hellodon

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 19, 2006
453
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So I got the iPad on launch day. I could leave it on my nightstand and when it wasnt in use it wasnt using battery. I could leave it for a day or 2 with occasional use and it would still have a great charge when i picked it up. Almost no drain. I'd throw it on the charger maybe once a week when it would get down to 20-30% and that was good enough.

Well - the past week I didnt use it much. Had it 100% charged on Tuesday, used it Wednesday night and noticed my battery was at 49%. I only used it for a few minutes and havent used it since that night. Today I just picked it up and it was completely dead. So it basically drained 50% twice while idle which it did not do even close to before.

What happened?! Anyone else notice this problem? I find it odd that it was so good on juice at first and now its not at all.

Any suggestions or ideas? I've done nothing different since initially getting it. I am almost ready to make an appointment and get this thing swapped out due to a battery problem because this just does not seem right.
 
Probably an app that didn't close properly. There's nothing wrong with your iPad. Try a reset (hold down the power button and home button until the unit reboots, and then let go). That should fix it.
 
Try recalibrating the battery. Also perhaps the great change in battery life could be due to either 3G, bluetooth, Wifi, etc that you may have left on. As mentioned earlier reset the ipad as well.
 
Did you turn on any sort of push services (e.g. notifications or MobileMe syncing?) or set mail to fetch automatically? Either of these things will have a very noticeable effect on your battery life, pretty much exactly as you describe.
 
How do you re-calibrate the battery?

Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go.

Ideally we all should be doing this once a month...on all our devices, including laptops.
 
Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go.

Ideally we all should be doing this once a month...on all our devices, including laptops.

Although the technique is true to it's words - I feel you're exaggerating with "once a month" deal. I'd say once a year sounds about right :)
 
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It's sprung a leak. Your energy juice is osmosing into the ether. You need a power bandage or a battery puncture repair kit.

Srsly though, as a diagnostic I'd try disabling wifi. (And/or Bluetooth.). If this stops the problem, then you can be sure it's some application trying to connect to the net constantly, or Bluetooth trying to communicate with some item. Then selectively reenable to track down the culprit.
 
Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go.

Ideally we all should be doing this once a month...on all our devices, including laptops.

Guess I can learn to live without my iPad while doing the deep draining and charging every so often. LOL

Seriously though thanks for the tip... Not sure how long the iPad is lasting me between charges so far, just seems insanely great so far.
 
Battery Apps for the iPad

Know that is poor form to post separately so quickly; but wanted input on Apps that are there for looking at battery issues for the iPad.

In looking at the iPad App store saw some apps that seem to manage the battery life thing pretty well:

- System Manager

- Battery Acid

- BattPwr HD

Any thoughts as to the best one is really? What seems to be missing from these apps is a running count of the time used on the iPad for various uses and a total run time. Is there an app for that?
 
I have the same problem

I have absolutely the same problem as posted by hellodon. I always close the applications. In fact, I begin to close after this problem has started. I also disable localization service. Nothing solved the problem. What a disappointment !!! Any suggestions?
 
First:

Make sure you're charging with the 10 Watt iPad charger, not your old iPod or iPhone charger.

All of the other "iThing" chargers are only 5 Watt and will not fully charge your iPad overnight. Your iPad will end up mis-calibrated and start showing 100% battery life even if you only have a 30% charge.

Second:

Check your Apps. One of the versions of Skype I had would drain my battery in about 4 hours even when "off"... I guess it was constantly polling or doing status updates or something in the background. When in doubt, delete the app from your iPad (it will still be in iTunes and you can install it again later.)

Third:

Check for hidden things, like Bluetooth being turned on and connected to a headset or keyboard near by. 3G turned on when you're in a very poor signal area will also really sap power -- as it runs the radio's at full power to maintain a connection to the network.

There are probably other things to check as well. The problem you're having is not normal.

If in doubt, back up your iPad in iTunes, then do a factory reset -- clearing EVERYTHING out of your iPad. Run your iPad with no Jailbreak, and no 3rd party Apps for a day and overnight to see if the battery still drains quickly. If it does, it's most likely a physical problem with the iPad.
 
Let it run down till it shuts off on it's own. Recharge it and let it stay connected for four to five hours, then use the iPad and let it runs down all the way again till it shuts off on its own. Leave it turned off without charging for a few hours; say three hours. Then recharge fully and should be good to go.

Ideally we all should be doing this once a month...on all our devices, including laptops.

i do this! once a month i drain all the way down. daily, i just recharge when it's around 50%

Although the technique is true to it's words - I feel you're exaggerating with "once a month" deal. I'd say once a year sounds about right :)

you do that and you run the risk of the battery developing memory (yeah yeah, we all have been told lipos do not have that memory effect but lipos should only be used to about 80% before recharging again.)
 
First:

Make sure you're charging with the 10 Watt iPad charger, not your old iPod or iPhone charger.

All of the other "iThing" chargers are only 5 Watt and will not fully charge your iPad overnight. Your iPad will end up mis-calibrated and start showing 100% battery life even if you only have a 30% charge.

Second:

Check your Apps. One of the versions of Skype I had would drain my battery in about 4 hours even when "off"... I guess it was constantly polling or doing status updates or something in the background. When in doubt, delete the app from your iPad (it will still be in iTunes and you can install it again later.)

Third:

Check for hidden things, like Bluetooth being turned on and connected to a headset or keyboard near by. 3G turned on when you're in a very poor signal area will also really sap power -- as it runs the radio's at full power to maintain a connection to the network.

There are probably other things to check as well. The problem you're having is not normal.

If in doubt, back up your iPad in iTunes, then do a factory reset -- clearing EVERYTHING out of your iPad. Run your iPad with no Jailbreak, and no 3rd party Apps for a day and overnight to see if the battery still drains quickly. If it does, it's most likely a physical problem with the iPad.

i use my iphone charger (5w) to slow charge it. i dont like the thought of fast charging it.
 
If you have a 3G or WiFi iPad and it is having trouble locking onto a signal, it could use power just trying to connect over and over. This is the same thing that happens to cell phones if they don't have a good signal.

So don't put it in a metal filing cabinet that is far away from your WiFi hotspot because it will likely use up lots of battery trying to maintain a connection.

I don't know if that is the case for the OP but it might be.


If you put your iPad into airplane mode and kill all running apps and you are still losing significant amounts of battery when it is asleep, I think you have a problem that warrants a trip to the Apple store. If it doesn't lose battery in that situation, try enabling/running things one at a time and see when the battery problem starts happening again...hopefully that will isolate the problem.
 
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