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SoYoung

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 3, 2015
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I bought an iPad 11 2018 1TB Wi-Fi + cellular model last week (there was a deal here in Canada) and I love it, but I noticed that if I just let the apps open and not close them, the battery in standby mode are terrible. For exemple, I put it off on the charger at 6AM, didn't use it at all during the day, and now on 11PM, just 16 hours later, its already at 86% from a 100% charge. I don't have this problem with my other iPads and when I checked on the battery activity, there was no activity at all during the day.

Is it because of the 6GB of ram and it drains more battery life when the system maintain apps in backgrounds? I don't have this issue on my 12.9 2018 iPad pro (or in very rare occasions) but it happens almost all the time on my brand new iPad pro 11. The only time it dont do this is if I close all the apps. I checked the battery health with coconutBattery and it is at around 102% because its brand new.

Any help?
 
Do you have an Apple Pencil connected that attempts to charge?

In addition: if you put the device in Airplane Mode for the same amount of time and no pencil attached, how does the battery change then?
 
I had the exact same problem with my 2018 11” iPad Pro. It was WiFi only but I had the exact same thing happen to me that you’re describing. When I upgraded to the 2020 12.9” I was still having the problem at first, but after the next iOS update, it seemed to have largely stopped happening. Are you on the latest iOS?
 
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i have the same problem on an ipad pro 10.5
for several weeks there are days that without using it the battery drops 30%
the night before last I left it at 90% when I went to sleep, the next day I will use it around 7 pm and it was at 44%
 
same problem here with a 2018 11 inch pro.
yesterday I went to apple store and they tested the battery capacity it shows 100%. they had me do a reset, so far so good but I did not install all the apps yet, just a dozen or so.
 
same problem here with a 2018 11 inch pro.
yesterday I went to apple store and they tested the battery capacity it shows 100%. they had me do a reset, so far so good but I did not install all the apps yet, just a dozen or so.

I’ve been through that song and dance before many times. Tried every different kind of restore there is that you can do in every different variation. It will go back to draining fast eventually. My 2020 iPad Pro goes down about 10% every 24 hours which is still annoying, but not nearly as bad as what was happening on my 11” 2018 iPad Pro.
 
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There's something wrong for sure. I left my iPad 11 this morning at 10AM at 46% battery and at 6PM it was at 36%. It lose 10% in like 7 hours. At this point I'm not enjoying my tablet anymore. I have no pencil attached and for now there's not cellular connection (does the cellular version drain more battery than wi-fi?)

The thing I don't understand is my 2018 12,9 pro is fine in standby mode and I take the same backup for my new 11 pro. As I said before, coconutBattery said the battery is at 102% health.

At this point I don't know what to do. I love the machine and I bought it because I have a very good deal on it. If I return it, I won't be able to bought it again at the same price I paid but at the same time, I don't want to play a cat and mouse game with apple on this case because with my previous experience in the past with battery, they'll always say its good and just propose a restore so AppleCare won't help here.
 
There's something wrong for sure. I left my iPad 11 this morning at 10AM at 46% battery and at 6PM it was at 36%. It lose 10% in like 7 hours. At this point I'm not enjoying my tablet anymore. I have no pencil attached and for now there's not cellular connection (does the cellular version drain more battery than wi-fi?)

The thing I don't understand is my 2018 12,9 pro is fine in standby mode and I take the same backup for my new 11 pro. As I said before, coconutBattery said the battery is at 102% health.

At this point I don't know what to do. I love the machine and I bought it because I have a very good deal on it. If I return it, I won't be able to bought it again at the same price I paid but at the same time, I don't want to play a cat and mouse game with apple on this case because with my previous experience in the past with battery, they'll always say its good and just propose a restore so AppleCare won't help here.
With mine, I got in the habit of just turning off WiFi when not in use. I put a shortcut in the sidebar so I could just turn it on and off with a tap. I know that kind of defeats the purpose of having a device be “always on” but I just couldn’t figure out the issue. Even after a replacement device from Apple, it was doing the same thing. I honestly think it’s an issue in the OS rather than the hardware.

EDIT: I also don’t think it’s super wide spread. I see people talking about it in different places, but it just doesn’t seem to be super common.
 
I am seeing some apps with 100% background activity. Best Buy and Speedtest to name a couple. If I force quit them, all is well. If not, they keep running in the background and use up battery. Check to see if you have this happening. Even turned off background app refresh to no avail.

this started with 13.5.1 for me.
 
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I am seeing some apps with 100% background activity. Best Buy and Speedtest to name a couple. If I force quit them, all is well. If not, they keep running in the background and use up battery. Check to see if you have this happening. Even turned off background app refresh to no avail.

this started with 13.5.1 for me.
For me as well! Wells Fargo app and Costco app. Woke up to find battery drained more than usual, battery showed 100% background usage for these apps on two separate nights. Never had this happen before 13.5.1.
 
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The problem in my case is there’s no activity at all in the battery Monitoring section when I don’t use my iPad so on the surface everything’s looks « normal ».
 
I done a thread on this a while back. There is an issue with the new pro with Apple Pencil connected. Confirmed by another who tested my theory removing pencil and turning off Bluetooth

Of course this is dependent on you having a pencil and/or blue tooth turned on constant
 
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The problem in my case is there’s no activity at all in the battery Monitoring section when I don’t use my iPad so on the surface everything’s looks « normal ».
Yep—through all my troubleshooting, I never had any apps report as using any significant battery while in standby.
 
I did not connect the Pencil with the ipad on standby, like I use to do, now it only uses 3% battery in a 10 hours stand by time.
Thanks everyone! I am not happy that I have to keep the Pencil separated from the charge, but it's a minor issue.
 
I did not connect the Pencil with the ipad on standby, like I use to do, now it only uses 3% battery in a 10 hours stand by time.
Thanks everyone! I am not happy that I have to keep the Pencil separated from the charge, but it's a minor issue.
Battery life is a lot better when the pencil isn’t constantly trying to charge. I have been impressed with being able to 11 - 12hr before needing to charge.
 
Unrelated to iPad, but on my iPhone 11, about a month or so ago, I suddenly needed to start charging it once a day instead of 1.5-2 days. I initially thought it was What's App, but when that sisn't sort it, I got in touch with Apple Support, who advised closing all the apps and doing a hard reboot on the phone. That seems to have sorted the problem! If you haven't tried that, it may be worth trying just in case.
 
I have the same problem with a new ipad pro 11 2020, battery drain about 5% in airplane mode without any connection. The battery test is 100%.. Something very strange for a new apple device in airplane mode...
 
I have the same problem with a new ipad pro 11 2020, battery drain about 5% in airplane mode without any connection. The battery test is 100%.. Something very strange for a new apple device in airplane mode...
Oh wow, really? My 2020 11” Pro is fantastic, it does not really drain until I use it, it can sit on 100% most of the day.

Edit:

Took it off charge 2 hours ago and it is still at 100%, haven’t used it in those 2 hours until now, and it has been on WiFi the whole time.
670E2CC1-0BE3-442A-9A5E-9D05F56F28AC.png
 
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I have the same problem with a new ipad pro 11 2020, battery drain about 5% in airplane mode without any connection. The battery test is 100%.. Something very strange for a new apple device in airplane mode...

I had same issue due to Bluetooth on with Apple Pencil. Specific only to pro 2020. Do u happen to have a pencil?
 
Same here, Ipad Pro 11, 2020. Drain from 100 % to 26 % in 7 days on standby only. Pencil not charging. Now i switched off OneDrive background activity. Let's see.
 
No drain here. Usage correlates exactly with battery status (and this is for a three years old iPP 12.9 inch now).
402B675A-B579-4836-8C69-6ED6FF16D2E6.jpeg
 
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Same here, I left it with a 100% charge and did not use it for 4 days. Now the battery is completely drained. I don't even have an Apple Pencil.
 
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