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iPad iPad Standby battery life?

Apple-Orchard

Apple-Orchard

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 8, 2024
9
17
Hi!

I’m having an iPad standby battery life problem and I want to know if it’s universal. Any answers before I return it to the store in a few days would be appreciated.

After I charge my iPad to 100% battery, it starts initially draining insignificantly until after a few hours when it starts draining sharply – 25% in 6 hours – until it hits 10% a day later and then it slowly drains fully for another day or two before it’s dead.

What’s your standby battery life?

Here’s the thing: my iPad Air (1st generation, 2015) still has a 30 day standby battery life after a decade of quite light use.

I want to know it this is happening to everyone or if a replacement could help.

I bought my iPad two years ago but I’ve hardly used it because it’s always dead! I’ve been investigating the issue for six months now and I’m close to returning it now. I’ve contacted Apple Support, they said my Battery Health is 100% (50 cycles, “amazing” they said). All they did was run a diagnostics and ask me to go to an Apple Store. I’ve reset it a dozen times, naturally turned off anything in the Settings app which uses battery, and I even bought a new AirTag! I obviously don’t have a keyboard anything attached. There’s absolutely no reason for the drain and it’s very visible in the Settings battery statistics when it happens… and no culprit shows up!

It’s the iPad 9 (2021, cheapest one) btw.
 
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Apple-Orchard said:
Hi!

I’m having an iPad standby battery life problem and I want to know if it’s universal. Any answers before I return it to the store in a few days would be appreciated.

After I charge my iPad to 100% battery, it starts initially draining insignificantly until after a few hours when it starts draining sharply – 25% in 6 hours – until it hits 10% a day later and then it slowly drains fully for another day or two before it’s dead.

What’s your standby battery life?

Here’s the thing: my iPad Air (1st generation, 2015) still has a 30 day standby battery life after a decade of quite light use.

I want to know it this is happening to everyone or if a replacement could help.

I bought my iPad two years ago but I’ve hardly used it because it’s always dead! I’ve been investigating the issue for six months now and I’m close to returning it now. I’ve contacted Apple Support, they said my Battery Health is 100% (50 cycles, “amazing” they said). All they did was run a diagnostics and ask me to go to an Apple Store. I’ve reset it a dozen times, naturally turned off anything in the Settings app which uses battery, and I even bought a new AirTag! I obviously don’t have a keyboard anything attached. There’s absolutely no reason for the drain and it’s very visible in the Settings battery statistics when it happens… and no culprit shows up!

It’s the iPad 9 (2021, cheapest one) btw.
Click to expand...
That doesn't sound normal. I can get a few weeks of standby out of my 2017 iPad Pro running iPadOS 17, just to give an example. I did, however, have a similar battery-draining issue a few years ago that was caused by iCloud struggling to sync some files from Keynote that would keep trying over and over again. One thing I'd try is to disable background processes, see if that makes a difference, and if it does then re-enable a handful at a time to find what might be the culprit.
 
My iPad makes it through the night with minimal drain, if I forget to plug it in. Beyond that I don’t know (or, frankly, care) how long it lasts.

What does Settings > Battery say is using power?
 
Apple-Orchard said:
Hi!

I’m having an iPad standby battery life problem and I want to know if it’s universal. Any answers before I return it to the store in a few days would be appreciated.

After I charge my iPad to 100% battery, it starts initially draining insignificantly until after a few hours when it starts draining sharply – 25% in 6 hours – until it hits 10% a day later and then it slowly drains fully for another day or two before it’s dead.

What’s your standby battery life?

Here’s the thing: my iPad Air (1st generation, 2015) still has a 30 day standby battery life after a decade of quite light use.

I want to know it this is happening to everyone or if a replacement could help.

I bought my iPad two years ago but I’ve hardly used it because it’s always dead! I’ve been investigating the issue for six months now and I’m close to returning it now. I’ve contacted Apple Support, they said my Battery Health is 100% (50 cycles, “amazing” they said). All they did was run a diagnostics and ask me to go to an Apple Store. I’ve reset it a dozen times, naturally turned off anything in the Settings app which uses battery, and I even bought a new AirTag! I obviously don’t have a keyboard anything attached. There’s absolutely no reason for the drain and it’s very visible in the Settings battery statistics when it happens… and no culprit shows up!

It’s the iPad 9 (2021, cheapest one) btw.
Click to expand...
WHen you say "reset it a dozen times" what does that involve? Factory reset, restore from icloud (last backup)?
 
I’ve reset it, erasing everything, multiple times and background processes and location services are all off. Settings > Battery says absolutely nothing is using power. If you search the internet a lot of users are blaming Find My and AirTags because if you leave Find My set to on then it says “Find My 100%” but if you turn it off then it still happens. There appears to be an invisible background process. I’m going to see if it still happens even in Airplane Mode, I think I’ve already seen that it does… but really, why should I have to go through any of this when my older iPad has everything turned on?
 
Apple-Orchard said:
I’ve reset it, erasing everything, multiple times and background processes and location services are all off. Settings > Battery says absolutely nothing is using power. If you search the internet a lot of users are blaming Find My and AirTags because if you leave Find My set to on then it says “Find My 100%” but if you turn it off then it still happens. There appears to be an invisible background process. I’m going to see if it still happens even in Airplane Mode, I think I’ve already seen that it does… but really, why should I have to go through any of this when my older iPad has everything turned on?
Click to expand...
But do you set it up as a new device without restoring a backup?
My mother has the same model, she isn't using Airtags or any BT devices connected to it though. Connected to a Wifi6 router on the 5ghz band non cellular.
What happens if you forget all the BT devices? Do you have more devices on your LAN that might be communicating the the iPad?
 
It's always difficult to compare our own battery life observations against those of others because our individual usage varies from everyone else, be it due to the apps that we use, our own usage patterns or even things like the nature and number of accounts (email or otherwise) that we have set up on our devices. I don't blame OP for suspecting a background process, whether it is an errant application or one that is polling/receiving a lot of notifications.

Sometimes my 2017 iPP will drain quickly in standby and other times less so. One thing that I notice is if I restart my iPP and avoid unlocking it after that restart then battery standby is at its best because little or nothing runs in the background until it is unlocked despite the iPad being "on."

I agree with others asking for details about how the device was reset - the best way to rule out an issue with the ipad itself is to reset it to stock and to avoid installing anything on it for a few days (including email account setup) and just observe what the iPad does in terms of battery life.
 
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Reverend Benny said:
But do you set it up as a new device without restoring a backup?
My mother has the same model, she isn't using Airtags or any BT devices connected to it though. Connected to a Wifi6 router on the 5ghz band non cellular.
What happens if you forget all the BT devices? Do you have more devices on your LAN that might be communicating the the iPad?
Click to expand...
I think I’ve done both.

I’ve had a breakthrough though. In Airplane mode, it uses less than 1% battery per day… that’s absolutely astounding. Now I’m going to have to slowly turn one setting on per day and see when the drain starts again. It will take time!
 
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Apple-Orchard said:
I think I’ve done both.

I’ve had a breakthrough though. In Airplane mode, it uses less than 1% battery per day… that’s absolutely astounding. Now I’m going to have to slowly turn one setting on per day and see when the drain starts again. It will take time!
Click to expand...
Good luck trying to find the source to what's draining the iPad.
Here's a few other tips.

If you have an isolated guest network at home only providing internet, use that for a while.
Have a look at your router, are there any updates? Any known bugs? Make a note of how your device connects, what WiFi standard, network etc.
 
Woah… turned Wi-fi on and the battery started dropping like a brick. Everything is literally turned off and signed out except Wi-fi, that’s CRAZY.

Unfortunately… that’s not informative. Now the question becomes whether it’s some kind of Wi-fi issue or whether there’s something invisibly using the Wi-fi nonstop. In the battery statistics, I only see Stocks and Weather, unlikely culprits, and I don’t have any app that records network activity or such. I should try it on a Wi-Fi network outside of my home, and with Wi-fi on but not connected to anything… will report back.
 
Apple-Orchard said:
Woah… turned Wi-fi on and the battery started dropping like a brick. Everything is literally turned off and signed out except Wi-fi, that’s CRAZY.

Unfortunately… that’s not informative. Now the question becomes whether it’s some kind of Wi-fi issue or whether there’s something invisibly using the Wi-fi nonstop. In the battery statistics, I only see Stocks and Weather, unlikely culprits, and I don’t have any app that records network activity or such. I should try it on a Wi-Fi network outside of my home, and with Wi-fi on but not connected to anything… will report back.
Click to expand...
Good idea. You could also try and use your phone as hotspot if you want to try another Wifi network.
Not sure what type of router you do have, but things you can try when it comes to networks are.

* Create an isolated network, like a guest network that can't talk to your other "home" devices.
* Separate networks so that you have one 2.4 and one 5ghz network, try and see if one gives better result.
* Update your router
* See if you have a possibility to track connected devices how much they "talk".
 
Ok, I’ve factory reset my iPad, which means you have to log in to your iCloud account to set it up again but afterwards I’ve immediately logged out again, turned background app refresh and all location services off and with Wi-fi off, there’s no battery drain, with Wi-fi on, there’s substantial drain and the battery app now says it’s 100% due to “Home Accessories”.

I’ve logged out of iCloud and the iPad isn’t connected to any Home… this is AWFUL. Home Accessories has never showed up before and none of my other Apple devices are affected. I have a Philips Hue Bridge and a few lights on the network, which shouldn’t… matter.

There are a lot of threads about this but few recent ones. Considering calling Apple again.
 
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It’s hard to diagnose… it does suck.. Not worth my time to diagnose. Part of me thinks it’s the iPad keyboard case that’s draining it.
 
Apple-Orchard said:
Ok, I’ve factory reset my iPad, which means you have to log in to your iCloud account to set it up again but afterwards I’ve immediately logged out again, turned background app refresh and all location services off and with Wi-fi off, there’s no battery drain, with Wi-fi on, there’s substantial drain and the battery app now says it’s 100% due to “Home Accessories”.

I’ve logged out of iCloud and the iPad isn’t connected to any Home… this is AWFUL. Home Accessories has never showed up before and none of my other Apple devices are affected. I have a Philips Hue Bridge and a few lights on the network, which shouldn’t… matter.

There are a lot of threads about this but few recent ones. Considering calling Apple again.
Click to expand...
Did you try any of what I suggested?
If you have an isolated network where your local devices on your network can't "talk" to your device you shouldn't see this.
You can factory reset an ipad and don't connect it to any icloud account at all. Basically use it as a stand alone device. Try that too and just hook it up to wifi.

Howto set iPad up without AppleID/iCloud

Choose "don't have an Apple ID" and then "set it up later"
 
Last edited:
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This is a DRAG! It seems to be my Philips Hue Bridge… I’m not absolutely certain, after I unplugged it the battery drain kept going and only stopped completely after a while. The question is what to do about it. I guess I’ll have to write Philips then Apple and see if anyone has anything to say about it, there aren’t many device settings.

EDIT: And of course these monkeys only have Facebook and X support chats…
 
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Apple-Orchard said:
Philips support says it’s not a known problem. Back to Apple support.
Click to expand...
Can you delete the app and reinstall it?
Or try an delete the app and keep hue connected, just to make sure it isn't the HUE bridge that has lost the plot and keep talking on the network keeping devices alive.
If you allow connecting to the HUE outside your local network it might be a good idea to have the HUE on a separate network.
 
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