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ipad2 + IOS5 = reduced battery life

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Derek87

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 29, 2009
693
161
i have noticed a significant reduction in battery life for my ipad2 after updating to IOS5.

the notable thing is that it seems to be losing a lot of battery through background usage while in "stand by" mode.

ii've followed this issue in the iphone 4 forum where a lot of suggestions have been made (reset network settings, turn off all notification/location services, turn off bluetooth, turn off icloud backup, turn off ping), and in the end i have gotten my Iphone4 back to where it was battery life wise for iOS4. that hasn't been the case for my ipad2.

i lose about 10% per day minimum (it was up to 25-30% before doing the things listed above in parentheses) when nothing is running in the background (ie, reboot and just let it sit there)

i'm tempted to refresh the whole things from scratch but that of course will wipe out things like my scores for Asphalt Adrenaline and other app info. :\

anyone else have this problem? suggestions beyond what i have listed above?

thanks!
 
Mine certainly seems to have much worse battery life too now. I didn't do any exact measurements on iOS4 though, so I've no exact comparison.

Before, I could spend a couple of hours playing games & listening to music, and the battery would go down by perhaps 25% maximum. Now on iOS5, with the same period of activity, the battery goes down by almost 50%.
 
If you have enabled wifi syncing with iTunes on your mac, and your iPad is spending a lot of time on the same wifi network as your computer with iTunes open. . . . . Then this will be eating your battery, as with wifi sync on the wifi on your iOS device never fully goes to sleep.

I have also found uder ios 5 that my iPhone (maybe iPad too I'm not sure) was using location services constantly for 'local time updates' or something. So I turned that off too.
 
mrboult said:
If you have enabled wifi syncing with iTunes on your mac, and your iPad is spending a lot of time on the same wifi network as your computer with iTunes open. . . . . Then this will be eating your battery, as with wifi sync on the wifi on your iOS device never fully goes to sleep.

I have also found uder ios 5 that my iPhone (maybe iPad too I'm not sure) was using location services constantly for 'local time updates' or something. So I turned that off too.
Click to expand...

interesting. i'll try shutting of the wifi sync to see if that helps as i didn't think about that as a possible culprit. i turned off all of my system location services and that helped my iphone immensely although i wonder if the compass cal being off will ultimately influence the GPS accuracy when using mapquest to navigate)
 
My iPad2 is running on iOS5 and the battery life in incredible, I don't use location services or wifi-sync but I don't have anything to compare it to but it has been nothing short of excellent for me.
 
Last week I was using my iPad 2 for 9 hour days at a conference. At the end of one day I calculated that my battery would last for at least another 6 hours (15 total). At the time I had iCloud sync on (I have since turned it off), but no wifi sync. This battery life matches my experience before iOS 5.
 
Derek87 said:
interesting. i'll try shutting of the wifi sync to see if that helps as i didn't think about that as a possible culprit. i turned off all of my system location services and that helped my iphone immensely although i wonder if the compass cal being off will ultimately influence the GPS accuracy when using mapquest to navigate)
Click to expand...

I think turning off all Location Services is a bit extreme! Certainly for me, a lot of my apps depend on knowing my location.

I have looked at my iPhone and found the issue I was eluding to earlier. . .

In Settings>LocationServices>SystemServices (at the bottom) . . . . You will find "Setting Time Zone"!!!! Now this seems to keep the location services on PERMANENTLY!!! You would not know this because it is only this far into the menu system (same page) where you find the option to show Location Services in the Menu Bar when they are active!!

Hope that makes sense!!!

I find it all a bit weird myself. To have the fact that your Location Services (by default) are permanently active so hidden from the user.
 
It's been the exact opposite for me. Battery life has improved dramatically on my iPad since the upgrade. No changes made either.
 
I'm still getting 4 full days of battery life out of my iPad 2 after upgrading to iOS 5. This is about the same as what I was getting before upgrading and I use my iPad for EVERYTHING.
 
a little better since i shut off wifi sync as suggested but still trickling away probably 10% per day in standby...this was closer to 2-3% for me with iOS4.

i'm going to look into seeing if i can use my old iphone file manager program to keep my game score files backed up and then perhaps do a clean reset of the ipad2 (ie, start from scratch) to see if i ca nget things back to where they should be.

what are people seeing for their standby time battery consumption?

derek
 
Derek87 said:
a little better since i shut off wifi sync as suggested but still trickling away probably 10% per day in standby...this was closer to 2-3% for me
Click to expand...

Wifi sync is supposed to only activate when plugged in, so how is this possible?
 
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