iPhone/iPad Battery Percentage Indicator

[wwchris]

While I am busy drunkenly ranting tonight...

Remember how Apple was "accidentally" showing the wrong number of reception bars on the phone? Ever notice how they (also by accident I am certain) show the wrong battery percentage over time to give a longer perception of battery life? Try timing the first 25% of battery loss from 100 to 75 versus the last 25 percent of battery life on your iPhone or iPad. I would say the speed doubles. I will measure it one night, but I always forget, would one of you kind folks do that for me? 🙂

 

[crazytiger86]

Battery decay/usage isn't linear. In short, this means 100 to 75% is not the same as 25% to 0. Why? Well...

...Battery usage is dependent on how your usage of the phone. You use more intensive apps, you use up more of the battery.

 

[Sedrick]

Battery decay/usage isn't linear. In short, this means 100 to 75% is not the same as 25% to 0. Why? Well...

...Battery usage is dependent on how your usage of the phone. You use more intensive apps, you use up more of the battery.

Yeah, it's 25% of battery life left, not 25% of the 10 hours you may get overall.

Funny, though, the last 1/4 tank of gas seems to go a helluva lot faster than the first quarter...

 

[Nishi100]

Yeah, it's 25% of battery life left, not 25% of the 10 hours you may get overall.

Funny, though, the last 1/4 tank of gas seems to go a helluva lot faster than the first quarter...

The last 20% lasts longer, than "normal" 20%.

 

[Small White Car]

Remember how Apple was "accidentally" showing the wrong number of reception bars on the phone?

I'm pretty sure no one ever said it was an accident.

 

[Sedrick]

The last 20% lasts longer, than "normal" 20%.

Probably goes into 'safe' mode of some sort: holding onto power for as long as possible..

 

[vincenz]

I think it's just mind tricks.

 

[wwchris]

Hmmm... I'm gonna have to to a little experiment myself. This is not about more apps using more power. This is when restarted with and all apps closed. I'll have to see if I can replicate the little graph above, because it seems the exact opposite of my experience.

An example of this for me has been while watching videos. I can watch an episode of a 44 minute tv show (no other apps running) and go from 100% to 96%. Same situation beginning with less battery and I will go from something like 20% to almost empty at the end of the show. Of course this is from my highly subjective and sometimes slightly inebriated recollection, so I will have to back this up with some actual measurable results when I get a chance and don't mind running my battery down (which brings on mild panic attacks and nightmares about having desperate moments without my iPad).

Apple was the ones who claimed the reception indicator was a mistake when they discovered they had been calculating reception incorrectly during "antenna gate".

"We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place."