iPod touch iPod Touch 4G - Battery Issues weird results

[chmwatson]

Hi all,

Yes, there is a LOT of varying things on this forum regarding 4G Touchs and battery problems. I've read through most... but this questions still nags me:

Battery life sucks! ok.. I deal with it.. I run with airplane mode most of the time (kids playing games) screen brightness down, and just starting to keep apps closed in the back ground.. it's helping..

However, within the course of a couple hours, battery will "flag" that it's down to 20%, BUT I've found if I shut the device off, then turn it back on, it's registering almost FULL battery again!??? Then it runs another 30 mins.. drops back down.. Is this a battery issue or something wonky with iOS 6.1.5?

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions would be greatly appreciated..

 

[BrettApple]

I believe it is just the way iOS handles battery, its different from other OSes like Android, OS X etc. I don't know for sure though, but it seems iOS basses its battery percentage on the current draw of power. So if you're playing a game or using Face Time or other intensive tasks it will drop faster to keep the percentage it drops over time at an even pace. But then when you exit the app it may "go back up" when there isn't so much of a draw on the battery and show it's actual capacity. Kind of like the time remaining on a laptop, it will vary based on usage and current power draw.

If this is the case, it drives me crazy, I just like it to say what it is actually at.

Anyway, I noticed this happening on my 4th gen touch all the time under iOS 6. I've recently restored it way back to iOS 4.2.1 and it doesn't do it so much, though I'm not running as much stuff on it. I charge it about once a week and get around 30 hours of music use out of it. It is still on the stock battery and I got it in late 2010. In fact, I'm waiting on a new LCD/Digitizer to get in to fix it up. I'd love to see the cycle count on the battery, probably in the 1,000 range by now. Still shows it holding 930 mAh from what I can tell though.

 

[chmwatson]

thanks.. I was thinking it might be more related to OS, but my other son's 4G doesn't have the same issue on the same OS.. I'd love to downgrade to an earlier iOS, but unfortunately many of the educational games they play are pushed to update to iOS 6 or 7, and that was primarily the reason I had to replace the 2G I had which was still in great shape, but mothballed at iOS 4.. ah, with new technology comes a whole new level of headaches!