iPad Air Pretty disappointed concerning battery new iPad Air

[FeliApple]

Sorry, the battery health is 88.4% according to iMazing and cycle count is 214.

Wow, very low for 11 years!

 

[iHorseHead]

Wow, very low for 11 years!

I used to use it for school and Pages only and 4 years later when I graduated it was just left standing and it's still standing. I like that I have an older version of YouTube app on it, which is better than the current one.
I like that iOS 12 is actually better, more lightweight than the current iOS version. And I still believe that my iPad mini 2 has a better battery life than iPad 9th gen. It's not just nostalgia. I can visibly see the differences between battery drops on the same tasks.

 

[FeliApple]

I used to use it for school and Pages only and 4 years later when I graduated it was just left standing and it's still standing. I like that I have an older version of YouTube app on it, which is better than the current one.
I like that iOS 12 is actually better, more lightweight than the current iOS version. And I still believe that my iPad mini 2 has a better battery life than iPad 9th gen. It's not just nostalgia. I can visibly see the differences between battery drops on the same tasks.

iOS 12 is really good, I have two devices on it. My 9.7-inch iPad Pro was forced from iOS 9 into iOS 12 by Apple and performance is actually quite similar. The only issue is slight keyboard lag, but back then, three major versions in, you could pretty much expect disaster.

It’s not a disaster, it’s quite good. Battery life saw a 25% decrease immediately, and that always bothered me until I pretty much bought two newer iPads and stopped using it.

The other one is my iPhone Xʀ, which is even faster and smoother than the iPhone 16 Plus on iOS 18 I’m typing this on. iOS 12 was that well optimised for original devices. Compatibility is too poor for me and I had to upgrade. On that note, YouTube (the app) doesn’t work anymore for me. I’m not sure how yours still does.

I really can’t explain nor understand how a Mini 2 with an A7 updated as far as it goes has better battery life than a 9th-gen now unless you’re running iPadOS 26 beta on it and that has destroyed it. Or do you mean standby time?

Standby battery life on older iPads far surpasses newer iOS versions. My 9.7-inch iPad Pro, updated three versions as it is, is far better than my Air 5 on its original iOS version: iPadOS 15.

But yeah, iOS 12 is quite good even on devices not running their original versions, but… I had read that the iPhone 6 and especially the 6+ (due to 1GB of RAM), had been killed by iOS 12. The Mini 2 had similar characteristics, I would’ve expected the same. My 9.7-inch works well but it has 2GB of RAM, a massive difference. 2GB was quite revolutionary when it came out, I recall discussions here about that.

 

[iHorseHead]

I really can’t explain nor understand how a Mini 2 with an A7 updated as far as it goes has better battery life than a 9th-gen now unless you’re running iPadOS 26 beta on it and that has destroyed it. Or do you mean standby time?

I mean standby time and by using Pages on it, while having WiFi on. I'm on iOS 18 and I shouldn't have upgraded to this anyway.
I much preferred my iPad mini 2 over any other iPads. YouTube app still works though? How doesnt it work? It just works. You can even scroll through the videos which you can't on older versions but yeah...

 

[FeliApple]

That said, I will never understand the battery health worries from people who will never keep a device for long. At some point it seems that the most frequent upgraders are those who worry the most.

My family has almost every device we’ve ever purchased in-use (at least those running iOS 13 onwards, the rest are too incompatible), and I’ve seen it all. From those, three iPhones are below 80% and they still run well (barring one 6s due to the abhorrent garbage that is iOS 13). I use an iPhone 8 myself that has (yes) 2246 cycles and 76% health. It runs well on iOS 14.

We have a 6th-gen iPad on iOS 12 with 840 cycles and 90% health. My 9.7-inch iPad Pro which also runs iOS 12 was at 91% health after a year and 164 cycles. It now has about 800 cycles and 85%. Battery life hasn’t changed.

 

[FeliApple]

I mean standby time and by using Pages on it, while having WiFi on. I'm on iOS 18 and I shouldn't have upgraded to this anyway.
I much preferred my iPad mini 2 over any other iPads. YouTube app still works though? How doesnt it work? It just works. You can even scroll through the videos which you can't on older versions but yeah...

Pages with Wi-Fi still shouldn’t be that great, I’m surprised.

Here’s a screenshot of my iPhone Xʀ running iOS 12 with a freshly installed YouTube:

Nothing works, and searching for something just throws an error.