What is disconcerting to me is that it continues to drain if I am playing a game while it is plugged in. That never happened with my ipad2. Love the screen, but the long charge times is definitely a bit a mistake by apple. Not that anything else could have been done, but maybe wait until battery technology could catch up with the displays needs. Although everyone would have lost their ***** if this iPad didn't have retina. Damned if you do....
So I guess gas stations should increase their technology to compensate for individuals that have gas tanks in their car that take 40+ gallons versus the 4 banger car that has a 12-16 gallon tank, right? Because it is going to take a lot longer to fill the 40+ gallon fuel tank than the 12-16 gallon tank.
It is pretty much the same reason. Apple didn't magically make the same battery in your iPad 2 last longer with LTE, dual bar LED, retina display, 1GB of RAM and more GPU cores in the iPad 3. They made it last longer because they put a bigger battery in the iPad 3. A 70% bigger battery. That extra 70% of capacity doesn't charge up in the same amount of time as a battery that is 70% smaller.
What is needed is a faster charger but that may cause issues as others have stated in other threads with overheating. Just plug your ipad in at night like I do before you go to bed and by the time you wake up in the morning it will probably be fully charged. I was at 40 something percent last night when I stuck it on the charger. This morning it was fully charged at 4:30am.
I never understood why so many people don't charge their devices when they sleep. It is the ideal time to do it. You aren't using it so charge it so it is ready for the next day's usage. My iPhone and iPad are ready to go each day for another day of hard usage. Both hold up without having to be recharged during the day.
My iPad 3:
Screen at 50% brightness, LTE off, WiFi on, blutooth on (for BT keyboard), on these forums in Safari. The numbers below are what I got from my usage
7 mins 13 secs = 1% of power used
14 mins 22 secs = 2% of power used
So figure that is about 14.33 minutes per 2% of power usage.
Now multiply that by 50 (since you are going by 2% at a time (if you use the 7 min 13 sec numbers you would multiply it by 100)) and you get 716.5 mins of usage.
Divide that by 60 (for mins in an hour) and you get 11.94 hours of usage.
Now I don't expect to get almost 12 hrs of usage from it but I am sure that you will get atleast 10+ hrs. That is pretty much what I have been getting on my iPad 3.