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Why does my iPad2 battery last 6 hours?

D

Denis54

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 24, 2011
101
0
The battery of my iPad 1 WiFi used to last about 10 hours.

I just bought an iPad 2 WiFi + 3 G and it's battery last 6 hours. I do not have a SIM card in it.

Is it normal for the iPad 2 battery to last only 6 hours?

Is there anything I can do to improve the situation?

Do the GPS and the 3G (with no SIM) functions decrease battery life?
 
Denis54 said:
The battery of my iPad 1 WiFi used to last about 10 hours.

I just bought an iPad 2 WiFi + 3 G and it's battery last 6 hours. I do not have a SIM card in it.

Is it normal for the iPad 2 battery to last only 6 hours?
Click to expand...
no. it is not normal.

Is there anything I can do to improve the situation?
Click to expand...
yes. tell us more about what you are doing :)

Do the GPS and the 3G (with no SIM) functions decrease battery life?
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yes. i would think so. anytime your ipad is searching for a signal (wifi, bluetooth, 3g, etc.) it is expending power. why don't you play around with it? for example, turn airplane mode on and then turn wireless on (this will keep everything else off). see how long your battery lasts then under the same usage. turning off locations and push will also help extend battery life.
 
If you are not using bluetooth turn it off, if you are not using 3G, turn off cellular data, you will see a huge increase in battery life, even if there is no sim in there. Its wasted power in the background.
 
Bluetooth is off

Cellular data is gray and I cannot access it. I would think it means it is off. Am I right?

I use my iPad to surf the Internet, read my emails and read an online newspaper. Exactly the same thing I used to do with my iPad 1.
 
My iPad 2 screen is significantly brighter than my Ipad 1 screen.

However they both have the default settings. The brightness bar is half way between maximum and minimum.
 
I'm assuming that you've done a hard reset. I occasionally get a process running in the background that drains battery life. Another killer is a email account that has the wrong password and it will keep trying to login over and over and drain the battery. It won't necessarily pop up an error.

There is definitely something wrong as you should be getting hours more battery life than that.
 
Auto-brightness is set to ON as it was in my iPad 1. In as far as I know this the default setting.

How do you do a hard reset?
 
Denis54 said:
Auto-brightness is set to ON as it was in my iPad 1. In as far as I know this the default setting.

How do you do a hard reset?
Click to expand...
Hard reset just means turning it completely off, then back on. Before MRoogle went defunct all of the recommended posts said turn auto-brightness off to save iPhone batteries. iPad should be the same.
 
I wasn't aware that turning auto brightness off mattered too much.

Having auto brightness off helps your battery life?
 
Yes, it will conserve your battery. Now please tell us, is your battery lasting longer now?
 
If you are still having a problem take it to an Apple store and let them check it out. They have some tools to view what apps have been sucking up time and battery. Also, if this is a hardware problem better to let them identify quickly so they'll accept it as a factory problem rather than a wear and tear issue.
 
WildGuess said:
Hard reset just means turning it completely off, then back on. Before MRoogle went defunct all of the recommended posts said turn auto-brightness off to save iPhone batteries. iPad should be the same.
Click to expand...

That's not a hard reset. A hard reset is rebooting it by pressing the home button and the power button at the same time until ou see the Apple logo.
 
WildGuess said:
My understanding is auto brightness should be off for max battery life.

Denis54 said:
Auto-brightness is set to ON as it was in my iPad 1. In as far as I know this the default setting.

How do you do a hard reset?

The Game 161 said:
I wasn't aware that turning auto brightness off mattered too much.

Having auto brightness off helps your battery life?
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

having auto-brightness ENABLED will mean that the brightness will regularly reach maximum when in bright environments (in the sun, in the subway, etc). only when it is in dark environments will the brightness be turned down.. so i always prefer manually changing the brightness for best battery efficiency.

OP: i would try this. :)

and fwiw, a hard reset wont really change anything
 
anjinha said:
That's not a hard reset. A hard reset is rebooting it by pressing the home button and the power button at the same time until ou see the Apple logo.
Click to expand...
Sometimes when something goes wrong (usually during a failed jailbreak) the phone is unresponsive and cannot be turned off. A hard reset just forces it to restart. Turning it off and on does the same thing.
 
I keep my brightness down around 25%. it's plenty bright for most environments and saves battery life significantly.
 
Yesterday I did the follwing changes:

Switched PING to OFF
Turned location services to OFF
Switched FETCH new Data to OFF
Charged my battery to 100%

This morning I turned Auto-Lock to never and let my iPad run all day. I got a battry life of 7.40 hours.

I used my iPad for about half of that time and let it idle the rest of the time
 
I experienced something similar when I tried jailbreaking. Battery life went to crap and my 3G usage went through the roof. Updated to the most recent official IOS version and battery life / 3G usage returned to normal.
 
anjinha said:
I would take your iPad to the Apple Store. It's not normal that cellular data is greyed off.
Click to expand...

Cellular Data is greyed out when there's no SIM inserted, which the OP said was the case.

Rather than the on/off switch it just says No SIM.
 
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