iPad 2017 iPad Pro 10.5 Rapid Battery Drain

[rytrunkie]

I am at my wits end.

I have spent hours on the phone with apple support - I am reaching out to the community to see if there is any assistance/input that others are willing to share.

My iPad's battery is discharging at a high rate. I first noticed this the morning of September 12, 2020 as I went to sleep that night with the battery around 70-80% and woke up with the battery around 20%. The iPad was on standby (screen off, apps still open in the background) and was not used at all that night. I was running iPadOS 13.7 since the day it was released.

Since September 12 I have tried the following:

• erased iPad
• restored iPad from iTunes
• DFU restore from iTunes
• Updated to iPadOS 14 and performed all the same operations listed above

It should be noted that in each of the above steps, I did not restore from backup nor did I sign into iCloud, nor did I download any apps to the device. None of the above actions changed the rapid drain on the battery. In the last 18 hours, my device went from 100% to 71% with 0 on screen time from me.

AppleCare informed me that my battery was at 97% capacity but received an error and could not tell me the cycle count (which I find strange and indicates that there is an actual problem with the battery, that is it not a software issue). iMazing reports that my battery level is at 87% and my cycle count is around 150.

iMazing also reports that my iPad Mini (retina) is at 93% battery with over 750 cycles.

I have downloaded the console logs from iMazing and I one of the consistent lines of code that is appearing is:

• mDNSResponder[151] <Notice>: [Q0] mDNSCoreReceiveResponse ignoring <mask.hash

There are thousands of lines of code and I really have no idea what I am looking for nor what I am looking at.

My requests are:

1. Anyone else experiencing/have experienced the same battery drain? I did a search and found that there were others but none in the last 90 days that appeared to have a similar experience that I am.
2. Are there any resourced online to help me interpret the code? - is there a specific error message or syntax that I can search the lines of code for to indicate that there was some sort of failure?
3. Anyone have insight as to whether or not the code posted above is anything that could cause the drain?

I just can't buy that the battery is in worse condition than my iPad mini which is 4+ years older than the Pro and has seen much more usage.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

 

[sparksd]

I had run into strange battery drain on my 10.5 a while back and what fixed it for me was completely disabling Siri. It wasn't enough to just turn it off, I had to go through all of my apps and turn off Learn from this App for Siri and Search under each one. Worth a try.

 

[rytrunkie]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have done what you recommended (turned off every setting under Siri in the Settings app). I will continue to monitor.

@sparksd - what OS were you using when you made the change and what OS are you using now? I am curious of an update to the OS has helped you as in my situation, the drain was present under 13.7 and is present under 14.0.

 

[sparksd]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have done what you recommended (turned off every setting under Siri in the Settings app). I will continue to monitor.

@sparksd - what OS were you using when you made the change and what OS are you using now? I am curious of an update to the OS has helped you as in my situation, the drain was present under 13.7 and is present under 14.0.

It was under a version of 13 - don't recall which. No OS update helped, just the Siri change. And just turning it off didn't do, had to do the disabling under each app. Really strange.

 

[rytrunkie]

It was under a version of 13 - don't recall which. No OS update helped, just the Siri change. And just turning it off didn't do, had to do the disabling under each app. Really strange.

Interesting.

I have made the change as you suggested and will continue to monitor the drain. I used the iPad to post my responses to you replies, make the change with Siri and my battery has gone down by 8%. Incredible.

Do you happen to know what you battery cycle count is and remaining capacity?

 

[AutomaticApple]

I used the iPad to post my responses to you replies, make the change with Siri and my battery has gone down by 8%. Incredible.

You’re not alone. I’m experiencing the same kind of terrible battery drain.

 

[rytrunkie]

You’re not alone. I’m experiencing the same kind of terrible battery drain.

Did it happen under 13.7 as well? I am surprised as your iPad is much newer than mine.

 

[AutomaticApple]

Did it happen under 13.7 as well? I am surprised as your iPad is much newer than mine.

Yup! It happened under iPadOS 13.7 as well.

 

[sparksd]

Interesting.

I have made the change as you suggested and will continue to monitor the drain. I used the iPad to post my responses to you replies, make the change with Siri and my battery has gone down by 8%. Incredible.

Do you happen to know what you battery cycle count is and remaining capacity?

247 cycles & 91.3%.

 

[MDinTV]

Similar problems here. Thanks for looking into it so extensively! How do I easily read battery health?

 

[sparksd]

Similar problems here. Thanks for looking into it so extensively! How do I easily read battery health?

coconutBattery on a Mac -

https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

I used iMazing on a Win10 laptop -

https://imazing.com/

 

[Markgnyc2]

I have the same issues. I noticed that even though I have the Smart Keyboard cover attached when in standby, the battery is showing the home and lock screen is using battery power. Very strange. Also the battery drains excessively when in use. Was actually thinking of replacing it with the new base iPad, since I never used many of the pro features anyway. And then I can still use my current pencil and keyboard.

 

[Christopher Kim]

Unfortunately don't have experience with this (never had that problem with my 10.5 iPP, or my current 2018 11" iPP). But just throwing out an easy troubleshooting suggestion - maybe it's some battery calibration error? (And the battery isn't actually draining that amount of %).

Maybe try letting the battery drain fully down to 0% and actually shut-off on its own, then charge back up to 100% uninterrupted, and see if that changes? Probably a long shot, but seems like something easy to try when nothing else working?

 

[beBeker]

I have the same issues. I noticed that even though I have the Smart Keyboard cover attached when in standby, the battery is showing the home and lock screen is using battery power. Very strange. Also the battery drains excessively when in use. Was actually thinking of replacing it with the new base iPad, since I never used many of the pro features anyway. And then I can still use my current pencil and keyboard

I have the same issues. I noticed that even though I have the Smart Keyboard cover attached when in standby, the battery is showing the home and lock screen is using battery power. Very strange. Also the battery drains excessively when in use. Was actually thinking of replacing it with the new base iPad, since I never used many of the pro features anyway. And then I can still use my current pencil and keyboard.

Exact same problem happened to my iPad Pro 10.5, since I upgraded to one of the latest iPadOs 13 version and I think is getting worse with iPadOs 14 versions. I also noticed that the home and lock screen is using battery power and noticed that when stand by or locked, the iPad reboot itself every minute or so, explaining why the home and lock screen is using almost all the power. As many in this forum, I also performed: hard reset, erase all my apps, DFU reset from my mac iTunes and setting as a new iPad and the problem still persists. I’m thinking in trading this 2017 machine for the new 2020 iPad air, until the new Pros will come next year to see if the cost worth the change

 

[Fshtank]

Searching why my 2017 10.5” iPad Pro battery was draining so fast I stumbled upon this thread.
I don’t have an answer for the unseemly in-use drain, but I found going through settings and turning-off or lengthening application background app-refreshes helped with the iPad-sleeping battery drain.

The iPad still works great but the battery drain stinks. Could it be related to the screen brightness? Mine is on Auto and winds up at full brightness with me being aware sometimes. I keep it normally at 75% if I can.

 

[rytrunkie]

Searching why my 2017 10.5” iPad Pro battery was draining so fast I stumbled upon this thread.
I don’t have an answer for the unseemly in-use drain, but I found going through settings and turning-off or lengthening application background app-refreshes helped with the iPad-sleeping battery drain.

The iPad still works great but the battery drain stinks. Could it be related to the screen brightness? Mine is on Auto and winds up at full brightness with me being aware sometimes. I keep it normally at 75% if I can.

I ended up filing a warranty claim with the warranty company (Squartrade). They swapped out the battery and the screen and the issue still remained. They agreed to replace the iPad to which I have already done. I purchased a 2020 iPad 10.2 and there are no issues with the battery life.

 

[Wackery]

Mine is fine, a refurb i bought about a year ago

 

[spiderman0616]

I have a lot of experience with this, as you can read in my thread here:

iPad Pro 10.5" battery drain in standby

Hi all-- So my iPad Pro 10.5" has been having battery drain issues for the last few weeks, here is kind of the order of events, and I feel like it's linked to when the last iOS 11 update went out: 1. Started draining on standby--about 20% every 12 hours. Doing a hard reset would only help for...

forums.macrumors.com

I tried all the different things I could think of and never got it resolved. Eventually I ended up selling the iPad and getting the 2018 11" Pro. I had the same problem with that model, but it eventually went away after an iOS update. Later on I upgraded to the 2020 12.9" iPad Pro. After iPadOS 13.2-ish, I started having severe battery drain issues again, but then a later iPadOS 13 update resolved it and I never had the problem again, all the way up through the latest iPadOS 14.

I have chalked this up to an iPadOS problem that comes back in some versions--something just doesn't play nice with the software I use. I have never been able to pinpoint it to a specific app, and my god have I tried. Eventually I figured out that the only way to stop it was to turn off Wifi when I'm not using the iPad, which tells me that the problem is most likely an iCloud sync issue.

I don't use an iPad anymore for now, not because of the battery problems, but because I wanted to switch to an M1 Mac for a while. But I will tell you that my 2020 12.9" iPad Pro was doing great as far as standby battery life at the time that I sold it. I will also tell you that Apple support is no help in this regard. They'll just try to convince you that your battery is no good anymore so they can charge you for a replacement iPad.

 

[philwang83]

Bumping this old thread to share a similar experience I have with my iPad Pro 10.5". My battery has been discharging extremely quickly (100% to 0% overnight in 9 hours or less) with screen off, notifications off, etc. Completely reset everything a couple times with no luck.

I've taken my iPad to Best Buy Apple Authorized service, who couldn't/wouldn't process the replacement because the battery health showed 86%. I then called Apple, who said the battery could be replaced and scheduled an appointment for me at an Apple store today. Despite my skepticism, I brought it in and the end result was the same. I spoke with a manager/supervisor to plead my case, which was like talking to a brick wall. Finally, I chatted Apple support one last time to try to plead my case, but the service rep didn't seem to grasp the situation and kept encouraging me to send in the iPad or schedule an appointment at an Apple store for repair.

Between the "mysterious white spot" that has plagued my iPad and the battery decay issues, owning this device has been an equal amount of joy and agony. At this point, I'm going to cut my losses and trade this in at Best Buy or an Apple store.

 

[chrfr]

Between the "mysterious white spot" that has plagued my iPad and the battery decay issues, owning this device has been an equal amount of joy and agony. At this point, I'm going to cut my losses and trade this in at Best Buy or an Apple store.

My 2017 Pro had an ok battery but sometimes just ignored touches. I ended up trading it in on a new iPad Air last week. Apple gave me $280 for it, and I did it in store so there's no concern that the trade would get rejected or revalued.

 

[philwang83]

My 2017 Pro had an ok battery but sometimes just ignored touches. I ended up trading it in on a new iPad Air last week. Apple gave me $280 for it, and I did it in store so there's no concern that the trade would get rejected or revalued.

I was just reading about mail-in trade-in nightmare stories with Phobio. Did you have to make a Genius Bar appointment to process the trade-in in store?

 

[chrfr]

I was just reading about mail-in trade-in nightmare stories with Phobio. Did you have to make a Genius Bar appointment to process the trade-in in store?

No Genius appointment, I just made an in-store pick up appointment for the new iPad and processed the trade in there. When I selected to add the trade in, I was given in-store as an option so I took it. The salesperson did the bare minimum of checking the iPad over before completing the sale. It was quite easy.

 

[theapplehead]

Wanted to revive this thread to share of my woes regarding battery drain on my iPad Pro 10.5. Since iOS 14 my battery has been absolute garbage, and like everyone else in this thread, Apple has been no help with the issue. I chatted with an advisor and had them scan my iPad and they said my battery was perfectly healthy. All I can figure is that with some iOS update, something went out of wack with power management on the 10.5 iPP and Apple has yet to fix it. At any rate it fits a nice timeline for Apple to encourage users to upgrade to a newer device and spend more money. If anyone ever found a definitive fix for this battery drain I'd really appreciate hearing about it!

 

[iObama]

I'd tried my niece's Apple Pencil once at her house, and never removed it from Bluetooth devices. I struggled for months with my iPad 10.5" battery... until I removed the Pencil from my Bluetooth devices. If you have one in there you don't use, try that.

Blew my friggin' mind how big of a difference it made.

 

[philwang83]

Wanted to revive this thread to share of my woes regarding battery drain on my iPad Pro 10.5. Since iOS 14 my battery has been absolute garbage, and like everyone else in this thread, Apple has been no help with the issue. I chatted with an advisor and had them scan my iPad and they said my battery was perfectly healthy. All I can figure is that with some iOS update, something went out of wack with power management on the 10.5 iPP and Apple has yet to fix it. At any rate it fits a nice timeline for Apple to encourage users to upgrade to a newer device and spend more money. If anyone ever found a definitive fix for this battery drain I'd really appreciate hearing about it!

I probably should have responded to this thread earlier, but I tried one last ditch effort at fixing the iPad and did a DFU wipe (https://www.imore.com/how-to-iphone-ipad-dfu-mode) and the battery issue was resolved. This was, of course, after I bought and fell in love with a new iPad Pro 11" (A12x, not M1)