iPad Pro 2018 11" iPad Pro - Battery life concern

[TheRealAlex]

I have a 2018 11" iPad Pro that's about 3.5 years old. It gets a few hours a day for basic stuff like browsing, email and Flipboard.

Recently I've noticed that I'm having to charge it more often than I used to. I charged it to 100% on Sunday evening. Since then Screen On time is less than 3 hours and the battery is down to 24%. Brightness is around 50%. Coconut Battery reckons the battery has had 475 cycles and is around 87% capacity.

Assuming this isn't normal/OK (please tell me if it is!) is there anything I can try to improve bayberry life? Or is it time for a new battery / new iPad?

Get Rid of that 4 year old iPad Apple gave $275 trade in accredit toward the new M2 iPad Pro 11“ and it’s so much faster.

 

[pward]

The 100-99% percentage point takes a lot longer (7 to 8 times longer) than the rest of the percentage points (99%-0%), which are linear. Extrapolating that percentage point directly would be a mistake, hence why my extrapolation is shorter.

Brightness isn’t so high so as to drop it to a sub 7-hour battery life, and the rest of the heavy settings are off. I still find it too low, especially considering that usage isn’t heavy, and like I said, the main battery drain culprit isn’t insanely high (brightness).

Thanks @FeliApple. Didn't realise that 100-99% percentage point took a lot longer than the rest.

Any thoughts on possible next steps? Talk to Apple perhaps?

 

[FeliApple]

Thanks @FeliApple. Didn't realise that 100-99% percentage point took a lot longer than the rest.

Any thoughts on possible next steps? Talk to Apple perhaps?

Can you try lowering the brightness to maybe 25% and go again? I don’t think 50% is high enough for that battery life, but I don’t really know a different culprit than those I’ve asked.

I’d say that some cycles are off (it’s happened to me), but it’s been too long with the same issue. Usage doesn’t seem the issue, like I said.

 

[pward]

Can you try lowering the brightness to maybe 25% and go again? I don’t think 50% is high enough for that battery life, but I don’t really know a different culprit than those I’ve asked.

I’d say that some cycles are off (it’s happened to me), but it’s been too long with the same issue. Usage doesn’t seem the issue, like I said.

@FeliApple Been running at 25% brightness, currently at 280 minutes Screen On time with 43% battery remaining. It's better but then one would expect it to be. Any thoughts?

 

[FeliApple]

@FeliApple Been running at 25% brightness, currently at 280 minutes Screen On time with 43% battery remaining. It's better but then one would expect it to be. Any thoughts?

4h 40 min 100-43% doesn’t sound good to me, but maybe that’s all you can get on iPadOS 16 with your usage pattern. I’m out of ideas, I’m sorry. Flipboard and Safari don’t sound like heavy apps, and the rest of the settings are fine. Brightness is low, background app refresh is off, Mail push is off, usage is light, battery life is not good. I’ve always been able to explain poor battery life through some combination of these, this time I can’t, I’m sorry.

If you have iPadOS 16, I’m inclined to blame that, but... that low? I thought there might be something else at play, but apparently there isn’t.

I used to get 14 hours on iOS 9 on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro, Apple forced it out of iOS 9 into iOS 12 and battery life immediately dropped to 10-11 hours at most, with low brightness, every setting off, and light use. I thought the 3rd Gen iPad Pro wouldn’t be as affected, but apparently it is. Less than 5 hours on 40% with light use is not great, and the only thing that explains it is iOS updates, because we eliminated the rest of the possibilities. If that’s the culprit, there’s no solution, I’m sorry.

 

[pward]

4h 40 min 100-43% doesn’t sound good to me, but maybe that’s all you can get on iPadOS 16 with your usage pattern. I’m out of ideas, I’m sorry. Flipboard and Safari don’t sound like heavy apps, and the rest of the settings are fine. Brightness is low, background app refresh is off, Mail push is off, usage is light, battery life is not good. I’ve always been able to explain poor battery life through some combination of these, this time I can’t, I’m sorry.

If you have iPadOS 16, I’m inclined to blame that, but... that low? I thought there might be something else at play, but apparently there isn’t.

I used to get 14 hours on iOS 9 on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro, Apple forced it out of iOS 9 into iOS 12 and battery life immediately dropped to 10-11 hours at most, with low brightness, every setting off, and light use. I thought the 3rd Gen iPad Pro wouldn’t be as affected, but apparently it is. Less than 5 hours on 40% with light use is not great, and the only thing that explains it is iOS updates, because we eliminated the rest of the possibilities. If that’s the culprit, there’s no solution, I’m sorry.

@FeliApple No problem at all and many thanks for your help and thoughts on this. I think you may be right - perhaps it's just the way it is with my device, iPadOS 16 and my usage pattern.

It's not the end of the world and battery life is much better than it was since manually shutting down all apps and doing a force restart.

Have a great 2023!