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AppleNooble

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2021
120
23
Is it just me or does the default apple folio case influence battery consumption? I charged up my iPad before going to bed and left it 100% charged and the flip cover over the screen. I woke up to 100% battery. But the next day, I could have sworn to have left it at around 50% and the folio flip cover not covering the screen. I came back to something like 27%! Am I imagining things? It seems like there’s multiple levels of sleep perhaps?
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
I don’t think that has an effect.
I think it does. My iPad mini seems to do much better overnight with the folio cover closed than open. I don't know what the difference is but it seems to be there. I'll have to do a more rigorous test.
 

Mlrollin91

macrumors G5
Nov 20, 2008
14,172
10,187
When the cover is closed, the screen will not turn on for notifications. If you receive a lot of notifications, this can definitely impact battery life, as the screen is constantly turning on.
 
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jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
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When the cover is closed, the screen will not turn on for notifications. If you receive a lot of notifications, this can definitely impact battery life, as the screen is constantly turning on.
It might do things like turn off Bluetooth, WiFi, and 5G. I don’t think I’ve seen the screen turn on because I use DND every night. Like I said, I’m going to have to experiment a bit. Now I’m curious.
 

rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,920
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It might do things like turn off Bluetooth, WiFi, and 5G. I don’t think I’ve seen the screen turn on because I use DND every night. Like I said, I’m going to have to experiment a bit. Now I’m curious.

On iPhones, I believe low power mode either disables the high power CPU cores or lowers clockrate. I know my Geekbench scores are usually around half when I have low power mode enabled. Haven't tested on iPad yet (most of my iPads are still on iOS 14).
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
On iPhones, I believe low power mode either disables the high power CPU cores or lowers clockrate. I know my Geekbench scores are usually around half when I have low power mode enabled. Haven't tested on iPad yet (most of my iPads are still on iOS 14).
This referring to using the folio case closed to potentially save power.
 

ericwn

macrumors G5
Apr 24, 2016
12,118
10,910
When the cover is closed, the screen will not turn on for notifications. If you receive a lot of notifications, this can definitely impact battery life, as the screen is constantly turning on.

That makes sense! Thanks for the pointer!
 

rui no onna

Contributor
Oct 25, 2013
14,920
13,264
This referring to using the folio case closed to potentially save power.

In that case, I can confirm using a folio case doesn’t affect Bluetooth, cellular or wifi.

I have a cellular iPad and I use it as Personal Hotspot when the folio case is closed. If the cover turned off the radios, then it would have required unlocking the iPad before being able to connect (which it doesn’t).
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
In that case, I can confirm using a folio case doesn’t affect Bluetooth, cellular or wifi.

I have a cellular iPad and I use it as Personal Hotspot when the folio case is closed. If the cover turned off the radios, then it would have required unlocking the iPad before being able to connect (which it doesn’t).
Good catch. I can test that myself and I see that you are correct.
 

AppleNooble

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2021
120
23
Well, I played around with it some more. Every time I have my cover not covering the screen, every time I check back on the iPad, the battery has been consumed a little. Every time I have my cover covering the screen, whenever I peak at it, the battery percentage is always where I had left it. So it seems like there's two different standby modes, one that is deeper and consumes no power and one that is less deep and consumes a bit of power.
 
Last edited:

AppleNooble

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2021
120
23
Ok now I'm getting different behaviour. I left my iPad @ 58% with the cover on, came back to it, it's now a few percentage points below. So it seems at 100% behaviour is possibly different.
 

jdb8167

macrumors 601
Nov 17, 2008
4,859
4,599
Ok now I'm getting different behaviour. I left my iPad @ 58% with the cover on, came back to it, it's now a few percentage points below. So it seems at 100% behaviour is possibly different.
Apple’s 100% isn’t likely to really be 100%. The battery indicator isn’t linear and Apple adjusts it to try to make it seem steady.

I meant to test this myself but I forgot and haven’t done it. Thanks for the reminder.
 

AppleNooble

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 14, 2021
120
23
That sounds logical. I've had the cover on for the past day and it's slowly draining. Same as without the cover. So looks like you guys were right, no difference.
 
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