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iPad Pro Best charging practice for longevity?
- Thread starter steve62388
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Batteries - Maximizing Performance
Maximize the life and lifespan of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in your MacBook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
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Plug in however you feel like and treat it like a tool instead of babying it like a puppy.
But as for your question, I plug in whenever it’s convenient. My 5yr old iPad Pro 9.7 had 800 cycles on it and still lasted way longer than I needed so I don’t stress about battery degradation.
Same here. I use it plugged in a lot and never worry about it.
The best way to preserve battery is to keep the device off at half charge, and even then the battery will degrade over the years. But who would want to keep an ipad off, unless you know that you are not using it for months?
The thing with lion batteries is that they do not degrade linearly... And the correlation between cycles and degradation if far from perfect.... Batteries tend to show hardly any degradation before 300-500 cycles or 3-5 years (whatever is reached first, whether they were used or not). And then all of a sudden they start degrading more and more...
All this is unless you shock them with many deep discharges, in which case the degradation will take place earlier. So I would just avoid deep discharges and if you use you ipad irregularly then plugging it in would help avoid them, unless you leave it off....
The thing with lion batteries is that they do not degrade linearly... And the correlation between cycles and degradation if far from perfect.... Batteries tend to show hardly any degradation before 300-500 cycles or 3-5 years (whatever is reached first, whether they were used or not). And then all of a sudden they start degrading more and more...
All this is unless you shock them with many deep discharges, in which case the degradation will take place earlier. So I would just avoid deep discharges and if you use you ipad irregularly then plugging it in would help avoid them, unless you leave it off....
I'm a very heavy user as well. Same as you, I often use iPads for 12+ hours a day. Charge yours often and do try to keep it at 20+%.
My Pro 9.7 often went below 10% or even all the way to shut down usually because I'm just too engrossed reading. Battery deteriorated within just a year of use.
On the second year of ownership, I got a 5th gen so I was using the Pro 9.7 during the day and swapping to the 5th gen at night while the Pro is charging. With my current iPads, I got into the habit of plugging them in if possible once battery drops to 30-50%.
My Pro 9.7 often went below 10% or even all the way to shut down usually because I'm just too engrossed reading. Battery deteriorated within just a year of use.
On the second year of ownership, I got a 5th gen so I was using the Pro 9.7 during the day and swapping to the 5th gen at night while the Pro is charging. With my current iPads, I got into the habit of plugging them in if possible once battery drops to 30-50%.
I think one annoying part here is Apple's definition of bad can often be in conflict with an individual's. You could be experiencing noticeably shorter battery life on the device and they still wouldn't replace the battery because their diagnostics say it's good.
I had the same issue with the pro 12.9 (1st gen) and the mini 4. The mini 4 has lost over half of it’s battery life... The pro 9.7 has more cycles but less deeps discharges and still lasts 9-10 hours...
My Pro 9.7 is down to 7-8 hours now. Granted, it was already around that level at the 1-year mark. It hasn't deteriorated noticeably since I started alternating iPads. With multiple devices, the usage is being spread enough that I think the wear on the iPads is now equivalent to light-to-moderate use.
Batteries - Maximizing Performance
Maximize the life and lifespan of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in your MacBook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.www.apple.com
This.
Besides that I stopped worrying about batteries a long time ago.
Strange that the iPhone has an ’optimize battery’ mode that maintains an 80% charge until right before it thinks you’re going to use it then charges to 100%, yet this support page doesn’t mention any harm from a prolonged 100% charge. Seems like a pretty mixed message from Apple.Batteries - Maximizing Performance
Maximize the life and lifespan of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries in your MacBook, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.www.apple.com
Well, let's think at it from a business perspective. If I wanted to make $ off of you, I'm only going to cover the information that's necessary for the warranty (2 years 80% capacity). Now, it's my opinion that Apple isn't completely evil - hence the "optimized charging" and above average battery life among other manufacturers.
Pretty much all of my Apple Devices have hit 2 years at or near design capacity. My MBP 2017 is at 94-96% after 2 years.
BatteryUniversity is extremely adamant about the 20-80% rule. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries - I've read Isidor's book several times (love it). I think the 20-80% rule is important if you're going to keep a device 3-5+ years. But now days, battery tech does pretty well with any usage up to 2 years.
I'm told Tesla does the same with their batteries - encourages users not to keep their devices at full charge all the time, etc.
I just wish there was an 80% switch one could enable permanently for those of us who use our devices next to power all the time (like myself). That said, every tech I've ever used in the past that has offered this was horrendous (Lenovo, Samsung laptops, Dell) - they could never keep it at 80%. I'd unplug my Dell laptop and POOF power gone because Windows thought it was 80% when in reality it was at 1% (similar experience with Samsung/Lenovo).
So now... I don't worry bout it. I use my devices for a few years and sell them back to Apple to help finance the next generation of devices (or give to family).
I could talk about this forever but... Your iPad will "trickle" charge 80%+. There's something to be said for keeping it 80%+ so that it always "slowly" charges vs the harsh full charging - but having your battery always at or near 100% is "bad" too. So I don't go out of my way to do the 20-80% - I'm almost always next to a plug so MOST of my devices are doing 90-100% their entire lives. This seems to help them over the 2 years I use them (coconutBattery to compare capacity to design capacity).
MBPs do this - they'll hold at 95% or so - draining from 100% to 95% and back to keep the battery "moving" and from getting stale.
I really see my electronic devices as consumables with an expected useful life of a few years at most. I purchase them to enhance my life, not to control it, and thus I use them to that end. My iPad gets plugged in nightly before bed and used daily down to 60-70%. In time if this is going to force the need to replace the battery so be it, I’ll choose then whether to pay for a battery replacement or purchase a new device. It’s really no different than the battery in my cars as far as I’m concerned (only i’d never consider purchasing a new car due to a dead battery LOL).
While the approach is sensible, the problem with Apple is that they often don't change the battery, but they swap the whole device with some other refurbished one... And backing up it's not like cloning and having your data exactly as they were. So for some people for whom some data is important or that want to stay on a give IOS version this may be a deal breaker...
I can understand that. I’m not a fan of the backup procedures available to us either - they required both a reliance on cloud services/backup and manually copying data. A royal pain to manage for sure.
We can still make an encrypted backup with iTunes/Finder and have the whole iOS device “cloned” onto a new one. I do a fresh installation of every major iOS release and it literally takes me about 30 minutes to get my iPad exactly as it was.
No guarantee you'll be able to keep the old iOS version, though (e.g. iOS 10 for 32-bit apps on something faster than iPhone 5/iPad 4). Now that recent iTunes version no longer have the App Store, there's also no guarantee you can re-download all apps that were installed on the old device.
Not only that, but even for current apps you won't always get them as they are... For instance since the spring 2019 dropbox does not allow more than 3 devices for the free version. Now your previous devices won't be disconnected. Personally I have between 20 and 30 between laptops, tablets and phones. If I "clone" the SSD of my pc, that's real cloning and dropbox will keep working. When I backup an ipad, dropbox will require me to sign in again, which won't work with new devices since I am way over the 3 device limit. So no, it's not cloning....
Did not know that about Dropbox - I also am over the limit. Time for a change ...