iPad Pro Does the iPad have any sort of battery health management?

[zorinlynx]

I have an older 2016 iPad Pro (9.7") that is serving as a monitor for two security cameras. It does a really good job at this, but what I worry about is that the battery charge is ALWAYS at 100%, which is not good for lithium batteries.

Macs have built in battery management so a Macbook that's plugged in all the time will eventually start idling below 100% to reduce battery wear. I can also install an app like Al Dente to control this further.

But the iPad doesn't seem to do this at all. It's been solidly at 100% for weeks now, despite my hearing that Apple did put in some battery health management a while back. Has anyone ever seen iPads do any sort of health management when plugged in all the time? Is there a way to get it to do that?

Frankly I don't care about this iPad that much, I don't use it anymore as an iPad because it's somewhat slow these days, but I worry it'll puff up like a blowfish someday because the battery is ALWAYS at maximum charge.

 

[rui no onna]

About iPad and iPhone charge-management feature - Apple Support (GU)

iPadOS and iOS include a charge-management feature to maintain battery health when iPad or iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, iPhone XR, or later is connected to power for prolonged periods of time.

support.apple.com

 

[zorinlynx]

Aha. So based on this:

"...reduces the maximum capacity of the battery. The battery indicator will display the charge percentage based on this adjusted maximum capacity."

It's doing something, but not telling you it's doing something.

It'd be nice if there were a way to determine it's actually reduced the maximum capacity. This is one of my pet peeves of Apple; they don't seem to like providing tools to tell you what's going on behind the scenes.

 

[Digitalguy]

Apple gives zero details. I tried leaving an iPad and and iPhone plugged in most of the time day and night for months in 2019 on IOS 12 (iPad mini 5 and iPhone SE).
I measured every now and then battery capacity via iMazing, and didn't find any sign of the battery ever going below 95-97% (while showing 100%).
In 9 months and only 18 battery cycles the mini lost 15% of battery capacity (goind from 106% new to around 91%) by just being at high voltage all the time (that is near 100% charge). I then unplugged the mini at the beginning of 2020 and started charging it between 50 and around 80% as I do with all the other iPads and since it has gone down to 83% with around 190 cycles... I kept the iPhone plugged in for longer (I was not using it) and the battery went down even more and started swelling (I have replaced it since and now I leave it off at around 60% and it's still at 105%).

So based on my experience I would not recommend leaving these devices plugged it for extended periods.

 

[HDFan]

Coconut battery might give you some insights about your battery state.

 

[mlody]

It is upsetting that Apple till today's day is not providing battery health on iPads. They do it for iPhones, Macs, watches, but not for iPads. We have Air 3 that suffers from poor battery. According to Coconut is has over 550 cycles and about 75% battery health, but Apple claims the battery is good, so we stuck with perfectly capable iPad with a weak battery because we can't use $99 battery replacement service.