Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

msavwah

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 5, 2010
394
1
Oahu
Mine started out +10 hrs and seems to be holding steady but now i think my standby time is taking a big hit overnight. Gotta make some logs....

How's it going for everyone?
 
Okay, some things to consider for your battery log.

Leaving Bluetooth on will use up some power in standby if I'm not mistaken.

So will leaving WiFi on -- especially if you have multiple e-mail accounts and have them set to fetch mail frequently.

I'm not sure what impact other notification apps (like Facebook, etc.) have on battery life when standing by.

The other consideration is probably how long its been since you've let your battery fully discharge to reset the percent counter. Over time the battery percentage indicator will get less and less accurate, until you do a full discharge/recharge.

Post your results. I'm interested to see the data.
 
The battery life on my iPad is going great. I've been using it constantly bar an hour or so over the past say 6hrs and it's only just hit 50%. I'm very impressed with it.

It does charge slow as hell though when plugged into my iMac but now that I've got it hooked into the AC adapter it charges quickly.

I expected a lot less so overall I can't complain.
 
I find I can get about 8 hours of reading and video watching out of it. I try to keep It plugged into the wall when reading if possible. I'm not looking forward to anymore reduced life. I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of users next year bitching about how they can only get 4-5 hours out of it. These lithium batteries really don't hold up long if you run a cycle threw them everyday.

Wifi doesn't seem to make much of a difference if on or off. The screen is by far draining the lions share of juice.
 
My battery is doing Great!

I charged it fully yesterday night and turned it off for the night. I got up at around 9 this morning, and it's 9 now, and I've been using it on and off through these 12 hours. I think total use today has been like 5 hours, and it's at 71% right now. I was really expecting less battery-wise.
 
Ok here is my first bit of info, and this concerns only standby time.


Apr 24 2250 47% to Apr 25 1320 36%

That's 11% battery drain in 14.5 hours.

Wifi on
Notifications on for 1 app with badges and sounds only 2 alerts received
Two push mail accts 1mm 1exchange gmail 1+4 messages received

Bluetooth off
3G off


Seems excessive on the battery drain, about 12 days....

Just kiddin bout 3G it's wifi only. :p
 
I seem to be doing fine with the battery. I stream netflix a lot at night before I go to sleep, I play on it here and there and mostly at night after work. I've done one complete drain and then full charge. Standby doesn't drain much power at all. I hope the next iPhone comes with a similar battery, even 50% of the usage time would be a dream.
 
I did a short test to show off to a co worker.

We watched two episodes of Sparticus via Netflix streaming. I started at 100% and almost two hours later was at.....

93%

Effin AMAZING

Push on every 15 min for two gmail accounts and about four apps. I only received one email and 2 notifications but still! Amazing battery life on this machine!
 
Have it on the dock at night, and use it all day with little loss of juice. Been surfing and playing games most of the day today, and still have 59%.

Time for me to recharge, I am at about 1% :)
 
I took the iPad off the charger at 10:30 am this morning and hsve played games all day today. Watched two movies, browsed the web countless times and I'm at 38%. and I still have yet to be able to run it all the way down.
 
Took my iPAd off my charger a little bit after 12 noon. I had Wifi on all day, watched the Gran Torino movie, browsed the web a lot and now at almost 12 midnight, the low battery 20% battery message came up. Great battery life.
 
It's been off the charger for 7-days. I use it a few hours a day for Twitter, e-mail, web surfing, Kindle reading, and newspaper app reading. I have bluetooth and WiFi always on, and use bluetooth to pump audio podcasts to my stereo. I use push mail and notifications for MobileMe, Exchange, and various apps. Today, I hooked it up to my TV, using Apple's component video cables and watched TWiT live (~ 2 hours) and another hour or so of video.

My iPad just hit 50%. This is why they used the word "magical".
 
I guess it depends heavily on the screen brightness.

To me, the screen brightness settings has little effect, as I leave auto-brightness on. Now I usually keep my apartment dimly lit, but I am not sure how much it impacts use. I did do a full discharge and charge after I received it and plan on doing so once every couple of weeks.

The only use of the iPad that appears to heavily drain the battery is 3D gaming.

If you aren't blown away by our iPad's battery life, I suggest taking it in for a look by a genius.
 
To me, the screen brightness settings has little effect, as I leave auto-brightness on. Now I usually keep my apartment dimly lit, but I am not sure how much it impacts use. I did do a full discharge and charge after I received it and plan on doing so once every couple of weeks.

The only use of the iPad that appears to heavily drain the battery is 3D gaming.

If you aren't blown away by our iPad's battery life, I suggest taking it in for a look by a genius.

Auto-brightness does not mean autodimm of course. At least i've never seen it dim itself.
I set my ipad at 50% brightness during the day and 2-5% at night and gets around 10 hours with it. That's obviously the specced usage time and shouldn't blow me away enough to justify a Genius appointment.

With hours of daily usage (which equals to min. 2 hours a day) for 7 days for only 50% charge as you claimed. That would be 14 hours for 50% = 28 hours usage for a full charge. Quite magical indeed, more magical than us ordinary ipadusers...
 
So I did a full discharge and recharge cycle and my results went from 11% drain over 14 hours to 0% drain over 8 hours in standby.
Much better.
 
I thought my battery life was getting shorter but I think I am just getting used to it. It was such a huge leap over my iPhone and Macbook that it felt like it would go forever. Now I am used to the long life and it just feels normal. It seems to be just fine.
 
I have found the iPad's battery life to be impressive, too. Routinely, wifi is on all the time and Bluetooth off. I use the iPad primarily for Web surfing but also stream some Netflix programming to it. Generally speaking, I put it on the charger every night, disconnect it the next morning, periodically use it all day and evening and then hook it up to charge again at bedtime. So far, so good. There is a caveat, though. My primary computer is my MBP, so I use the iPad only as an adjunct to it. Still, the iPad is the first true computing device I have ever had that I could treat like a smartphone where battery life is concerned.
 
I am routinely getting ten to twelve hours on a single charge. Just amazing!

It really hit home when flying this week on a six hour flight. My MacBook air was lucky to get two hours of movie playing time before it would die. With the iPad I surfed, played games, and watched a movie -- and still had plenty of battery life to last me another couple of days!

Magical indeed!
 
Here are my battery calculations. And yes, I feel like a total nerd for figuring this all out like this.

Normal:
50% screen brightness
Auto-Brightness = ON
Bluetooth = OFF
Wi-Fi = ON
Three Mail accounts, fetching every 5 mins.
Activities: Mail, iPod, Safari, occasional games, Notes, Youtube, and Videos.

Battery Life: ~12 hours.

iBooks:
Same settings as above, but wi-fi OFF, and obviously, just iBooks running.

Battery Life: 14-16 hours.

Minimalist:
10% screen brightness
Auto-Brightness = ON
Bluetooth = OFF
Wi-Fi = OFF
Location Services = OFF

Activities: iPod, Notes, Videos, and other non-wi-fi apps.

Battery Life: 18-20 hours.


Now, I've tested all of these on my 32GB wi-fi iPad, and these are the numbers I've gotten. Most of the time, I keep it on the normal settings, and end up charging every third day.

At night, I'll use the iBooks setting, and read for hours. The boost is significant, but could be to the lack of other processes. iBooks obviously doesn't take much to run. While the screen brightness is diminished from it being darker, this is countered by the screen remaining on constantly, where with usage of some other apps may find "down time" in between activity (specifically iPod, Notes, and similar apps that may be left alone for a few minutes, allowing the screen to turn off.)

The minimalist setting is limited - obviously, because there's no wi-fi, and the screen just isn't as pretty when it's brightness is so low. There's still visibility, but obviously it's much nicer to watch movies or take notes with higher brightness settings. I could see this being useful for someone who is out and about and needs to be taking notes, or isn't on wi-fi and needs some lasting battery life. That being said, despite the huge gain in battery life, in my opinion it's not really worth it unless it's a necessity, as you're limiting yourself quite a bit.
 
I'm kind of surprised the iPad OS doesn't have the same usage stats as the iPhone. Why don't they want to show us how long our usage has been in days, hours etc.

Am I missing it?
 
Frankly, I am AMAZED at the strength of the battery in my iPad. I have the 32GB model and just took the thing on a trip across the country... I used it everyday, HARD, on the plane and everywhere else I went. I have to estimate total usage was somewhere around 12-15 hours with wireless on most of that time... and my iPad never dropped below 50% of battery power!

I did recharge it for the return home, and I did turn "auto-brightness" to OFF. But still, that's just fantastic; my MB Pro gets 2-3 hours battery life tops, on it's best day...
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.