iPad Pro 10.5" battery drain in standby

[spiderman0616]

Hi all--

So my iPad Pro 10.5" has been having battery drain issues for the last few weeks, here is kind of the order of events, and I feel like it's linked to when the last iOS 11 update went out:

1. Started draining on standby--about 20% every 12 hours. Doing a hard reset would only help for a day or so and then it would start again.

2. Did a factory reset and restore from backup. That did not work at all. (I mostly didn't expect it to.) I did realize at that point that I had the iPad set up as a Home Hub, and turned that off. We have 2 Apple TVs and a HomePod acting as Home Hubs, so I don't need the iPad doing it too. Turning that off did fix some of the battery drain.

3. Did a DFU restore and installed a fresh copy of iOS 11. I went ahead and restored all apps from backup since it just redownloads/reinstalls new copies of those anyway. This actually worked for 2 or 3 days, and then I noticed the battery was draining about 10% overnight again.

4. Last night it went from 97% to 89% in about 12 hours. I had only logged about 20 minutes of actual use on the iPad since putting it away the day before (according to the battery menu), but it was showing 4 hours of usage time and about 26 hours of standby time. I definitely had not used it for 4 hours since taking it off the charger, but SOMETHING is using battery in standby.

5. Today I did a hard reset on it, turned off all background app refresh, and force quit all apps. I'm going to see where it is at the end of the day. I did call Apple Support and they ran a diagnostic on it--the OS, battery, and all apps passed their test as being fine, so they made me an Apple Store appointment. I just have doubts that's going to do anything. I think something is running in the background that shouldn't be. I just can't figure out which app or service it is.

Anyone have any experiences like this recently? I feel like I have a rogue app somewhere or something.

 

[flaubert]

The pattern you describe does sound like some app is eating more than its share of the battery. Have you tried going into Settings > Battery and seeing what apps the iPad lists as using the most battery in the past 24 hours and the past 7 days? Then you could try temporarily deleting the top couple apps (assuming they're not built-in apps like Safari or Messages), and see if the draining slows.

 

[spiderman0616]

The pattern you describe does sound like some app is eating more than its share of the battery. Have you tried going into Settings > Battery and seeing what apps the iPad lists as using the most battery in the past 24 hours and the past 7 days? Then you could try temporarily deleting the top couple apps (assuming they're not built-in apps like Safari or Messages), and see if the draining slows.

Yep--all the items listed in the Battery area match up with my actual usage. Yesterday morning I took the iPad off the charger and then kept close track of what apps I was using during the day and for how long. The Battery area matched pretty much exactly with what I noted--about 20 or 25 total minutes of usage. But the Usage stats listed about 6 hours since I had taken the iPad off the charger, and the standby was only about 26 hours since the last full charge. So something was using an extra 5.5 hours while the iPad was in standby.

This is exactly why I don't think taking the iPad into the Apple Store is going to do any good. I don't think there's a hardware issue. I think something is using battery in the background when it shouldn't be. I took everything out of my widget screen, turned all background app refresh off, and did a hard reboot. I'm going to try to leave the iPad completely alone until tomorrow morning and see what it says after doing all that. I'm starting to think the MLB At Bat app might be the culprit.

 

[flaubert]

Sounds like a good plan (to leave it untouched for 24 hours so as to pinpoint who is using battery juice). Might be a good idea to use all your usual apps the day before that test so that everything is primed for doing whatever it does, and you go into the non-use period with the usual apps in memory.

 

[spiderman0616]

Well, nothing I've done has gotten a different result so far--even after turning off all background app refresh, almost all location services, uninstalling most apps, and some other things, my usage stats are about 1/3 of my standby stats when the iPad is not in use. So if the iPad is in standby for 8 hours after a fresh charge to 100% and no use, activity will show as 2, 3, sometimes even 4 hours.

I'm trying my last resort now--I did ANOTHER DFU restore, but this time I didn't reinstall my apps or files from backup afterwards. I just reinstalled everything fresh, re-set up Apple Pay and Touch ID, reconfigured all settings, etc. Last time I did the DFU restore and then installed everything from backup, and might have reintroduced whatever the problem was to the system. Hopefully this is what solves it and saves me a trip to the Apple Store on Monday. I'm still convinced there is nothing wrong with my hardware, or else the usage stats would not be what they are. This is a software problem.

 

[Perene]

I would contact Apple and try to replace this iPAD with a brand new one. When I hear these stories I am glad I did not update my IPP 10.5 from iOS 10.3.2 and even installed a tvOS profile to block these pathetic attemps from Apple to force down my throat this garbage.

Question: are there any devices using bluetooth in this iPAD? Already paired?

 

[spiderman0616]

I would contact Apple and try to replace this iPAD with a brand new one. When I hear these stories I am glad I did not update my IPP 10.5 from iOS 10.3.2 and even installed a tvOS profile to block these pathetic attemps from Apple to force down my throat this garbage.

Question: are there any devices using bluetooth in this iPAD? Already paired?

I actually think my DFU method yesterday solved my problem. I did a DFU restore again, but then afterwards did NOT let my nearby iPhone set up any of the settings and did NOT restore from backup after the firmware was restored from iTunes on my Mac. I downloaded all my apps from scratch and set up all my settings manually. I then took the iPad Pro off the charger at about 5:00 PM and let it sit overnight having not used any apps at all after unplugging (other than Settings to take a screenshot of the battery menu).

When I checked the Battery menu in the morning, the standby was at a little over 13 hours, and the usage time was about 32 minutes. Battery charge was still at 100%. (Sorry, forgot to take a screenshot at that point.) This is in line with what I was getting when the iPad was new. I am cautiously going to declare this problem as being solved. I actually expected this morning's results to be worse than they were because of it being a new install and the OS probably needing to do some indexing and stuff in the background, but maybe it got done with most of that during the day when I had the charger plugged in.

To answer your question, the only bluetooth things I connect to from my iPad are my AirPods and my Apple Pencil. We do have some other bluetooth items in our house that we use regularly, but not with our iPads.

The problem I was having does seem to be coming from iOS 11.2.6 itself. There were no apps reporting as running in the background unnecessarily. I even turned off background app refresh completely a couple of nights and it made no difference. My theory is that there were rogue iOS services running in the background that were draining my battery. My hope is that iOS 11.3 doesn't put me back in the same boat again. I've heard from some people beta testing it that it is running fine as far as battery life, so I'll remain hopeful for now.

 

[spiderman0616]

Bump: My last fix didn't ultimately work. I thought I'd keep this up to date because when looking for ways to troubleshoot this, I find nothing helpful other than people telling me to turn everything off, which makes the iPad useless. Here is what I've tried, in order of how I tried it, none of which worked:

1. Factory restore, and then restore from backup. (situation remained the same)
2. Factory restore, and then install apps new. (worked for a day and then went back to high battery drain in standby)
3. DFU restore, and then restore from backup. (worked for about a week and then back to high drain in standby)
4. DFU restore, install all apps new, manually set all settings. (Worked for about 3 days and back to high standby drain)
5. Turn off background app refresh completely (made no difference)
6. Turn off location services completely (made no difference)
7. Turn off push in email (made no difference)

Screen is set to auto adjust brightness. Auto lock/unlock is on. iPad is draining roughly 10% a day in standby. When I charge it to 100% and then take it off the charger and just let it sit without ever using any apps, it's still behaving this way. The last time I fully charged it, after 19 hours of standby it showed 8 hours of battery usage and I had launched no apps and not used it for anything at all.

This is just simply unacceptable, and I usually tend to not blame the hardware, but I'm pretty sure there is something wrong with the battery in my iPad Pro. I set up another Genius Bar appointment for Monday, and will hopefully get a replacement. I use this thing for work, so I can't have it constantly draining like this. I hate getting replacements because they're going to replace the new unit that I bought on launch day fresh in the box with a refurbished unit, but that's the way the cookie crumbles I guess.

 

[flaubert]

I'm sorry to hear that this is still unresolved. Reading over your (very complete) list of debugging steps, it strikes me that all of them involve having all your usual third-party apps in play on the device, right? If it were me, I would go for one more firmware restore, except I would NOT install any third party apps at all. Then just live with the Apple-supplied apps for a week (or as long as you feel it would take to judge whether the battery drain was occurring). Use the iPad to surf on Safari, check email, read ebooks in Apple apps, etc, but no MLB game day, etc. I still am suspicious that there is some app on your device that is misbehaving.

 

[spiderman0616]

I'm sorry to hear that this is still unresolved. Reading over your (very complete) list of debugging steps, it strikes me that all of them involve having all your usual third-party apps in play on the device, right? If it were me, I would go for one more firmware restore, except I would NOT install any third party apps at all. Then just live with the Apple-supplied apps for a week (or as long as you feel it would take to judge whether the battery drain was occurring). Use the iPad to surf on Safari, check email, read ebooks in Apple apps, etc, but no MLB game day, etc. I still am suspicious that there is some app on your device that is misbehaving.

I am too, which makes me REALLY not want to go to the Apple store. If I get a refurb unit as a replacement and then start having the same issue again, I would be so annoyed. I know there's really nothing wrong with refurbs, but I have gotten ones before with cosmetic issues, which drives me crazy.

EDIT: You got me thinking--since I'm having such trouble with battery drain and basically not using the iPad right now, I may as well start all over. I look at it like I have one more week to figure this out on my own before my Apple store appointment. I just did a DFU restore and installed NOTHING on the iPad. Just restored as new and logged into my iCloud account for basic app use. If I still see the same problem, then I KNOW the hardware is faulty and I'll just restore from backup on the replacement. If I don't see the problem, then I'll start installing apps a little at a time. I will probably hold off on 11.3 if it comes out in the meantime as well.

Ugh--it sucks not having full use of my iPad!!!

 

[spiderman0616]

After ANOTHER DFU restore yesterday and not installing any backups or apps--just the iPad Pro running 11.2.6 fresh--I let it sit overnight and checked the battery use stats this morning. It was about 9 hours standby and about 1.5 hours usage. Not promising. However, I do know that you can't exactly go by those stats after the first setup and charge as the OS is indexing, uploading, downloading, and all kinds of other stuff. So I am going to ignore those stats.

I topped the battery back off this morning and let it sit again. Just checked the battery usage stats again and in about 2.5 hours standby, the usage stat was 7 minutes. This is more in line with what should be happening. However, I have had that happen before and then in the same day it will jump way up and chew through 10-15% of battery just sitting there on standby with nothing open in the background or anything.

I will post back here again when I have good information to share. I'm hoping this thread gets some hits, because again, when I was looking around online for stuff to try, all I ever found was articles telling me to turn things off, which is not a solution and didn't work anyway. I still think my iPad has a hardware issue, but I'm hoping this will serve as a good guide of things for people to try if all else fails.

 

[spiderman0616]

Late in the day yesterday, I decided to start installing a select group of apps:

iWork (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
Office 365 (OneDrive, OneNote, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype for Business, Outlook)
Notability
Slack
Carrot Weather
Twitter
GameInformer
Amazon
TV Remote
Scanner Pro
Printer Pro
AirPort Utility
TV Guide
Playstation Vue

I also finally paired my Apple Pencil.

I used Notability for some things, did some web browsing, looked at some work stuff in Office, did some Amazon shopping, and then put everything away for the night. I did NOT force quit any of my apps before putting the iPad away. I just used it like normal and put it in the bag when I was done. When I woke up this morning, the battery usage stat since the night before was only about 30 minutes, and the drain was only 1%. I'm going to let it go one more day to see what happens before installing any other apps, but for now I'm confident that nothing in the above list is the culprit of my phantom battery drain.

If I wake up tomorrow morning and the situation is still the same, I'm going to call the Apple rep I've been working with and tell her to close the case. I'm not trading my iPad Pro in for an app issue that will likely come back anyway.

 

[Perene]

@spiderman0616 Did you try fully draining the battery (0%) and then recharging to 100%? Could this be a way to fix it?

I heard this is detrimental to batteries (and not necessary, if the goal is to calibrate), however it seems in some cases need to be done to correct battery issues. I never let my devices drain to 0% and always recharge before that happens.

Have you also tried using this?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1128929-REG/apple_mj262ll_a_29w_usb_c_power_adapter.html

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1241871-REG/apple_mkq42am_a_lightning_to_usb_type_c.html

I would contact Apple and try to replace this iPAD, don't wait until you can't do this anymore.

 

[spiderman0616]

@spiderman0616 Did you try fully draining the battery (0%) and then recharging to 100%? Could this be a way to fix it?

I heard this is detrimental to batteries (and not necessary, if the goal is to calibrate), however it seems in some cases need to be done to correct battery issues. I never let my devices drain to 0% and always recharge before that happens.

Have you also tried using this?

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1128929-REG/apple_mj262ll_a_29w_usb_c_power_adapter.html

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1241871-REG/apple_mkq42am_a_lightning_to_usb_type_c.html

I would contact Apple and try to replace this iPAD, don't wait until you can't do this anymore.

I have plenty of warranty left with Apple, so I'm not worried about it in that regard. Yes, I have tried discharging the battery fully--that didn't work.

At this point I'm definitely convinced it's an app. I've been using my iPad as normal with only the above apps (and my Pencil and Smart Keyboard) for the last couple of days with no problems yet.

And yes, I do have both the Apple brand lightning charger and USB-C to lightning fast charger. I usually use the standard, as the fast charging is harder on the battery.

 

[Perene]

the fast charging is harder on the battery.

What do you mean? Is it detrimental to the battery's health? I didn't know that.

I have both, and so far the battery has lost 10% of its capacity, since I received in October 13, 2017. I tend to use the 29W charger. And I never left iOS 10.3.2.

Have you also tried disabling wi-fi and bluetooth, and putting in Airplane mode? About these apps, what do iOS tells you after a few days or 24 hours, I mean, how much each one of them is wasting in % ?

iOS battery stats can point out after a while which apps are using your battery the most. Please post here a screenshot of this data.

 

[spiderman0616]

What do you mean? Is it detrimental to the battery's health? I didn't know that.

I have both, and so far the battery has lost 10% of its capacity, since I received in October 13, 2017. I tend to use the 29W charger. And I never left iOS 10.3.2.

Have you also tried disabling wi-fi and bluetooth, and putting in Airplane mode? About these apps, what do iOS tells you after a few days or 24 hours, I mean, how much each one of them is wasting in % ?

iOS battery stats can point out after a while which apps are using your battery the most. Please post here a screenshot of this data.

Fast charging is harder on any battery than standard speed charging. The difference is probably negligible in the short term but can add up over time, so I only use it when I really need to.

Disabling things was doing nothing for the problem before. The battery stats screen in Settings was completely useless because when the problem started it wasn't showing anything that didn't match my notes. You can see from my comments above that it was never showing anything running excessively in the background. The only stat I could go off of was the battery usage stat, which was spiking excessively while in standby.

Unfortunately I don't have any screenshots for you at this time. I'm on a fresh install right now, so the battery usage screen isn't going to tell you much. So far so good though. With the current set of apps I have installed (not my full stable of 3rd party apps, just the really important ones I use) I have not seen excessive usage or battery drain stats while in standby in a couple of days now. I'm currently convinced there is a buggy app doing this.

 

[spiderman0616]

Quick update--

Yesterday I installed the following video apps in the afternoon:
Netflix
HBO Go
Amazon Prime Video
CW
History Channel

This is just a fraction of the video/channel apps I usually have on my device, but I thought I'd start with the handful of services that I don't use with Playstation Vue. Last night I streamed some shows on Vue, surfed on Safari a bit, and read news in the News app. Did not force quit any apps in the background before shutting down for the night.

This morning I had no excessive battery usage while in standby, and no excessive battery percentage drain.

This is the longest I've gone after a restore so far where the battery hasn't started drastically discharging overnight or during the day at random times while in standby. Things are pointing more and more toward a buggy app. Now things are going so much better with my iPad I'm scared to put any more apps on it!

 

[spiderman0616]

Earlier this afternoon, I installed Purify (ad blocker), Workflow, Speedtest, and GIF Keyboard. Battery hasn't even gone down 1% since then and Usage stat has barely gone up. In the clear so far. Will probably install some more apps in the morning and will list those here and post results tomorrow.

 

[spiderman0616]

Seems that sometime this afternoon, the battery drain in standby started kicking up again. This was after installing GIF keyboard, Speedtest, Purity, and Workflow. I’m going to check the stats again before I go to bed. If the drain is still happening, I will uninstall all 4 and see if the overnight numbers improve.

 

[spiderman0616]

Final post—this iPad is going in to the Apple Store. Even after deleting the apps I had installed just before the battery started quickly draining again, the drain continues. This is a hardware issue.

 

[Perene]

Final post—this iPad is going in to the Apple Store. Even after deleting the apps I had installed just before the battery started quickly draining again, the drain continues. This is a hardware issue.

Could you just check what is the battery degradation from this device? iOS apps can tell you that *. If it's new then it must be 2, 3 % at most, I am just curious what the real numbers are.

* Example:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-care-battery-life-tips/id1130216129?mt=8

 

[spiderman0616]

Could you just check what is the battery degradation from this device? iOS apps can tell you that *. If it's new then it must be 2, 3 % at most, I am just curious what the real numbers are.

* Example:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/battery-care-battery-life-tips/id1130216129?mt=8

I'm not going to have a chance to do that today. It's going to the Apple Store tonight--I'll try to find out what it is when they do their testing, but I'm assuming I'll be coming home with a replacement unit.

 

[spiderman0616]

Just as a post mortem on this thread:

I had reset the iPad again on Saturday (2 days ago) thinking I might try some more stuff, but then gave up and just shut it down completely and didn't touch it until my Apple Store appointment tonight. When I powered it on right before the appointment, the battery had drained about 8% just sitting there for a couple of days not even powered on. Go figure--I hadn't thought to ever try this out to see if it would drain.

I told the guy I was working with at the store all the things I had tried--basically the entire list I posted above--and he was pretty impressed that I went to all that trouble before bringing it in. While we were talking he goes, "Oh my god--your iPad has drained like 3% since we started talking!"

He ran a diagnostic on the iPad and it was still reporting that the battery was at 100% capacity, so nothing was reporting back as failing, but he was watching it drain with his own eyes on a fresh iOS install with no apps on it. He went back and checked with some of the techs in the back to see if he was missing anything. They all agreed I should get a replacement. They didn't have the model I needed in stock, so I had to go to another Apple Store about 15 minutes away to pick it up.

I just spent about 2 hours setting the new unit back up fully with all my 3rd party apps so I can finally start using it again tomorrow. I'm going to leave it on the charger overnight, and tomorrow I'll be back in action. (Part of me is still crossing my fingers and worried that this one will drain for unexplained reasons too.)

All in all though, Apple has bent over backwards for me twice in the last couple of months. They replaced my wife's Apple Watch, which was WAY out of warranty, because it wasn't holding a charge anymore (and decided to waive the battery fee too), and now replaced my iPad Pro pretty much on my word, as they couldn't find anything wrong with the unit through their testing. Is it annoying that I had to deal with this in the first place? Yes. But not as annoying as it would be if Apple Stores didn't exist--that's one of the many big differences that keep me coming back to Apple hardware again and again.

 

[spiderman0616]

BUMP

Two weeks later, and my replacement iPad Pro is doing the standby drain thing again. The only thing I can do to get it to stop at this point is put it in Airplane Mode over night. When I do that, it drains 0-1% max. This must be some kind of a software issue, but I can't for the life of me figure out what could be causing it.

The Airplane Mode option is not ideal--that means nothing updates while I'm not using the iPad. I don't know what to do. I might just wipe it, sell it, and start fresh when the new iPad Pros come out. It would just mean going without for a while and gambling on a June launch actually happening.

 

[spiderman0616]

Another update. My iPad Pro battery usage settled down on its own again and has been stable for the last few days. I took it off the charger yesterday afternoon and then put it away. I just got it back out and it shows 21 hours standby, 51 minutes usage. That’s pretty great.