iPhone does the same thing. MacBooks too if the screen is open and you haven’t turned it off with Terminal.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPad iPad Turns On While Charging
- Thread starter digirati
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Not a big deal but majorly annoying and perhaps hindering when you have turned your phone off because of low energy and need every percent you can get once you’re near a charger, just that it’s not up to you that the phones fire back on the moment it sips the smallest amount of power. THAT IS very annoying and potentially a big deal, because boot takes a lot of energy, being on and being turned off again, too. All while you need to charge and keep every % you can get for later.
Unlikely. It charges the same when turned off. Also, the device will be in BFU, so not much else is accessible.
No, that works when off as well, I am pretty sure.
This is how iPods, iPhones and iPads have been for as long as I can remember. I believe if you plug in the device and turn it off after plugging it in, it will stay turned off until you turn it on manually.
Exactly, processes concerning battery management. So why do you have to boot when these processes can obviously run in the background anyway?
OP has a point, it is not known why iDevices do this and that alone makes it annoying.
Yes, they do stay turned off. Which makes it all the more confusing why it doesn’t work when the device is already off.
No idea, but the reverse is not true. A plugged in iPad when switched off won't switch back on.
The usual use case for me turning my iPad off is that I have a timed automation to play BBC Sounds on it at 6:00am and transfer it to the HomePod in the kitchen. I don't want the automation to run when we're away from home, so I turn the iPad off (and the backup alarm on the HomePods also).
Pretty easy, as iPhone/iPad/Mac/Watch never actually run fully out of power, and thus don't "power down" 100%:
The whole "shut down" process on an iDevice is, roughly speaking, equivalent to having a lamp with its own built-in switch plugged into a wall outlet. You know, like the ones with a switch on the cable?
With this kind of design, you can turn the lamp on and off all you want. But there will still be electricity running between the wall-outlet and the switch on the cable.
You can only fully turn off the lamp, and stop electricity from running inside the cable and to the switch if there's an on-off switch over the wall-outlet, or if you unplug the cable from the wall-outlet.
The same goes for an iPad/iPhone/Watch/MacBook: You'd have to disassemble your iDevice and disconnect the internal battery from your iDevice to truly shut it off.
But, unlike a lamp like the one in the photo, on your iDevice, "shut down" is a software-based "on-off switch" rather than an actual, manual on-off switch.
In short, you don't cut off the power from your iDevice and stop it from using battery entirely if you just shut it down. The iDevice, in a sense, always stays on.
"Shut Down" "just" powers down iOS and the display and makes it go in to an extremely efficient, "ultra low-power mode" that barely uses any power but keeps enough to keep some very basic functionality running.
This serves to keep the internal system clock on time, aids in recharging the battery correctly before iOS gets booted up, and helps to ensure that the battery never drains fully which is something that can permanently damage the battery.
Tip: If you want to recharge your iDevice while in its (almost but not really) off-state, you can simply shut down your iDevice while it's charging: It will stay "shut down" but charge like it would if iOS was running and the display was on.
No doubt a multitude of reasons.
Because the device will wait until it has a minimal charge for basic operation before powering (back) on, there’s a delay after plugged in (when the battery is critically depleted) before (re)boot. By having the device automatically (re)start, the user doesn’t need to guess, continually try to boot device. Rather, it’s ready to go (again) ASAP. In other words:
Troubleshooting/maintenance also seems like valid reasoning.
The SMC handles that. However -- in the little bit I’ve analyzed the specific aspect -- it appears the device must be powered on and have been initially unlocked to log the battery state of charge progress (i.e., there will be a blank/empty period in the battery usage graph).