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Poor battery life :( am I the only one?

C

cidf2008

macrumors member
Original poster
May 5, 2010
56
0
So yesterday I got my iPad and when I unboxed it it was fully charged.
after a use of about 6 hours the battery was at 1% and the device turned off. I charged my iPad over night and today I am experiencing the same thing.

To test it I streamed a video for 30 minutes and the battery lost 8%.

So that gives me 375 minutes of battery life on one charge which is little over 6 hours and just what I experienced yesterday.

Do I have to worry? May it be, because the battery isn't conditioned yet? What is your experience?

please help
 
cidf2008 said:
So yesterday I got my iPad and when I unboxed it it was fully charged.
after a use of about 6 hours the battery was at 1% and the device turned off. I charged my iPad over night and today I am experiencing the same thing.

To test it I streamed a video for 30 minutes and the battery lost 8%.

So that gives me 375 minutes of battery life on one charge which is little over 6 hours and just what I experienced yesterday.

Do I have to worry? May it be, because the battery isn't conditioned yet? What is your experience?

please help
Click to expand...

I don't think you should worry. Streaming video sucks the battery power quick. A number of sites have done test, and doing a lot of streaming of video usually gives you about 6-7 hours battery life.
 
That cant be right if ur battery ran out completely within 6 hours! Unless you had it on full brightness wifi or 3g (3g naturally has less battery life!), push emails, location services etc. I only had my ipad plugged in to sync. And from full charge yesterday 2pm ive got 24% left! Now ive used it a good 10 hours or so and still got 24% left!

It might just be a faulty battery. But try calibrating it, and if after a few days its still the same or in the mean time if you just dont think your getting the advertised usage then take it to an apple store! They will run some diagnostics and Sort it out for you by either replacement ipad or repair. Might be different for ipad but, i doubt it since its just out, they replaced my iphone 3gs no problem due to battery related issues :)

Hope this helps! :)
 
I have the wifi only version so no location stuff no 3g.

I had push-notifications deactivated but I had the brightness up
 
Was this over 3G or WiFi? Also what was the brightness level?

W/ WiFi @ med. brightness you should be getting at least 8-9 hours if you are 100% streaming for that entire time (that is a lot of time to be streaming though)

w/ 3G @ med brightness you should be getting 6-7 hours. 3G sucks more juice.

Under a mixed use scenario: some streaming, some browsing, using some offline game/productivity apps, maybe a stored video, you should be getting 9-10 hours on either model.
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Was this over 3G or WiFi? Also what was the brightness level?

W/ WiFi @ med. brightness you should be getting at least 8-9 hours if you are 100% streaming for that entire time (that is a lot of time to be streaming though)

w/ 3G @ med brightness you should be getting 6-7 hours. 3G sucks more juice.

Under a mixed use scenario: some streaming, some browsing, using some offline game/productivity apps, maybe a stored video, you should be getting 9-10 hours on either model.
Click to expand...

As I said it's wifi only.
But my Brightness was on 100%. Was that it?
 
I took me 3 charge cycles to really see the best performance. Also, it seems like whenever I charge via iMac the battery drains faster. Just something to consider.
 
I lost about 20-30% with about 3 hours solid Internet use last night. Which fits pretty nicely into apples 10 hour life expectancy.
Unlike my MacBook. Never had the "5 hours" out of that. Even just word processing.
 
Harmush said:
I lost about 20-30% with about 3 hours solid Internet use last night. Which fits pretty nicely into apples 10 hour life expectancy.
Unlike my MacBook. Never had the "5 hours" out of that. Even just word processing.
Click to expand...

How was your brightness set?
 
Ok After Running a few tests i've come to the conclusion that my battery life is Currently at 8,33 hours per charge with mid brightness and 6,25 hours at Full brightness. Not terrible but with everyone Talking about an Average 10+ hours i am a Little disappointed. If that isn't better on monday i am going to contact the Support at get a New one
 
cidf2008 said:
Ok After Running a few tests i've come to the conclusion that my battery life is Currently at 8,33 hours per charge with mid brightness and 6,25 hours at Full brightness. Not terrible but with everyone Talking about an Average 10+ hours i am a Little disappointed. If that isn't better on monday i am going to contact the Support at get a New one
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity, how can you look at the screen on full brightness? (I only ask because I've got it on 1/3rd and anything more than that seems to bore in the very backs of my eyes.)

(I've also checked and I all my machines/iphone at the same brightness, the only exception is the 5 year old iMac which has the brightness up a bit more due to age)
 
cidf2008 said:
As I said it's wifi only.
But my Brightness was on 100%. Was that it?
Click to expand...


Could be. Set turn your brightness down to 50% or less. It's still very bright at that level. See if that doesn't help. Also try charging the battery to 100% and let it drain completely, i.e. it shuts down on its own. Let it rest for a few hours then recharge it. Let it rest charged and plugged in for another couple of hours -- you can use it, just keep it plugged in. Then unplug and see if battery life doesn't improve.
 
I just flew round trip from New York to San Francisco this week. It was 5 1/2 hours each way. I was using the iPad for about 4 hours both times. With screen brightness set just below 50% and the WiFi radio turned off and starting with a full battery, I ended my trip with 67% battery both times. I find less than 50% brightness to be my comfort zone, especially in the dim environment of an aircraft cabin. I don't think I could use it indoors at 100% brightness. And there is no point in having the WiFi radio turned on when you're not in a WiFi environment. The iPad has great battery life but it requires a little common sense from the user.

BTW, I was using the iPad to review a 52 page PowerPoint presentation, music, video, games, and an iBook. It did a great job with PowerPoint to the extent that I actually prefer it to my laptop on a plane. It's smaller and easier to handle and navigation between pages is just soooo damned easy. The iPad makes air travel much more tolerable. Not enjoyable, but tolerable.
 
As i Said wen i put the brightness to 50% i get an estimated 8,33 hours.

I am just concerned because most reviews said it the battery life would even Be above the 10 hours and mine is below.
 
cidf2008 said:
As i Said wen i put the brightness to 50% i get an estimated 8,33 hours.

I am just concerned because most reviews said it the battery life would even Be above the 10 hours and mine is below.
Click to expand...

Have you checked what settings those reviews are using?
 
From Apple's website:

"Testing conducted by Apple in March 2010 using preproduction iPad units and software. Testing consisted of full battery discharge while performing each of the following tasks: video playback, audio playback, and Internet browsing using Wi-Fi or 3G. Video content was a repeated 2-hour 23-minute movie purchased from the iTunes Store. Audio content was a playlist of 358 unique songs, consisting of a combination of songs imported from CDs using iTunes (128-Kbps AAC encoding) and songs purchased from the iTunes Store (256-Kbps AAC encoding). Internet over Wi-Fi and 3G tests were conducted using a closed network (for Wi-Fi only) and dedicated web and mail servers, browsing snapshot versions of 20 popular web pages, and receiving mail once an hour. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network (except for Internet browsing over 3G); the Wi-Fi feature Ask to Join Networks and Auto-Brightness were turned off. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors. Battery tests are conducted using specific iPad units; actual results may vary."
 
New batteries need a few charge cycles before they give their best performance so I think its a little early to take it back, especially as 8.5 hour of video streaming is pretty goo going in my estimation.

Are you just guessing/calculation 8.5 hours a 50% brightness or have you actually tried it? After all you only got it yesterday.:confused:
 
gazwas said:
New batteries need a few charge cycles before they give their best performance so I think its a little early to take it back, especially as 8.5 hour of video streaming is pretty goo going in my estimation.

Are you just guessing/calculation 8.5 hours a 50% brightness or have you actually tried it? After all you only got it yesterday.:confused:
Click to expand...

I See how much the battery Drains in an Hour and estimatenthe rest
 
The screen is BY FAR the biggest power draw in the device. There was a breakdown from iFixit that showed the entire device ran on something ridiculous like 2.5 watts.

It's a strange change from regular laptop usage. On my laptop, I get hours from just email, but any processor-intensive stuff, even watching video, will kill the battery very shortly.

But with the iPad, the battery discharges about the same whether I'm just listening to a few tunes and typing the occasional email as when I'm streaming Netflix shows continuously.

Try to reduce the amount of glare or sunlight that is hitting your iPad, and view the screen directly from the front, not from the side. This will let you keep the brightness down around the 30-40% mark and still have everything be very visible.

And again, the screen is the biggest power drain, so if you're just listening to music or something, make heavy usage of the screen lock button to save some juice whenever you can.
 
To the OP: Run your battery all the way down until the device shuts off, then recharge overnight until it's full. I think you'll see FAR better performance.

I bought my 3G at the beginning of the week. Came out of the box with 80% charge. Used it a while and it seemed to drain down to 40% too fast. Charged it to 100% overnight, and the next day it again seemed to drain too fast. But once I FULLY drained the battery (took a couple days of periodic use without charging), THEN recharged to 100%, the rate of battery drainage dropped way down. I haven't done a formal test but it feels like the 10 hrs quoted.

So, when you first buy the iPad, the meter and charging system may be off calibration. Only a full discharge and recharge will fix it. Give it a try.

In general you should do this once every 1-2 months on any rechargeable device.
 
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