iPad Ipad 1 Owners: What's Your Current Battery Life Like After One Year Or More?

[Batman Jr.]

I started to notice over the last few weeks that the battery life on my iPad 1 has gone down from the 10 hours per day I’d been getting since purchase (received mine in June, 2010) to approx. 7 hours per day now. The battery drain has been visually consistent in that previously I’d see it deplete almost exactly 1% every six minutes, and now it drops that far in only four minutes (no OCD here ). My use case has stayed predominantly the same (Wi-Fi usually on; mainly web browsing; manipulation of research files via Dropbox, etc.; regular use of voice-note apps.; very light e-mailing; reading e-books on Kindle and Stanza apps.; infrequent video streaming). I was curious to know what the experience has been of others who’ve owned the iPad 1 for at least a year, so I’m placing this poll “in the field.” I realize there is subjectivity in some of the terms used (e.g., “usage,” “decreased/increased”), but I’m just trying to get a general sense of where things stand 15 months out. Thanks for your input!

[EDITED TO ADD - Sorry, I should have made it clearer that you can make three choices: one from Options 1-4, one from Options 5-7, and one from Options 8-10.]

[lestatar]

^ Huh, interesting. That iPad battery is not user replaceable is it?

[Batman Jr.]

Originally Posted by lestatar

^ Huh, interesting. That iPad battery is not user replaceable is it?

Unfortunately, no.

[HistoryWes]

I,ve had mine 14 months now. I use it ALL day and usualliy have 30-40 % by bedtime.

[Batman Jr.]

Originally Posted by HistoryWes

I,ve had mine 14 months now. I use it ALL day and usualliy have 30-40 % by bedtime.

Thanks for the insight, HistoryWes. It would be interesting to hear some citation from Apple or elsewhere as to what the "normal" depletion should be at this point.

Edited To Add: I use mine on and off over the course of 17 - 18 waking hours. There still seems to be hardly any drain during standby time, though.

[rvdparis]

I received mine in May 2010, and I use it all the time, in the same ways as the original poster. However, I made a visit to the Apple Store last month because I wanted to know if they could test my battery to tell me how much battery power I do have. Why? Because once it reaches I think 50% capacity, you can have it replaced for 99 euros (I'm in France) in the Battery Replacement Program or 79 euros if you have AppleCare. BUT ONLY if the battery is below or around 50%. I assumed they would have the software to tell me, but they did not. They could only tell me what other battery apps tell you: how many hours you have left given the current charge you have. Curiously, there is no app that can tell you how many charge cycles you have completed, and this is crucial information for lithium ion batteries, because charge cycles completed tells you how long your battery is going to last (which may explain why you have to bring the battery down to between 40 and 60% and leave it there if you are going to store it away for awhile, and why Apple recommends draining the battery once a month or so to 0% and recharging to recalibrate the lithium ion batteries in all their iOS devices, and laptops). In any case, there are plenty of apps for OSX that tell you how many charge cycles your laptop batteries have done, but NONE for iOS, as far as I can see.

Anyway, the guy at the Apple Store could NOT, with his diagnostic tools, tell me how many charge cycles I had, nor could he tell me how much charge capacity I had left!!! He recommended I send it in to Apple for the Battery Replacement Program because they have those tools! He did notice I keep apps open and he told me that there are many apps that drain battery time faster than others even when they are in the background while I am multitasking. SO, his lesson to me was to simply shut down those background apps when I put the iPad away for a while.

All that said, my iPad 1 works flawlessly every day....and battery power goes down about 1-2% every 5 minutes, perhaps 15% max in one hour. But it depends on what I am doing, and I noticed the change around January of this year. Before that it was 10 hours all the time on a full charge.

[petermillard]

Receivedmy iPad in May '10.

I voted for 7-10 hours, although it's a lot closer to 10 than 7. Stuck in an airport at the moment and have just watched an hour of video that dropped the battery by exactly 10%, though I know if I'm at home and streaming video over wifi it'll drop a little faster than that.

Assuming 50% battery life gives ~5 hrs of use, that's still pretty decent for occasional use on a device that'll be getting on for around three years old, and if the battery replacement program is still running it'll probably still be worth doing, given that second-hand values of Apple kit are traditionally pretty strong.

Certainly for around 100$/€/£ it's a much better bet than trying to crack the case open yourself to replace a battery, IMHO.

Cheers, Pete

[orwell2k]

I have to say, since getting my iPad1 in Dec 2010 I have not used my PB360 or BeBook eInk devices, and have done all my reading on the iPad (using BlueFire Reader for ePub/PDF and readMe for FB2). I also use the device daily for emails, work documents (GoodReader) and movies, and have been singularly impressed with the battery life.

Even watching movies I get 10 hours of battery (I check the battery % and compare to the movie runtime and find these are always consistent with estimating 10 hours of use, and I have no unusual drops in battery remaining %). I usually try to run the device down a little, so that I am not always trickle-charging and keeping it topped up, but naturally if I know I will be away from power sources when travelling on holidays or business I do keep it topped up. But usually it gets a good rundown and charge every 1-2 days depending on usage.

Once or twice after a recharge overnight the battery has only gone up to 67%, but I find if I disconnect and reconnect it will charge up to full. There is obviously some power management bug there but I am not overly concerned yet.

Apple definitely got something right on the power side of the iPad (and the rest, quite frankly!). Well done!

[Batman Jr.]

Thansk for the responses, all. I wasn't aware of the battery replacement program, or had forgotten about it. I'll have to keep that in mind, as one of the reasons I'm interested in what others have to say is that with a first generation product it seems impossible to know how it "should" be currently performing. I will note that I tried testing for a couple of days by turning off Wi-Fi whenever I didn't need it (I have a 32 GB Wi-Fi only), and closing all background apps., but still saw a ~15% per hour drop.

Also, for others who may answer, I clarified the poll to note that you can choose three options: one from Options 1-4, one from Options 5-7, and one from Options 8-10.

[DixieGal]

I turn off notifications and locations unless the app asks for it. They eat up power quickly.

[kjk]

I didn't notice any battery life degradation with my first iPad-it got moderately heavy use during a day, but never got below 30-40% (like HistoryWes)-but I kept it in the powered cradle every night. Getting about the same battery life with the iPad2, but it is considerably quicker.

My iPhone 3GS is now over 2 years old, and I'm not seeing any battery degradation from it either, yet. But after getting the iPad/iPad 2, I really don't use it for much beyond simple messaging and the like.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by rvdparis

Curiously, there is no app that can tell you how many charge cycles you have completed, and this is crucial information for lithium ion batteries, because charge cycles completed tells you how long your battery is going to last

with Ni-Mh you can count charge cycles charged but not with Li-Ion. They can be topped off with no penalty in charges, unlike previous technology. The best way to count the life is to count how many full charges from empty they have had where topping off counts as a partial charge and you add together all of the partial charges and the % charge they accomplished to figure out the equivalent of a full charge. Even then it is only an estimate. And you wonder why there is no app for that.

The best policy is just to do what they do and measure the time to depletion. Typically that is about 1.5 to 2 years for most folks to hit a point where they begin to really notice the drop off in time. It is not linear though as it tends to taper off toward the end.

Dale

[Harmon]

I use my iPad every day, primarily in the evenings for about 3 or 4 hours. I don't do video or music - just internet browsing, & reading various magazines & aggregators. When I'm through, I park it on the charger till the following evening.

For practical purposes, my battery lasts forever. I'm just guessing that I would get 10 hours on it if I didn't do the daily recharge.

[athlonkmf]

Have you tried to recallibrate your battery? By running it all down till the iPad shuts down, wait a few minutes, then charge it overnight?

[kjk]

Originally Posted by athlonkmf

Have you tried to recallibrate your battery? By running it all down till the iPad shuts down, wait a few minutes, then charge it overnight?

I did when I first got the iPad 1 (similar to my notebook battery), but honestly-getting the iPad battery to run to zero just takes too long