MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - iPad Ipad 1 Owners: What's Your Current Battery Life Like After One Year Or More?

rvdparis · 07-31-2011, 04:47 AM

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.

07-31-2011, 04:47 AM	#6
rvdparis Connoisseur Posts: 53 Karma: 140 Join Date: Apr 2009 Device: Kindle Touch + iPad 1 + iPhone 4	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.