iPad Air 2 Battery Life?

iOS
#1

G’day,

My son’s iPad Air 2 is almost 1 year old (limited warranty expires 25 January), and at best the battery is lasting around 4 hours. Apparently brand new the battery was promoted as lasting 10 hours. That’s more than 50% decrease in ability after being used for its main function - in the class room - but also at home / weekends etc.

The device is running 11.1.2.

I was going to try to try instal Coconut Battery to check the cycles/etc, however could not find it on the AppStore, and then read that iOS10 removed the ability for apps to read that data? As such any battery app you may try will in fact not give you real stats?

With the warranty approaching expiry, but visiting an AppleStore meaning a trip to Melbourne, is there any way I can verify the battery’s actual present condition?

cheers

cosmic

#2

The Mac version of Coconut Battery still does that.

http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/

#3

Try coconut battery on the Mac. I’m not aware of it ever being on iOS.

iOS 11 is fairly hopeless on battery and the Air 2 in my experience doesn’t have fantastic battery life, the battery is smaller than in previous iPads.

#4

Thanks guys :slight_smile: Coconut Battery for Mac → iPad plugged in…

So the device has reached 116 loadcycles. At 100% charge, it is showing as 6896 mAh, whilst design capacity is noted as 7340 mAh - only around 5% difference…

I personally have only noticed the issue of poor battery performance “recently”… Which possibly co-incides with when my son got fed up with the constant requests to upgrade the iOS and told it to upgrade to iOS 11. So I guess that could be a possible factor…

Yesterday according to the Battery settings, 80% was used by a game that he was playing - Bloxels Builder (Build your own computer game). The other day it was mostly used by another game, Roblox. When Apple says the iPad should last 10 hours (new), would I be right in thinking that their usage would be something very minimal on power usage, whereas gaming - constantly using the touch screen etc - would be high power usage…?

It’s just rather frustrating given our decision to go for a new iPad for him instead of 2nd hand, expecting that it would see him through Primary School (3 years), yet now after just 1 year the battery is not performing anywhere near as long as “expected”. Certainly when new, the device could easily go several days without needing a charge, but now if he forgets to charge it one night, he’s in trouble of it dying.

About a month ago after first noticing the battery wasn’t lasting as I expected it should, I did a quick check of settings - noticed that bluetooth was on (turned it off; now know he uses it for Airdrop at school; told him to turn it on when needed only), and also the screen was set to never go to sleep - not a good idea considering how often I find the iPad sitting around still “awake”.

I’ve just gone through Apple’s battery saving tips, and have now turned off Location Services and Notifications, and reduced screen brightness (no longer has auto option?). I’ll keep monitoring over the next week, and decide whether to get it to Apple before the 12 months runs out…