iPad battery drain - sorta fixed, but need help

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Level 1

4 points

iPad battery drain - sorta fixed, but need help

I've been having iPad battery drain issue's that I couldn't fix with ANY of the potential resolutions I found on the web. After months of testing, I have found a work-around.

TL:DR - I'm convinced it’s something in the iCloud profile.

Like many others, my iPad battery was draining between 1-3% an hour regardless of what’s in use or its configuration. Example:

Note the app usage is measured in single minutes, there is no blue usage indicator for the majority of the time, yet the drain is significant.

Yet on occasion the thing would temporarily just ‘fix itself’:

Notice between 9am and 5pm there’s no drain. But between 5 and midnight there is significant drain, and again no drain between midnight and 8:00am. FYI I have been acutely conscious to regularly ensure all apps were closed and the screen was off as part of my testing.

Over the course of several months, I have performed a significant amount of testing, including all the internet recommendations, and am 100% convinced it is something embedded deep within my iCloud profile, and NOT something I can affect by reboots, reloads or configuration settings.

Here’s a short version of what I tried prior to visiting the genius bar:

The iPad in question was an iPad version 6 that was about 13 months old when the issue started.

Power off / Power on
Changing mail sync
Turn off mail sync
Turn off siri (everywhere)
Deleting all mail/calendar accounts
Power off and leave it off (If ‘slide to power off’, the battery does NOT drain)
Erase all settings and reload backup

Nothing worked, so I moved on to more in-depth testing:

DFU to my regular profile with all apps restored
Go through all settings 1x1 on my wife’s ipad and set mine to exactly the same
DFU to my regular profile but vanilla state (No apps restored and no mail, calendar, etc configured to sync). i.e. nothing was running at all
DFU to my wife’s account and ran that in vanilla

None of this worked either:

So… I thought the final remaining thing was to assume the battery was knackered, bite the bullet and go to the genius bar.

Read on in additional notes:

Fixing the iPad battery drain

iPad Pro 11-inch Wi-Fi

Posted on Dec 3, 2020 8:05 AM

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Answer 1

S.J.T Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2020 8:49 AM in response to MichelPM

Oh I have. As one of my exercises I went through and turned everything that would toggle, to off. What I meant is that I believe it's my iCloud profile (the thing I log in to apple products with), rather than icloud itself.

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Answer 2

S.J.T Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2020 10:03 AM in response to S.J.T

Don't think the additional notes attachment worked. Here is what else I did:

ROUND 2

I arrive at the genius bar and hand over my iPad for their testing. It passed! My battery was in great condition at 97% and so their conclusion was that given my extensive testing it must be a hardware issue. They could replace the entire device for the cost of the battery or I could use it for a trade-in. OK – I’m an impulse buyer and prompted to go for a new iPad pro 11”.

Excitedly, I arrive home and hurriedly perform an iCloud restore, charged the iPad to 100% and began.

Curiously, (as has always been the case) after charging to 100% the problem doesn’t show itself until the iPad is being used. The battery indicator stays at 100%. However, as soon as you start using the iPad in earnest, the battery drain issue immediately returns. So, my testing continued:

·Blow away my profile and restore my wife’s (Same problem)

·Check my wife’s iPad and lo-and-behold, it has the same draining profile

·FInally I do a DFU and restore an iCloud profile I set up years ago but never used

**PROBLEM FIXED!**

I have been operating on this new profile for a few weeks and it is working perfectly. I have started downloading more and more apps, on purpose leaving as many open as I can, have mail syncing, all siri options on, and it remains working perfectly.

My conclusion

Given that the same iPad can behave differently depending on the iCloud profile, regardless of the amount of testing, tweaking configuration and rebooting, the only conclusion must be it is something to do with the iCloud profile itself. Even the DFU and vanilla restore didn’t work.

If you are having the same problem, try a new profile and report.

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Answer 3

MichelPM

Level 10

81,056 points

Dec 3, 2020 8:22 AM in response to S.J.T

You stated that you believe this was an Apple iCloud related issue.

Why haven't you tried toggling things OFF in iCloud settings?

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iPad battery drain - sorta fixed, but need help

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