Airpods Pro 2nd gen case battery drain

Yesterday after the update the case was at 100% and the airpods at 100%. I used the airpods for a while, they dropped to 79% charged them to 100% and the case dropped to 94%. So I left them like that for the rest of the day without touching them. In the next hours the case dropped to 92% then to 89%, at the time of my post it was when it reached 89%, that all happened within 5 hours without touching the airpods nor the case at all. Now after the 89%, it stopped! Did not lose any charge till after about 8-9 hours later it dropped to 88% and has hold there till now. Seems like it stopped draining, at least the extreme part of the drain. If it drops a 1% per 24 hours, I would call that acceptable. Im still testing as we speak.

frustratedcstmr wrote:

Yes the drain seems to be fixed for sure. But im having to issues, one is old and another one is new (new to me) the first one is that the percentage to the case on the settings, it disappeared again, no more battery percentage to the case, that problem was there and it seemed it got fixed with the update, buy now itd back. 2. Is now my airpods are not charging to 100%, they get stuck at 99%. Its not a big issue but its still a bug, not sure if both issues are related. Im going to drain my airpods and fully charge them to see if it fixes anything.

I strongly recommend against fully discharging the batteries because Lithium batteries do not respond well to deep discharge. It worked for NiCd batteries but they were 30 year-old technology. The accepted wisdom for Lithium cells amongst experienced users is to try and maintain the batteries between about 30% and 80% for best overall performance. The consensus is for prolonged storage Lithium cells should be maintained in the 40-80% range by periodic charging.

You should also remember your Apple devices are mass produced without individual calibration, and the battery estimates are only an estimate. As a guide, expect the absolute accuracy to be within about +/- 5%, but the repeatability for any one device and measurement may be more like 1-2%. There is also an inherent +/- 1 digit error in the conversion from a measured analog value into a digital (numeric) value. In other words, your 99% display could be anywhere between 98% and 100% true value.

Going up above 80% is unlikely to cause immediate problems. It is acceptable if the device is going to use that power rather than remain at 100% for a long period, provided the cells are never allowed to charge above 100% capacity, because that is when thermal runaway becomes a risk. Everyone is familiar with the photos of a Tesla with fire trucks around it...

Going below 30% down to about 15-20% occasionally to meet a service need is unlikely to cause a problem, but I would never go (intentionally) below 10% unless it was needed for safety of life. Discharge of Lithium cells to the point where equipment shuts down tends to knock lumps out of the overall capacity.

I updated to latest update and turned off ‘find my’ as well.

I have recently only just purchased and after a day or 2 on old firmware, I opened case in morning and it showed 1% even though it was fully charged and showed individual battery percentage for each bud and one was like 13%

I updated and seemed much better as both charged to 100% and case charged too. I left about 2 days without using and opened again and said 100% for both the airpods and charging case so fixed I thought. But over night, the case has dropped 16%.

any ideas?

i tried to take out the buds from case and see if the case will drop the % again but I still think that it’s all about the buds because the case trying to keep the pods100% when they are in the case so if the pods drops even 1% even in the case the case will start charging all over and it will repeat always so I’m trying to do it and test it 1 hour passed it was at 90% after night drain so I’ll check it in 1-2 hour and see if it went below 90%

Mines drop about 2% within 24 hours, it could be at any given time. And the to 2% usually are side by side, 1% first and in less than a half hour it will drop the other 1%, but thats all it drops in 24 hours

I Have updated to latest firmware, reset iPods, and turned off leave behind notifications. iPods are still draining about 12% every 24 hours without using them, if I use them then of course they drain even more. I don't believe the firmware has addressed this issue.

I have a pair of AirPods 3rd generation and they can sit in a drawer for days and not lose anything, maybe 1% every 3 days.

I really hope apple will come out with a fix for this, I have the airpods pro 1 gen and the case just drains and drains. Last thing I tried was to remove them from "find my" as some said this helped for them, but doesnt seem to help for me. I charged them to 100% Wednesday evening, then used them for like 1½ hours Thursday, and now Friday when I checked the case is at 72% already, this is not normal and never saw this in the past. In the past I could go 3-4 weeks with little use and the case would still be at 80% or more.

My understanding with tws (true wireless stereo) earbuds, the way they work is that usually one earbud (usually the right earbud) is the one connected tu your phone and relays another bluetooth signal to the other earbud making the dual connection earbud use more power regardless if you are using the mic or not. I really dont know if airpods use that same technology but I would assume that they do.

yes its normal, if you youtube any tws earbuds and see the battery tests, you will see that its always the right earbud the one that dies first and then the left one goes on for a while longer. Like I said, the right earbud draws more power because its the host earbud that is receiving bluetooth signal and sending signal to the left earbud. Its not like both earbuds are connected to your phone and working exactly the same. There is another wireless connection that works between both earbuds, thats what makes them true wireless. That extra sending signal to the left earbud is where that extra power is needed, unlike the left earbud that only receives signal.

No they are def inserted correctly. As I say, I hadn’t used them for a few days and case hadn’t moved. case was staying steady at 100% and didn’t lose any charge. Then all of a sudden yesterday, the case just lost charge quickly and drained 5% during day then another 6% between 5pm and 11pm so something started making them drain which is odd as have been fine.

as I say, I’ve now updated so hopefully was just a bug.

however, reason I asked about ‘find my’ is because I have the family settings set up and my partner said she checked find my a few times yesterday. Well, all devices in family show up so I wondered if when she checked find my, that it was actively checking my AirPods location and refreshing this causing battery to drain quicker. Is that possible?

Im sure "find my" does drain battery, but not to the point where its noticeably huge. I check find my constantly a few times a day to be able to see the battery percentage on the widgets as they go away when i walk away from the room the airpods are in, I have not noticed any huge drainage. Its weird you had that problem because i also had it in these past days, it happened once, but i dont know if it was on the past firmware or it had already update to this latest version. When I found out about the firmware update a day had gone by. It could of been something to do with the update, while trying to update or searching for the update? I havent had it happen again.

Ah yes you could be right actually as maybe not a coincidence that the battery drain happened on the day that the newest firmware was released. So maybe something with that as same as you, since updating, the battery percentage has held fine again.

Good news!! Do you find a little more efficient use of case when you used it to little charges, for example, charge the airpods in 90%. in my case (not 6A299B) little charges in airpods (example: 90%) used 5-6% in case.

I face the same issue! Every hour the battery drains approx. 2%. This is confirmed by Genius Bar because I left them the device and after 3 hours the battery went down. Although they reported this battery drain, they told me that it’s normal.

This is what they said

Issue: Customer has reported issues with their case discharging.

Steps to Reproduce: The case was checked in and charged. The AirPods charged up to 100%. The case was charged up to 98% and then unplugged at 14:37pm

The case was left uncharged. At collection the AirPods case was 94%, in the process of our conversation which lasted around 20 minutes the case at 18:16 was 93%

Proposed Resolution: I proposed that if the customer wants to test charging further to compare performance the comparable test would need to be completed in store with our test AirPods 2nd gens versus the customer AirPods. The customer has requested that we document our testing so far and that they take the case so they can take the conversation further with Apple support.

At this point we have not identified a specific issue or cause for their reported concern.

Do you think that it’s normal? By the way, a week ago they replaced the case with a brand new one.

It doesn’t make sense but I’ll try that. Is your case still connecting on find my? If not, it’s just find my not working. If that’s the case, battery won’t drain. Which defeats the purpose.