iPad 3 charging issues

I'd highly recommend reading Dr. Raymond Soneira's outstanding article on the iPad 3. It explains a lot of the power consumption/battery issues.

The iPad 3 uses amorphous silicon which is not as power efficient as the IGZO technology on the iPhone. To quote the article...

The iPad 2 uses amorphous Silicon for the LCD Active Matrix Thin Film Transistors (AM TFTs), the same display technology found in most Tablets, laptops, and desktop monitors. On the other hand, the iPhone 4 uses Low Temperature Poly Silicon (LTPS) because the much higher ppi requires smaller AM TFTs in order to maintain satisfactory brightness and efficiency. However, it’s more complex and costly to produce. One of the biggest rumors was that Apple was going to use Sharp’s IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide), which is better at high ppi and lower cost than LTPS. But it’s a new technology and Sharp publicly announced in December that it was experiencing startup delays. LG and Samsung have also been working on IGZO technology. The question is when, not if, this technology will be coming to future Retina Displays (and non-Apple Tablets and Smartphones). It will also be coming to laptops, monitors, and televisions, possibly even Apple’s. Our lab measurements show that IGZO is desperately needed for the new iPad high ppi display because of the high power and large batteries it currently needs. And, counter to the rumor mill, IGZO can do IPS (in Plane Switching) technology that is found on the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 displays. So what display technology is in the new iPad? According to DisplaySearch it is still amorphous Silicon that has been pushed to its extreme upper ppi limit.

Regarding the battery, when the iPad 3 battery indicator reaches 100%, in fact the iPad 3 has only charged to 90%. This is by design as the charging of the battery is not linear and charges very slowly from 90% to 100%. Again, from the article...

Conclusion – the battery is only 90% charged when it says 100%

So, when the battery indicator first says 100% the battery is actually only 90% charged and you get 1.2 hours less running time. It takes an additional 1 to 2 hours to fully charge the battery as explained above. However, anyone that recharges their iPad unattended (and off or in sleep mode), especially overnight, will get the necessary extra charging time and get the full running time indicated above.

Apple has subsequently released a statement saying that this is by design and as they intended. Maybe so, but why? ALL of our results are technically correct EXACTLY as stated above. So what’s the REAL reason – it isn’t the one mentioned in Apple’s statement. The battery charging rate gets slower and slower as it approaches full charge, so Apple decided to show 100% sooner so that people didn’t notice or get annoyed by the long and slow final creep up to the true 100% charge level. The last hour in the long 6½ charging cycle is painfully slow, so that becomes invisible if the battery indicator is accelerated up to 100% for that final hour. It’s all done to improve the quality of the user experience...

The full article can be found here.

http://www.displaymate.com/iPad_ShootOut_1.htm

It's fairly and objectively written, not out to bash the iPad 3. Other than the two issues, it recommends the iPad 3 as an outstanding piece of technology and praises Apple for pushing the technology forward.

As I am not putting my serial number on the Internet...can you tell me this: is it from the serial number that tells you what production week? Is it a number or part of the letters that are a code for the production week? Or is the production week in the Model?

If you can answer this I thank you very much!

I'm not all technical like others on here, but when I charge my new iPad from about 17% to 100%, when the iPad battery indicator says 100% it IS 100% (on mine at least). I know this because during charging the charger itself gets pretty darn warm (during the ENTIRE charge time). After a little more than 5 hours when it said 100%, the charger was totally cool to the touch. So to this non-technical person, that would indicate that it is done charging because it is now fully charged.

(this is just MY experience with MY iPad)

I fell in love with apple since my first iPod. Now every new product apple releases I have to have. I own a franchise with zagg in san Antonio. I research and know a lot about apple products. Even though iPad is still the king in the market for tablets. Many competitors is on the rise. Apple doesn't use cheap parts or products by any means. Any one know how much just the cost of the glass and multi touch included in the new iPad? What about the cost of the LCD? Even the L.T.E. Apples profit is much less then its predecessor the iPad 2. Yes apple makes millions when people get there knew iPads and people just on iTunes and start buying or renting HD 1080p movies, buying music and downloading a bunch of games from the app store. But apple wants to make sure they get there investment quick and with apple trying to blow us away with products every quarter of the year. Then every device they lunch must be a huge success. I'm sure they was aware that the 10w charger was just either power to keep the device charging not under having load. I was playing infinity blade II last night and yes even though the charger kept it going for a good long time. It did give in and my iPad did shut down. The charger isn't strong enough to charge when maxing out the gpu, CPU, memory, and power the display etc. It will drawn the battery. So I'm sure after all these tests they do before releasing a product. Apple knew this. Many reasons could come into play. Could apple give us a 15 to 20 watt charger, add more memory like people complained about. Making it 32gig, 64, and topping off at 128gig without raising the price at all? Or maybe apple knows through future iOS updates they can fix this issues. Like what I'm doing right now. Who's to say apple wont adjust the CPU and gpu voltage levels when I'm just on safari and typing this letter. Making charging and battery life more efficient. Releasing the product now but improving it as time goes on. Like 5.0 and battery issues with iPhone 4 customers. 4.0 killing iPhone 3G users performance. Many things go into making great products like they make. Some times things are rushed. Some times things are not right out of the gate. But some how they work on it and in the end they try to please us. I love my display. I love playing these great games or watching a movie on this new iPad. It is crazy how much things evolve! It ***** my battery drains and isn't powerful enough to play games and keep charging or be charged and just run off the charger. I'm sure apple will fix something through software. Im sure tons of third parties manufactures will start selling higher powered chargers. I'm sure on the next gen since they won't be putting millions into designing a new type of display. There would be more room for improving on features like this. Bravo apple. You guys did give us another great product that will take a long time for our competitors to compete! Be Patient people. Apple will have a better solution for us soon. If not I'm sure there will be chargers for $10-40 out there very soon that will take away any bodys trouble for charging. Still making the iPad better then the Samsung tablets. Don't see many people returning iPads just because it doesnt charge like the other iPads. Must be something people still love about it.

not impressed with the long charge times nor how fast the battery drains, oh well, its always something, im getting used to it, nothing will ever be perfect.

And therein lies the rub. If this were a Samsung, HP, Amazon, or other tablet, no one would care. But, with Apple we've come to expect so much care with the details, that when something isn't perfect, we do care. I'm keeping my new iPad...

Was quite surprised on the battery % did not fall much 0~1% while i left it in my car for an entire day... and throughout the night... roughly 18~20Hours...

The battery level fell quickly once I get home, connected to wireless, enabled auto app downloads, enable icloud, open a few apps, browsing through some websites, with a few apps opened up... battery drainage was quite fast as the ipad downloads various apps and updates... fell to 82% from 96% ish within 1~2hours.

Did a charge from 82 % last night.before i go to bed at 2248H and when i got up around 2328H ish, to my surprise, the % has gone up to 93~94% and i left it overnight to do the charging with the supplied 10W mains to USB adaptor.

so far so good. ;-) applied anti-radiation screen protector ytd as well... if i find out any issues, will post again... lol..

Friend there is nothing wrong with positive criticism especially when you expect a product to be rigorously tested by a manufacturer before releasing it and that goes for all manufacturers.

The crux of the issue with iPad 3 is a design flaw that will not disappear.

The battery is way bigger than required and is unable to be handled by the 10 Watt charger and the net benefit is minimal considering you are lugging around more weight especially when laying down and holding the Ipad upward as you are reading articles on the net. The inefficiency of charging costs more to charge the 42.5 Watt battery and you have a charger with a runaway heat that gets so hot it will actually destroy your power management circuit in the not to distant future.

Try this at home, charge it as you do for five hours then remove the USB cable from the power plug pack and touch it with your fingers, if your fingers don't start burning after 3 or more seconds then we have a reliability issue with some customers complaining about this issue while others say it is no problem. But you see to a rational person it is not ok because this heat is being transmitted through the charging wire straight through into your iPad and this is not healthy.

Having said all that I will not be surprised to see many cooked iPad 3s in the not to distant future then you can appreciate what I have been making people aware of.

I bought an iPad 2 a year ago and then an iPad 3 this year and when I noticed the design flaw I returned it with a little argument and didn't waste time to buy another iPad 2 at $100 less from 500 down to 400.

I still think that apple is very much a software engineering company and has the best operating system and has fine tuned it's software to work best with the hardware and balance the battery life. For iPad 3 I will not agree with the statement I have just made for the simple reason that they have not done their homework on the hardware design side.

Let me tell you apple has an excellent fast charging of battery next to none and yet a rational person knows that you can charge the battery quickly to avoid long charging times and this will ultimately lead to a shorter battery life. With the 42.5 Watt battery you just can't charge it any faster and apple knows this so they employed an algorithm that tweaks the charging capacity displayed on the screen as 100% when in fact it is only 90% charged so that the ineffiency of charging it would take from 90% to 100% would not be realized by the customer. This is trickery in my books and again a quick fix to the major design flaw problem. Apply knows that the charger gets very hot and will ultimately destroy the power management circuit over time because the heat transferred through to the iPad is unacceptable for sensitive electronics piece of hardware.

So a message to apple is come clean and do the right thing by your customers and announce the design issue and do a recall and replace the battery back to the 25 Watt one and then everything is sweat. Thankyou apple I will continue to use your product but I must tell you the truth and don't wait because you will have a lot of fried units back into your repository.

Your whole story proves the "problem": battery very large, faster charge would require more Amps than are in the 10W charger which is 2 amps. A larger charger is nor obvious, because a larger amperage would heat the iPad too much. And on the New iPad the retina screen demands more energy than the iPad2 screen, thus part of the 2 apms in the actual charger is been "eaten up" by the screen, thus it is best to charge overnight with the iPad in sleep.

Or a switch mode power supply with a duty cycle that will balance between charge and heat dissipation even though the unit will take 14 hours to charge.

I wouldn't mind leaving it in charge overnight knowing the thing isn't cooking even though it will take 14 hours to charge, at least it is a more power efficiently controlled charge over time rather than a rapid charge.

A switch mode power supply switches between 0 and 5 volts very quickly so that it still maintains the charge whilst allowing the power supply to rest. It is like a pulsed charge.

This would be bulky power supply but it is the only solution I would recommended instead of a recall or cooked iPads. At least the people can still use their iPads and just be given a unique charge until the next version of iPad fixes this hardware issue with a better battery technology.

Patience is a virtue as they say. But also, sitting back with a piece of tech in your hands that doesn't 'work' as advertised is a waste of money. My iPad 3 doesn't charge properly and I have problems with 3G when going from wifi outside to 3G. Despite the Apple tech guys PROMISING me there are no compatibility issues with 3G. What a load of rubbish. I find on here, and other forums, there are thousands in the same boat. Now to me it seems that although it took Apple 1 year to develop this new iPad, they still seem to have rushed it out without testing it properly. This is not just an Apple problem, ASUS done the same with the Transformer Prime. They want our money so bad they will use us a guinea pigs and test them in the open market. Sorry Zagg but for me your argument is flawed. To me this is sub-standard and unless Apple sort it out fast I will get my money back and move on. Shame really cos I have had iPods since 2004 and then an iPhone which I love to bits. I thought the new iPad would be the icing on the cake. I've waited 6 months for it since I decided to buy a tablet. Instead it's given me food poisoning and I need a cure!

Ok ... Can someone answer this.

I have a 1 amp wall charger that works with my iPad 3' will using a longer and lower rate charger inc USB via laptop, lesson the damage potential from the heat issue discussed?

Also, what is the min amps the pad 3 need to charge, as I want to use a solar panel as well.

Thanks ...

I don't think there is any damage potential using the included 2 amp charger. I'm no electrical engineer but common sense might tell me that using a 1 amp charger would double the charging time.

Can't comment on solar charging.

So you disagree with the heat issue stated above, don't give any comment on one amp charging, in relation to less heat, merely stating twice as long to charge, and then unable to comment on solar.

I don't see why you bothered to cick the reply button tbf.

I might ask the same, why post in a 15 page, 200+ thread that has nothing to do with heat when there are literally hundreds of other posts on heat. Regardless...

Yes, I disagree you to the extent you want to lessen the damage potential to heat by using a lower amperage charger. I don't think the included 2 amp charger damages the iPad due to heat, or for that matter, any other reason. I've found no posts on any forums indicating otherwise.

If you feel otherwise, you're entitled to your opinion. If you want to charge with a 1 amp charger, go ahead, knock yourself out. It will work. Better yet, charge using a USB port on a computer for even lower amperage. Stop by in 24-48 hours when your iPad is finished charging.