PadGadget How -To Guide: How To Preserve Battery Life on Your iPad
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Apple’s iPad has an impressively long battery life. You can keep your iPad going for about 12 hours before it will need a recharge. Depending on how long you’ve had your device, you have probably already noticed some activities that drain battery more than others. If you are planning on spending a lot of time outdoors this summer, you may want to think about how to keep your iPad’s battery charged for as long as possible. Below are 10 simple tricks to help extend your battery’s life, aside from the obvious of not streaming HD movies while sitting in your car and using the 4G network.
Turn Off Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G - The iPad is always searching for a way to stay connected. If you have a 3G or 4G compatible iPad, you should only have the network enabled when you need to access the Internet or use an app or some other task that requires a connection. The iPad’s Wi-Fi locator does the same thing. If you are driving to work, taking the train on a long trip, or hiking through the Yellowstone National Forrest, your iPad will be searching for the nearest wireless hotspot. If you don’t actively need the Internet, turn it off.
Turn Off Bluetooth - You’d be surprised at how much battery life gets gobbled up by your iPad’s Bluetooth pairing feature. I’ll be the first to stand up and shout that that is totally lame. I use a Bluetooth-enabled keyboard case with my iPad and I hate having to turn it off when I’m not actively using the keyboard. If you’re heading outdoors, it is less likely that you’ll need all the fancy gadgets that can be paired with an iPad (except maybe some wireless speakers), so just turn it off.
Turn Off Data Push/ Turn Off Email Fetch - For as long as I have owned an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, I’ve never turned on my Push Notifications and guess what? I still get my email in a timely manner, still know what my friends are up to on Facebook and still find out about the top headlines before my grandma has to tell me about them. Push notifications are, in my opinion, useless. I know I’ll get some guff from those A-type go getters out there that think the world will explode if they aren’t always immediately connected to everything, but I won’t change my mind on this one. When it comes to receiving emails, the best way to conserve battery life is to turn off the fetch data feature. That is, set it to manual. You can check your email accounts as often as you like manually. If you’re expecting an important message from someone, chances are you’re doing that anyway.
Turn Off Location Services - Have you ever been on a road trip and called up your native Maps app to help you with directions? There is a little arrow next to your battery that tells you your location service is running. The native camera app has it to. The location service will drain one percent of your battery for every minute it is being used. When it isn’t active, you’re not losing as much battery life, but it should still be turned off when you’re not using it.
Turn Down Brightness - Even though the new iPad has a beautiful, vivid Retina display screen, it should not be set to full brightness if you are trying to conserve your battery. I don’t personally recommend doing this when you are at home and can charge your iPad at your leisure. I love my crisp, bright screen and having to dim it, even just a little, takes away from its splendor. However, if you are on a camping trip, with no power source for miles around, you may want to sacrifice beauty for sustainability.
Set Auto Lock Sooner/Manually Lock iPad - If you have finished using your device, you’d better lock it by pushing the lock button on top. There is no reason your iPad should be glowing when you aren’t even looking at it. If you have a bad habit of forgetting to manually lock your device, you can change the length of time it takes for the auto lock to activate. You can decrease the time to as low as one minute after you stop using it. This can be annoying if you are trying to read a book or use the iPad for something that doesn’t require constant screen touching, so I suggest you just remember to lock it manually.
Turn Off Equalizer - If you’re not in a situation where your music needs special attention, like somewhere that you have to keep the volume down, you may want to turn off your iPad’s auto equalizer. Personally, I would never do this, even at the expense of a few percentages of battery life, but some people don’t even notice whether a song has the right amount of treble or bass. The iPad’s music player has an automatic equalizer built into it that will adjust the outgoing settings to optimize sound quality. Turn it off if you don’t think you can tell the difference.
Update Current iOS - Before you head out on any trip, make sure you iPad’s operating system is up to date. Often times, there are updates that fix issues with battery drainage, especially on older devices. I remember having serious battery loss when iOS 4.0 came out, but with version 4.1, the issue was fixed.
Let Your Battery Run Down - I know that technology has advanced to the point where we don’t have to let the battery run down to zero every time we want to charge it. However, Apple’s own how-to guide suggests that going through one entire charge, that’s 100 percent to zero, once per month will ensure that your iPad is reporting the battery’s correct state of charge. So every once in a while let that bad boy go into the red before finally recharging it.
Keep Out Of Extreme Heat - Keeping your iPad from overheating will not only protect battery life, but will also protect the longevity of the battery, that is, it’s overall lifespan in your device. Don’t ever leave your iPad in the trunk or on the dashboard of your car on a hot summer day or exposed to the sun while you’re at the beach. When your device overheats, it causes your battery to degrade rapidly. In fact, if you’ve left your iPad in a hot car and come back to find that you can’t turn it on, it is probably because the battery drained entirely and you’ll have to recharge it if you want to turn it on again.
Practically all of the suggestions we’ve mentioned above can be accessed from your iPad’s settings section. Once you open the Settings app on your iPad, you’ll see a list of things on the left side of the screen. Look for the category that matches the change you want to make. For example, to turn off Location Service, go to Settings>General>Location Services.
