How to Extend the Battery Life of an iPad

Just as with an iPhone or iPod Touch, the battery life of your iPad will be shorter during heavy use. However, there are some measures you can take to keep your device on and active for hours of enjoyment, and this article explains what you can do to lengthen the battery life.

Steps

1. Turn off Wi-Fi and cellular data (iPad + 3G) settings. Your iPad drains battery power when searching for and attempting to connect to the nearest Wi-Fi or cellular network tower, so if you’re not planning on using Safari or apps that require these features, shut them off.

  • Go to “Settings”, “WiFi option” or “Cellular”, and tap the off switch.
2. Turn off or decrease the timing for data fetching. Data that are updated regularly include email notifications and RSS feed.

  • Go to “Settings”. Tap on “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and go to “Fetch New Data”. Tap “Manually”.
  • Alternately, tap “Hourly” to increase the fetching interval.
3. Turn off Push notifications. The usefulness of this step depends on how many emails or IM+ you usually receive; if you get a lot, this step is probably worth using as this can deplete battery life.

  • Go to “Settings”, “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” and “Fetch New Data”. Turn off Push.
4. Tone down the brightness. It goes without saying that the brighter the screen, the more battery power your iPad consumes. Turn down the brightness to a setting that looks right.

  • Go to “Settings”, then “Brightness & Wallpaper”.
  • Select “Auto Brightness”, which will allow the iPad to adjust brightness depending on the brightness of your location; or
  • Drag the slider to the left to lower the default screen brightness. 25 percent to 30 percent brightness should be sufficient for daytime use, and for most people, should also work for nighttime.

5. Turn off the sound effects. Sounds can cause the battery to deplete quickly if they are frequent and as they are activated by default, they will sound whenever you receive notifications or when pressing buttons for the on-screen keyboard.

  • Go to “Settings”, “General”, and “Sounds”. There are five different options on the equalizer to “Increase/Decrease”. Or, you can switch to “On/Off” if preferred. Obviously, disabling the lot would decrease the battery usage by sounds.
6. Turn off location services. Active use of maps and other location services will drain battery life. If left on, Maps updates continuously, something that you don’t need draining your battery.
7. Avoid frequent use of 3D or graphic heavy apps. Sure, BrickBreaker HD looks great in high-definition, but playing for long periods of time drains battery life like a hose.
8. Switch on Airplane Mode if you have an iPad + 3G. It blocks all of the iPad’s wireless signals and will increase battery life. In areas where 3G is patchy or weak, this could drain the battery even more, so it’s a very good idea to turn it off in such a situation.
9. Keep the iPad away from temperature extremes. Extreme high or low temperatures can cause the battery life to decrease. Keep the iPad environment between 32ºF and 95ºF(0ºC and 35ºC).

  • Be careful of using an iPad case when charging the battery, as this can prevent adequate ventilation, increasing the temperature of the iPad and potentially damaging the battery (charging releases heat).
10. Keep your software up-to-date at all times. Apple recommends updating regularly because engineers look for new ways to optimize battery performance and when they find any ways, they pass these on via software updates.
11. Switch on the auto-lock feature. This means that your iPad will turn off after a set period of time if left inactive.

  • Go to “Settings”, “General”, and tap on “Auto Lock”. Set the interval to a short space of time, such as one minute.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.