Before I started this endeavor, I noticed that the iPad would last about 3 to 4 days with my regular use, which was about 30 mins to an hour a day. After I implemented some changes, I was able to get the iPad to last almost 7 to 8 days without having to charge it! And a lot of them were very easy fixes that just never occurred to me before. In this article, I’ll mention the 5 tweaks that increased the battery life of my iPad. If you have others not mentioned here, let us know in the comments.
Method 1 – Charge When Low Battery
One of the main reasons why my iPad battery has lasted two years is because I still follow the charge only when the battery is really low rule. Yes there are some that say that doesn’t matter as much now, etc, etc, but whatever. I still do it and it seems to work. For example, I usually wait till the iPad is below 5% and then I start charging it.
Also, I do a couple of other things. Firstly, I make sure that I let it charge all the way to 100% without disconnecting it. A battery gets worn down by charge cycles, so if you stop in-between and then charge it again and then stop, over and over, the life of the battery will decrease.
Lastly, I try my best to disconnect it immediately after it hits 100%. The iPad has some mechanism to let the device run on battery and then re-charge when it hits 100% and you keep it connected to the power source. It’s supposed to make the battery last longer, but the fact that it keeps having to do that just means you’re wearing the battery down more. If you can disconnect it ASAP after a full charge that is best.
Method 2 – Disable Lock Screen Notifications
The next major tweak that made a whole lot of difference was disabling notifications on the lock screen. Basically, whenever you get a notification from any app (and I got a whole lot because I have 100+ apps installed), it will appear on the lock screen and they display will turn on in order to show it. The display comes on for a short time, but I realized that this was happening all the time. Every 15 to 20 minutes, my iPad would turn on to display a Facebook notification, iMessage notification, new magazine notification or something else.
All that time the display was on for showing notifications, the battery was being slowly eaten up. I quickly realized that I had to just turn off notifications on the lock screen and no more constant screen light-ups.
You’ll have to go through each app under Notifications, but it’s well worth the time. You don’t have to turn off notifications completely, just make sure that you turn off View in Lock Screen for anything you don’t feel is very important. I switched off notifications on the lock screen for pretty much everything except a few apps I wanted to get visual alerts for.
What’s nice is that once you unlock the iPad, you’ll then see all the notifications appear in the banner at the top. Make sure you also turn on Banners instead of Alerts. Recently, I also turned mine off for iMessage because I realized with the new unified iMessage in iOS 6, my iPad would keep turning on every time I got a new iMessage on my iPhone. If I had an extended conversation, the iPad would light up the whole time. Definitely not necessary.
Method 3 – Auto-Lock
If you go to Settings, General, and Auto-Lock, you should set this value to the lowest possible, which is 2 minutes.
Unless you really need the display on for longer, 2 minutes without using it is more than enough. After that, you want it to automatically turn off. The less the screen is on when you’re not using it, the longer your iPad battery will last.
Method 4 – Turn Off Cellular Data
My iPad is Wifi+3G and the 3G used to always be on. I realized this was pretty useless since I only used it when I left the house. So maybe a few times a week, I would be using 3G, otherwise it was always connected to WiFi.
For the new iPad, you’re talking 4G, which probably eats up even more battery. I just turn off cellular data until I actually need it. Just go to Settings and tap on Cellular Data and switch it to Off.
Method 5 – Bluetooth
Lastly, I also disabled Bluetooth as I didn’t use this feature all the time either. Whenever I needed to connect my bluetooth headset, I would just go in and turn it back on. After I’m done, I turn if back off. It saves quite a bit of battery if you can be disciplined about it and turn it off when you don’t need it.
Bonus Method – Do Not Disturb
if you recently updated to iOS 6, then you probably heard of Do Not Disturb. It’s a new feature that will silence all FaceTime calls and any alerts. This is useful if you don’t feel like doing Method 2 mentioned above. Then you can just leave everything and turn on Do Not Disturb for the portion of the day you don’t use the iPad.
If you go to Settings, first turn on Do Not Disturb. After that, tap on Notifications and turn Scheduled to On. Then choose the time you want to enable do not disturb. You can also allow FaceTime calls from favorites if you like or disable it. They even have a feature so that if you get a repeated FaceTime call within three minutes, it’ll ring.
That’s about it! Using these methods, I was able to significantly increase the battery life of my iPad. If you do something different than what I mentioned here, post it in the comments. Enjoy!
"iPad-iPhone tips: Increase iPad Battery Life Use 5 Ways "
Reference : online-tech-tips.com
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