Apple says 100% iPad recharge "problem" is by design
Summary: After days of silence, Apple tells AllThingsD that the Apple iPad recharge "problem" is actually by design. Dr. Soneira, who found the problem, disagrees.
When is 100% charged not 100% charged? When it's Apple iPad 3.
To believe Apple about its iPad 3 battery problem or not to believe Apple is the question. In a story by Ina Fried at AllThingsD, Apple VP Michael Tchao explained that while the iPad--and iPhone and iPod Touch—display as 100% charged before the device is actually 100% charged, it's because they're constantly charging to 100 percent, and then discharging and recharging back up to 100 percent. The point, according to Apple, is to maintain the best possible charge. Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, the world’s leading display and display tuning company, who found the battery problem in the first place disagrees.
While Tchao calls this “a great feature that’s always been in iOS,” Soneira doesn't see it that way. He sees it as the Apple VP acknowledging “my point that the iPad is not 100% charged when it says so. It's not the full admission that I would have liked, but it is actually more than I expected Apple would admit to.” In short, he sees Apple spinning how iOS mishandles its battery-powered device reporting.
Soneira concluded, “My essential point is simply that if the new iPad is fully charged overnight then my tests show it will run 11.6 hours, which is 1.2 hours longer than if it just charged to 100% (10.4 hours). This will matter to some users. If the iPad has cell and WiFi and background tasks running then I agree with Apple that it will cycle down and up. My lab tests were in Airplane Mode so that did not happen and I measured the true battery state.”
Besides if this is “normal” for the iPad family then why did an Apple representative tell CNBC that “If you charge it more than [when the battery indicator reads 100%], you could actually harm the longevity of the battery.”? Soneira thinks, “this was a misguided off-the-cuff remark by an Apple representative to make everything sound just fine. But if we take this statement at face value, it unfortunately implies that the new iPad is damaging its own battery.”
So does this matter? I think so.
100% means 100%. It doesn't mean, as Soneira found was really the case with the iPad 3, 90%. Anytime a company starts playing games with such a fundamental and important number as battery charge and its brother, useful battery life, I begin to wonder what's really going on here. 1.2 hours for a tablet, or any other battery-powered device, is a significant amount of time. Then, when you add in Apple's earlier comment about how constantly charging am iPad might damage the battery, you can only suspect that Apple is simply trying to talk its way out of trouble.
Apple needs to explain clearly and simply what's really going on with its batteries. As Soneira suggests, “Perhaps Apple should instead retract the [first] remark and graciously accept my interpretation and rescind their own remarks, which sound like very poorly thought out PR damage control.”
Related Stories:
- Apple: iPad 3 battery gauge works as expected
- Batterygate: Apple's dysfunctional iPad 3 battery charger
- The iPad 3’s battery algorithm is busted, here’s why
- Why the new iPad battery meter is behaving just as it should
- Batterygate? Apple’s iPad “Fibbing” battery charger
- Apple: iPad 3 battery gauge works as expected
- Batterygate: Apple's dysfunctional iPad 3 battery charger
- The iPad 3’s battery algorithm is busted, here’s why
- Why the new iPad battery meter is behaving just as it should
- Batterygate? Apple’s iPad “Fibbing” battery charger
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Talkback
It's another example (along with the 4G claim).....
:-(
Two things to consider:
Second, Apple is correct. Lithium batteries should not be over charged or you lose life. A battery that would hold a 11.2 hr charge will last 3 years when charged charged to 90% (10 hrs.). It will only last 1.5 years when charged to 100% (11.2 hrs). My husband is in the backup battery business and this is a fact.
I will go with Apple on this one and ditch the Apple haters.
So why does Apple program the iPad to damage the battery?
Of course you are correct that Li-Ion batteries should not be over charged. But it is not Dr. Soneira (who first drew attention to this problem) who would be "over charging" the battery by leaving the iPad plugged in over night. He did not hack the software or over ride any protections or the basic iPad charging routine. He just left a regular old iPad plugged in over night, and found that 100% of charge, when the iPad has been left plugged in over night, gives over an hour more run time than 100% of charge, when that reading first appears.
Or do you contend that users are supposed to unplug the iPad the second that "100%" shows up on the charge screen? If so, I assume you will call on Apple to change its instructions to warn everybody that leaving it plugged in over night will cause it damage, yes?
It's not a bug
4 days ago I wrote:
So this is showing something simpler than reality, where the battery is something like 95%+ charged, then takes two further hours of "trickle charge" to get to 100% (which is probably still someway of the theoretical maximum, to make the battery last longer).
They probably do this so the user won't think "oh it's almost charged, I'll wait for it to hit 100%". You see "100%" (which is a reasonable approximation) and think "oh, cool, I can take it now".
This might explain why many reviewers have found that the iPad exceeds Apple's stated figures for battery life. It would make sense for Apple to measure from "indicated 100%" to "flat", rather than "actual 100%".
This seems like the most likely explanation for what we're seeing.
New>
This is pretty much what Apple are saying... Seems to make sense, yes?
Also 100% (when it comes to batteries) doesn't mean 100% - nobody actually charges to the theoretical maximum, as doing so would severely limit the service life of the unit. But given it runs up fast then slows to a crawl (again to maximise the service life of the unit) this seems like a reasonable approximation (otherwise you'd have to explain to people that the "last few percent" will take a long time - so if you're wanting to take the thing don't wait for it, the law of diminishing returns has set in.
Trying to educate users is pretty hard.
Of course, given the huge capacity (electrically) of the (new) iPad battery this effect is much more noticeable, but this is far from unique.
Umm no
Yes, this is likely a bug but, this is one of those bugs that benefits the consumer!
Waste of time...
I have seen the same thing on other devices
So we ate now up to what 7 stories about this none issue?
Pagan jim
The Apple Haters care.
Did you eat right?
No the disagreement is in the Apple executive
I find it disconcerting that Apple expects people to awaken in the middle of the night to disconnect their iPad from the charger, so as to not damage the battery.
Yes. Does it perform as stated? If yes, then it is a non-issue
However, there is no DIRECT measurement of the total charge available from a battery cell.
Does it last for 10 hours?
How many articles do you need to milk the issue dry? And... How many hits the site of "Dr. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, the world???s leading display and display tuning company, who found the battery problem" has got in the process"?
10 hours
Sony states that batteries last longer if not fully charged
Since Sony is a major OEM battery maker, I would suspect that they know about the limitations of the technology.
Just something for Steven to whine about - it doesn't really matter
I've had a heck of a lot more problems with my Android 2.3 to 3.2 upgrade (from the vendor no less, no jail breaking here) and no one is saying anything about that.
If this is all Steven's got on Apple, and he didn't even find it, it's pretty minimal.
He should find a real problem
This is normal for Most Electronic Devices
Enough with the 'Gates'...
There's quite possibly something here, much like the old issues with the display of bars on the iPhone. But it's also a fairly minor thing that plays into the narratives the press and bloggers like: Apple somehow misleads gullibile consumers, as the above; Apple is arrogant and won't admit mistakes; Apple is bad and Android is good. It really doesn't matter how important or not the issue is, or if it actually affects anyone, it's just if it fits the narrative. It's how the press works.
The problem is, as Jeremy states quite well above, that the issue is complex; those who says "100% should be 100%!" as if the battery were a glass filling with water aren't being realistic. Apple is about consumer experience, not about technical wonkery. The 100% level is actually arbitrary no matter what, because as was said above, no battery charges to the theoretical max. If the battery level went to 90-95% fairly quickly, then took 8 hours ADDITONAL to go to 100% because of how the battery actually works, that's going to be annoying to most people. People who want their device 'fully charged' would complain that the iPad takes 16 hours to charge fully, even if all that extra time only gives an extra hour of use. It would be another '-gate'. So Apple sets the 100% threshhold at a point where diminishing returns take over, and where the user will get the hours of use Apple advertises.
Yes, if an Andoid Manufacturer came up with a battery like the iPad's, they could (and probably would) put a meter on their tablet that reaches 95% and then a little icon would appear, and a pop-up would show that would explain "Now charging slowly because battery is nearly charged. Complete charge in 15 hours. But there are diminishing returns to continued charging. You can disconnect the tablet now if needed. Dismiss this warning? Y/N?" and the user could dismiss the pop-up and then it would show again the next time the user charged as a reminder, and eventually the user could find instructions online on how to go into the control panel and set the warning to be disabled. And Truth would be upheld, everyone would be better educated, and the user would totally NOT be annoyed.
Yes. I'm being sarcastic. Or "100% is 100%" could be upheld, and the iPad would take a full day to charge, even though most people would be fine with a much shorter charge time, because 100 is 100, darn it! But wait... charging it for a full week, gives an extra 5 minutes of battery life! That's the real 100%! So change the meter again! Or wait, someone charged it for 3 months straight, and they discovered.....
Or they could leave it as is; most people would be happy with getting the advertised battery life, plus a bit extra if it's plugged in all night. And the tech press can have something to be clever about. Yes, 1.2 hours is 'significant' but only because most laptop batteries last about 2-3 hours. If a Dell laptop reported 100% at 3 hours of use, but could really go another 15 minutes, would that be worth spending all this time on? But because it's Apple, it's worth it for the 'Gotcha!' and for the proof on how clever the person finding the issue is, and how devoted the reporter is to Fundamental Truth, and is totally looking out for you.
Next we'll find out that when the battery meter reaches 0% and the system shuts down, there's technically a charge still in the battery, and it's not ABSOLUTELY empty, and the system could actually have operated another few minutes, but the designers chose to have the system shutdown gracefully instead... What? Really!? Get me the press!
Very good...