I'm relatively new to iPad, so I'm trying to figure out whether I'm actually dealing with abnormal battery drain or just misunderstanding what's normal
My iPad is relatively new, Battery Health is 100%, and the cycle count is around 26
Apple diagnostics have also said everything is normal
Before this issue started, with very light use/mostly idle, I would normally lose around 3% over an entire day
This is based on my iPad's own previous usage, not a claimed “normal” number from somewhere else
For about a month now, I've been seeing much higher consumption
I usually keep Wi-Fi off when I'm not using the iPad.
When I first went to the service centre about the idle drain, they asked me to actually use the iPad so they could observe the battery consumption
I followed their instructions and recorded some active use data as well
Brightness was around 50% during these active-use tests
For example:
Sept 6: 46% battery used, 4h 9m screen-on. I was basically just reading a book in the Files app, with Wi-Fi off
Sept 7: 45% battery used, 4h 7m screen-on. Wi-Fi was on and brightness was around 50%. I watched YouTube through Safari for around 25 minutes (not HD), and the rest of my Safari usage was just normal web surfing
I also have screenshots from the earlier low-use days where I got:
Sept 1: 14% used, 2 min screen-on
Sept 2: 14% used, 2 min screen-on
Sept 3: 15% used, 3 min screen-on
Wi-Fi was off on those days
Another thing I've noticed is that Battery Usage seems to blame whichever app I happen to use the most that day
For example, when I use Safari, Safari shows up with a higher percentage; when I spend most of my time reading in Files, Files gets the higher percentage
The percentage can also increase later even after I've stopped using that app
So I'm not sure whether this attribution is actually meaningful or whether I'm misunderstanding how iPadOS reports battery usage
The service centre previously told me they couldn't really see the drain unless I actually used the iPad, so I'm trying to give them active-use data as requested.
Do these numbers look abnormal to you, or would you consider this normal iPad battery consumption? I'm not trying to claim the battery is defective — I genuinely want to know whether I'm worrying about normal behaviour or whether this is worth pushing the service centre to investigate