One of the most important factors of any mobile device is its battery life. Without a fair amount of juice to last through the day, a mobile device, whether it be a smartphone or a tablet, is rendered useless.
Just about every hardware manufacturer markets the heck out of their battery technology because it is such an important feature in a mobile device. Apple is one of those hardware companies. All you have to do to realize this is look at any of their mobile hardware pages and you’ll see some mention of battery life. And typically, Apple makes it seem that their batteries will last you throughout the day – or at least much longer than the competition.
But in my years as a technology enthusiast, I’ve realized that Apple’s battery life estimations aren’t always the most accurate in real-life use. The numbers are certainly achievable, but I like to keep my displays’ brightnesses cranked up to the max and have most of my wireless connections turned on. When all of that is happening at once, it takes a toll on Apple’s special batteries – no matter how much room they may take up inside those thin aluminum bodies.
Granted, on my iPad, I can still get about 7 hours of continuous use with my display at full brightness and all of my connections turned on, but the extra three hours that Apple advertises would be fantastic when I’m on the road and want to get everything I can out of my tablet. I also understand that I could just turn down the brightness and turn off a few of my wireless connections, but that’s a pain and it takes away a lot of functionality for me.
My $829 iPad still gets me through the day, and I still think it’s one of the best purchases I’ve made in terms of technology; and really, that’s why I’m writing this article. Save for NFC, Apple really doesn’t need to add anything to the iPad in my opinion. In fact, I believe that Apple could remove the rear-facing camera, add NFC, and up the battery life by a few hours and would still have a very successful product – with better battery life, to boot.
How is your new iPad’s battery life? Do you wish it was longer or do you think that the new hardware that Apple added is a good sacrifice for its relatively subpar battery life?
[Image credit: Cult of Mac]
Max brightness is the biggest battery killer. It may be necessary if you’re using your device outside, though. I used to leave my 4th-gen Touch at about 1/4 brightness indoors, and that was enough.
With that, the only time my battery really drained quickly was when I played games…..in particular, Contract Killer:Zombies, because I would lose track of time, and suddenly(so it seemed) get the low battery warning.
I just like full brightness because it makes the display look more beautiful. I turn it down at night or in the dark, but only because I don’t want to hurt my eyes.
But yeah, the battery life stinks even more when I play games, too.
I wasn’t conscious of it until the iPad 3. My 2 was better than any estimate. I’ve sort of written it off to a worthwhile trade for the best screen in the world and 4G. But I still wish it was better.
As someone who uses a Transformer Prime (often without the dock) and a Galaxy Tab I still think Apple gets better mileage, though. Especially since I tend to pick the iPad up a lot more to read on that display.
Please do not suggest Apple remove the rear facing camera from the iPad. On the ‘new iPad’ the quality is very acceptable and it makes it very nice for things like: doing quick eBay listing, making deposits at Chase (or other banks supporting ‘scanned’ deposits), OCR applications, capturing impromptu photos where no other device is available, etc.
NOTE: I fully did not expect to use the camera when I bought the new iPad. However, over time, the camera quality and speed of capture has become the one feature that I find to be unequaled on any other tablet.
Adding features IMHO is very nice, because a user has the option whether to use them or not.
Removing features is not so nice IMHO because some portion of users will likely miss that feature and there is no way to recover it. 
I understand your desire for improved battery life and probably reduced cost as well, but cutting features is not the ideal way to do it IMHO.