iPad 2 battery is not draining completely
Over the last couple of days, I found that my iPad - whilst functioning as expected in all ways - is not able to discharge beyond 14%; it would simply turn off as if I had drained the battery down to zero. I've been using this iPad for almost two months now and it is only in the last couple of days that it has started behaving in this way.
I can think of several reasons for this:
- The battery indicator is out of whack (14% actually means 0%) and needs to be calibrated. If so, how do I do this?
- There is something physically wrong with the battery such that the charge beyond ~14% is unusable.
I found someone with a similar problem here but there is no resolution reported.
When I recharge the iPad, it is able to charge back up to 100% but would subsequently drain down to 14% as before.
Does anyone know what's the best thing to do in this case?
So as it turned out, it's a case of a mis-calibrated battery indicator. Here's what I did to re-calibrate it:
- Use iPad until it switches off by itself
- Charge it back up
- After a couple of minutes, it should turn itself back on. Check the battery indicator to see if it's around 2% (as would be expected). If it is, then allow the iPad to be fully charged back up to 100%. If it is not (i.e. it is around 14% as in my experience), proceed to the next step.
- Disconnect the iPad from the charger and let it discharge completely again
- Repeat from (2).
It took my iPad one cycle of the steps above to get its battery indicator re-calibrated and it has been working fine since. If this doesn't fix your iPad it's probably worth getting AppleCare involved.