Insane Battery Life of iPad 3... (post stories of your old devices)

We should have a new thread here; old device of the month. Here's mine.

I bought my iPad 3 on March 15th 2012, which makes it almost exactly 5 years old. At the time, I had an iPad 1st generation that was already showing signs of age thanks to a combination of the unfortunate 256MB of RAM onboard and multitasking in iOS 5. Anyway...

Long story short, I still use my iPad 3 practically every day and have done for the last 5 years. Yes the A5 processor is a little slow these days (although you can help things A LOT by disabling certain background tasks and visual effects) and yes compared to the iPad Air or Pro it's a little chunky and heavy, and yes it may be stuck on iOS9, but... it still feels like a modern device, and many of the apps on it actually perform better than the same apps on a Surface Pro 4 (I know, because I have one I got from work). Nook, Netflix, HBO Now, YouTube all work better on a 5 year old iPad than an i7 based Surface.

And then there's the battery... this old chugger, which has had 398 charge cycles according to Coconut Battery and has 79.8% battery health, can still manage 10 hours of use AND almost 100 hours of standby on one charge (see below).

So excuse the showy anecdote, but the next time someone screams 'Apple gear is obsolete too soon' or 'doesn't last long' tell them this story.

Very interesting, thank you.

A lot has to do with how you look after your iDevice and you obviously cherish it. A bit of luck too, perhaps.

Ian

I had an original LC with an RGB display running OS 7.0.1 and used it up until this year with my Apple Camera. The only thing that ever failed was the 128MB, yes MB, hard drive. That was the largest capacity hard drive it could handle and the8MB of RAM made it much faster than the earlier model with two floppies before the hard drive era began!

I too have an iPad 3 stuck on iOS 9.3.5 and like member "Zoolook" mine is also an old work horse still giving me fantastic battery life. Mine is also cellular capable and uses the free T-Mobile gratis 200MB of data every month. I rarely if ever use it on cellular anymore but it's nice to have just in case. I seriously thought about buying a 9.7" iPad Pro to replace it but instead obtained an iPhone 7+.

We still have an iPad 2 in use (7yo daughter), every day and it still takes a beating. Just after Christmas during school break, it didn't turn on, so put it away. Tried it again every 1 or 2 weeks, and it started back up last Thursday with 80% battery. I don't know why, but my daughter is using it again. The only issue is getting the non-Apple 30-pin connector set just right so it will charge.

I bought this in April 2012 from Apple refurb, well worth it for the use we have all gotten out of it.