The new iPad's battery may show it as fully charged before it is. That's due to a cycling feature built into iOS.
There are reports that the new iPad keeps charging beyond the point where
the battery icon indicates it is 100 percent chargedwhich is actually a
value-added feature that Apple Vice President Michael Tchao said has been built
into the products operating system, iOS, for a while.
DisplayMate analyst Ray Soneira reported that the iPad says it is fully
charged when it is not. What is happening, according to Tchao is that the
new iPad runs on a cycle where it fully charges, then discharges, then fully
recharges in order to maintain an optimum charge. That circuitry is designed
so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like, he
told the
technology blog AllThingsD. Its a great feature thats always been in iOS.
Apple promises 10 hours of battery life for the latest version of the iPad,
which has yet to be given an official moniker Apple usually bestows upon the
updated versions of its products. Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe told
AllThingsD that battery charging is a complex process, the specifics of which
are best left to engineers. Whats really subtle is that consumers think they
understand that 100 percent means full, Howe was reported as saying. That
might have been the case with older batteries, but todays batteries have
microprocessors managing their charging. So 100 percent is whatever that
microprocessor says it is its not any absolute measurement of ion concentration
or anything.
The battery life indicator, however small an overall component of the
tablet, has not been the only feature that has drawn attention to the iPad. The
new tablet also
operates at higher temperaturesthe
back of the new iPad reached temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheitthan
the iPad 2 when running a processor-intensive game, according to a recent test
by Consumer Reports. The iPad 2, subjected to the same tests, ran between 12
and 13 degrees cooler than the new iPad.
The new iPad features a high-resolution Retina Display, an improved camera
and processor, and comparable battery life to its predecessors. The new iPads
prices top out at $699 for the WiFi-only, 64GB model and $829 for the 64GB
model with WiFi and 4G. Apple
said
it has sold 3 million new iPads since the next-generation tablets March 16
release.
Philip Schiller, the companys senior vice president of worldwide marketing,
claimed in a company release that the opening sales weekend had produced the
strongest iPad launch yet.
Apple could sell
66
million iPads this year, buoyed by strong interest in its newest version,
according to Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray. By 2015, Munster
suggested, the iPad market will expand to some 176 million units. He also
believes that Apple will release a sub-$300 iPad sometime in 2013.
Due to the strong launch, we are raising our [calendar year 2012] iPad
estimates from 60 [million] to 66 [million], Munster wrote in a March 20 research
note. We believe the unprecedented ramp of the iPad over the past year is
evidence that the tablet market will be measurably larger than the PC market.
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