For those of you wondering how Apple managed to keep the iPad’s legendary 10 hour battery life despite the addition of a Retina display and LTE technology, we’ve come across a good explanation: the battery is a lot bigger than its predecessors. Surprise!
How much is a lot? Well according to the recent iFixit teardown, and other reports, the new iPad’s battery has roughly 70% more capacity than the one used to power the iPad 2. But unfortunately this also means that it takes a lot longer to charge…
MG Siegler explains this phenomenon in his review of the new iPad:
“It appears they’ve had a fairly major breakthrough in their battery technology. While the new battery clearly isn’t much bigger than the old one, it can hold much more juice (42 watt-hours versus 25-watt-hours). The downside of this is that I’ve found it takes quite a bit longer to charge the new iPad. As in several hours — you’ll probably want to do it overnight.”
If you haven’t guessed by now, none of this is really all that surprising considering what Apple has pulled off here. While LTE has been the blame for poor battery life in several devices over the past year, the new iPad is still good for nearly 10 hours of continuous usage. And that feat becomes even more impressive when you mix in the Retina display and quad core graphics processor.
Our iPads should be arriving tomorrow so make sure you check back with us this weekend for our hands-on impressions.
What do you think? Is the iPad’s battery life worth the extra charging time?
[9to5Mac]