iPad 3 seeing massive battery life when used as mobile hotspot
As I’ve pointed out already, the iPad 3’s battery capacity increase isn’t to compensate for LTE – because then the WiFi version would see much better battery life in hours. It’s the screen’s fault, as it’s essentially a flashlight that drains your battery constantly. However, if you were to turn off the screen and on LTE and WiFi to use the iPad 3 as a mobile hotspot to share its internet connection with other devices, you suddenly start seeing ridiculous numbers. 25.3 hours, in fact, according to AnandTech. That basically means that an ipad 3 can provide internet connectivity for other devices for over a day, which is both extremely useful and puts the LTE-drains-battery theory to rest once and for all.
This does of course require that the carrier allows mobile hotspots, which isn’t given in all countries. You’d also most likely run out of battery power on whatever you’re providing internet for long before you do on the iPad, but I’d assume that similar number expand to things like listening to music, displaying video over HDMI, and other things that don’t require the screen to be on. I wonder if there’s an accessibility setting in there to disable the screen but keep touch input active – iOS has great accessibility features that makes it perfect even for blind people, and having an iPad that doesn’t show anything on the screen in order to get 20 hours of battery life would actually be a very helpful tool.
[AnandTech]
