r/ipadmini • u/nish_money • 15d ago

I really want to love my iPad Mini, but...

I've had it for ~3 months now, and love the form factor for consuming YouTube/Netflix, news articles, and FaceTiming folks.

But, I've been having some issues:

  1. General slowness/bugginess around the UI sometimes. I wasn't able to simply send a photo on iMessage the other day, the select popup just kept showing up / disappearing.
  2. Battery life. Standby battery life has been awful, and I'm constantly having to plug it in. A 2hr FaceTime took up 46% of my battery life, and 7min of YouTube drains about 10%. Find My + Home & Lock Screen routinely drain the battery, and I've done the normal things like disable background app refresh / turn on auto-lock / etc.

Curious if anyone else has run into these issues + if they've done anything to address them.

35 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

36 comments sorted by

19

u/Downtown_Ambition680 15d ago

I feel your pain, but please blame iPad OS 26 not the beautiful lil guy trying his best 🫠 it was much better prior to updating. My battery life still isn’t quite as bad as what you describe though. I have the 7th gen.

11

u/VigoSuave 15d ago

Do you keep a pencil attached? I find that drains my battery dramatically more. The battery life in general is a trade-off for the size but a 7 minute YT video shouldn't drain 10 percent.

1

u/nish_money 14d ago

I don't have a pencil

9

u/ViejoSalse 15d ago

That's really weird. I've been using the mini 6 for around 4 years and never had any of those issues. Probably the iPadOS version? Mine is not the latest and have heard people with massive battery draining and I have no issues on my old slab

6

u/nish_money 15d ago

I wish there were a version to downgrade iPad OS to an older version

1

u/emecan1 14d ago

They do this with the Macs, I wish there was this option for iPads

3

u/1N0TF0UND 15d ago

For iOS 26.5 you really want the Mini 7 at minimum…

2

u/nish_money 15d ago

I do have the Mini 7!

3

u/Ill_Connection_341 15d ago

iPadOS 26?

2

u/nish_money 15d ago

Yes - but not sure if there's a way to get rid of it

1

u/Ill_Connection_341 15d ago

I hope they fix it in ipados 27. Rumors say it's a bug fix os. 

2

u/Competitive_Funny964 14d ago

I had those issues, they started to happen with iOS 26. Standby time used to be almost a week, now is 3 days (I use it in weekend like you say: FaceTime grandparents with my kids, reading, some live YouTube watch and maybe occasional once a month dual screen to the Mac for specific activity)

Perhaps battery is aging or just admiring that Apple like other tech is using ai code so the quality could take a hit especially if more and more is offshore.

1

u/whatash4m3 15d ago

You might want to double check if you have turned off background app refresh. Disabling it has significantly improved my mini’s battery life, without noticing any downsides.

1

u/nish_money 15d ago

It's off, not sure what else could be causing the drain.

1

u/Nikhil7286 15d ago

Try a factory reset and set the device up brand new

1

u/nish_money 15d ago

I will give it a shot, thank you!

1

u/kuped 15d ago

What iPad mini are we talking about here? If it's a Mini 7, then your experience is not a normal one. I use mine when I fly (always on, connected to a GPS and ADS-B wifi transmitter, full brightness) on a regular basis. A 2.5-3.0 hour flight uses about 25% of the battery. All this after 2.5 years of daily use.

1

u/nish_money 15d ago

I've got the Mini 7 as well. I got it on iPad OS 26 so no option to revert to previous version

1

u/kuped 14d ago

I don't think an earlier iOS version will affect your issues. It's something else.

1

u/am0x 15d ago

I just played horizon horizon 6 on it for 2 hours and was at 89%. What you got isn’t normal.

And I bought it used.

1

u/movdqa 15d ago

Which iPad mini do you have? I have the 6 and it's fine for me. It replaced a 5 that had the issues you're talking about.

1

u/CaptainAdmin42 15d ago

Always check for Software Updates, a lot of the general glitchiness and drops in performance, either speed or battery, can often be remidied by regular updates.

1

u/DivineLights1995 14d ago

I have been using a Mini 7 for a year and a half and don’t have any issues whatsoever. Could be a bad application causing yours. Or do a factory reset.

1

u/Cloudwalker222 14d ago

That’s strange. I have a 6 refurb that I just got and it runs 26.5 without issue. The battery is 98% capacity too. I don’t understand where others are having issues. An hour of tv took ten percent but 10 hours would be okay with what I need.

1

u/Motorcycle1000 14d ago

I have a newish A17. Battery life could be better, no doubt about it. But then, I don't manage every bit of power usage. If I think I'm going to need it, I just take a high-cap fast-charge power tank. I'd rather not need to carry the extra battery, but it's not a bad workaround.

1

u/Zee6372 14d ago

I’ve been very disappointed with iPad OS 26 on my M4 Pro… I wouldn’t call the UI slow, but it is certainly buggy on new hardware too.

1

u/guustavocl 14d ago

lol just checked mine for today, 1h50m of youtube screen time and it used 15% of battery, mini 7 ipadOS 26.5

oh and the pencil pro attached all of the time

1

u/TheKernelPop 14d ago

Had these exact same issues. Unfortunately decided enough was enough and upgraded to the Air. I miss the Mini and even prefer it, but it needs a serious spec upgrade

1

u/Independent-View1236 2d ago

How has been the Air? I’ve seen several battery tests on Youtube and the Air is always the first one to die, even behind the regular one and the mini. People have been complaining about battery since the M1 version.

1

u/Scorpion101325 14d ago

Most of the time, even you got mini 7, I don't recommend go for iPad OS 26. Stay in 18 as it is the most stable version right now.

All the symptoms seems are due to the software issues (yeah the OS issue), rather than the hardware. I am using ipad mini 7 with iPadOS 18, refusing to upgrade to 26, still working well as I expected. Additionally, ipadOS 26 is bad on supporting rhythm games, which hits me a nail to the coffin with that.

1

u/specornot210 12d ago

i’m on Ipad OS 26.2 Ipad mini 7 and my battery life lasts around 10 hours total tho! i have been using it for about 2 months or so now.

I do the following to try and conserve battery:

  1. turn off background app refresh
  2. always keep the brightness at half max
  3. turn off bluetooth if i’m not using it

other than that it’s been okay so far. My usage includes streaming movies, watching youtube, reading books and scrolling reddit. Sometimes i use it for presentations or playing games.

1

u/alanjigsaw 11d ago

It’s weird, it’s like the OS 26 update hits iPads differently. My battery is the same as it was before the update, which is really good. But I’ve heard for others it drains faster than ever and the device is slower. Maybe try restarting and turning off extra things you don’t need. Idk

1

u/DearKaleidoscope5102 15d ago
  1. None for me
  2. I can play for around 2 -2.5 hours at max settings and get about 20% left but with streaming apps or doomscrolling nothing dramatic like yours. I use a pencil usb c cos I’ve experienced draining from pro pencil on my ipad pro if I leave it attached

1

u/ThingsGotStabby 14d ago

While I do not have these issues on my Mini7 with iOS18.7.8, I do not love the bargain parts bin 60hz dim screen, tinny low volume speakers, no high bandwidth Bluetooth chip for that nerfed AirTag experience, no haptic feedback making typing feed completely dead, unnecessarily basic camera app devoid of any features and generally terrible camera, and constant daily and several times a day prompting me to downgrade to iOS26.

0

u/farrellart 15d ago

I haven't got a ipadmini anymore, I bought a wacom movink instead, same deal about battery life, for heavy tasks I just plug in a powerbank.