New iPad Notes: Battery Charging at 100%, Safari Scaling Images

A couple of new findings as people spend more time with their new iPads. First, iLounge reports on findings by DisplayMate on the new iPads charging behavior. It turns out the iPad continues to charge for as long as an hour after it says its at 100%, suggesting the on-screen indicator isn't quite accurate and may still need more charging.

In an email exchange with iLounge, DisplayMate President Ray Soneira indicated that the third-generation iPad—when connected to power via the included Apple 10W Power Adapter—actually continued to draw 10W of power for up to one hour after reaching what is reported by iOS as a full 100% charge

iLounge found in their battery testing of the new iPad that sometimes the charge would drop initially quickly when they thought the iPad was fully charged.

Earlier in the week, Tom's Hardware noticed that Safari on the new iPad was automatically scaling large images down significantly.

comparison
Large images were automatically scaled down to near 1 megapixel resolutions. This means that if you are viewing large images through Safari, you aren't getting the full Retina experience. A workaround mentioned is to save the image to Photos which seems to preserve the original resolution.

These findings were confirmed by web developer Duncan Davidson who ran into the limit when trying to enhance his websites with Retina-sized images.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Dark Blue and Orange

iPhone 17 Release Date, Pre-Orders, and What to Expect

Thursday August 28, 2025 4:08 am PDT by
An iPhone 17 announcement is a dead cert for September 2025 – Apple has already sent out invites for an "Awe dropping" event on Tuesday, September 9 at the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. The timing follows Apple's trend of introducing new iPhone models annually in the fall. At the event, Apple is expected to unveil its new-generation iPhone 17, an all-new ultra-thin iPhone 17...
xiaomi apple ad india

Apple and Samsung Push Back Against Xiaomi's Bold India Ads

Friday August 29, 2025 4:54 am PDT by
Apple and Samsung have reportedly issued cease-and-desist notices to Xiaomi in India for an ad campaign that directly compares the rivals' devices to Xiaomi's products. The two companies have threatened the Chinese vendor with legal action, calling the ads "disparaging." Ads have appeared in local print media and on social media that take pot shots at the competitors' premium offerings. One...
iPhone 17 Pro Iridescent Feature 2

iPhone 17 Pro Clear Case Leak Reveals Three Key Changes

Sunday August 31, 2025 1:26 pm PDT by
Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 17 series on Tuesday, September 9, and last-minute rumors about the devices continue to surface. The latest info comes from a leaker known as Majin Bu, who has shared alleged images of Apple's Clear Case for the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, or at least replicas. Image Credit: @MajinBuOfficial The images show three alleged changes compared to Apple's iP...
maxresdefault

The MacRumors Show: iPhone 17's 'Awe Dropping' Accessories

Friday August 29, 2025 8:12 am PDT by
Following the announcement of Apple's upcoming "Awe dropping" event, on this week's episode of The MacRumors Show we talk through all of the new accessories rumored to debut alongside the iPhone 17 lineup. Subscribe to The MacRumors Show YouTube channel for more videos We take a closer look at Apple's invite for "Awe dropping;" the design could hint at the iPhone 17's new thermal system with ...
iOS 18 on iPhone Arrow Down

Apple Preparing iOS 18.7 for iPhones as iOS 26 Release Date Nears

Sunday August 31, 2025 4:35 pm PDT by
Apple is preparing to release iOS 18.7 for compatible iPhone models, according to evidence of the update in the MacRumors visitor logs. We expect iOS 18.7 to be released in September, alongside iOS 26. The update will likely include fixes for security vulnerabilities, but little else. iOS 18.7 will be one of the final updates ever released for the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR,...

Top Rated Comments

Lordskelic Avatar
176 months ago
What's the point of the retina display if the images are just going to be scaled down? Didn't apple think about this before they released the iPad 3rd Generation?
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
slicecom Avatar
176 months ago
The Safari scaling issue is infuriating when looking for wallpapers. You simply can't look for them in your iPad because they're compressed to hell and scaled down to 1024x1024, you have to look for them on a computer, then transfer them to your iPad. I hope they fix this.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kolax Avatar
176 months ago
What's the reason for the large images being scaled down? iOS bug?

EDIT: For those who say it is for memory, cellular reasons or speed of the web browser, the iPad 3 is meant for high resolution images. If there's one available, and you are on WiFi, then why restrain it. It does have 1GB of memory..

This makes sense on other iOS devices, but the iPad 3's selling point is the retina display. Seems daft to downscale images below the 3 megapixel screen the iPad 3 has when a WiFi connection is available along with enough memory.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
rmwebs Avatar
176 months ago
Probably Safari scales images on the server side (like an Apple proxy, as Opera does with its Opera Mini "turbo mode"). This may be one more agreement between Apple and carriers to keep low bandwidth usage.

No. Wifi content does not go through a proxy. This is built into the Safari app.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Riemann Zeta Avatar
176 months ago
Expecting a mobile device (even one with 1GB of RAM) to be able to render 10-80 MPixel images is a little nuts. Even if we ignore the download bandwidth, the GPU itself doesn't have the memory or the bus throughput needed to render such a large image to framebuffer.

As for the battery, I think the meter is wildly inaccurate for iOS 5.1 on the iPad 3. Apple will need to calibrate it better in the 5.1.1 update that is soon to follow.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
palouf Avatar
176 months ago
Images in Ios safari were already downgraded, is it the same issue Here

Hi all,

I remember having trouble reading an online comic because some strips were bigger than 2Mega Pixels, the image was unsharp, as if the number of pixels was reduced to 1/4th (was confirmed on the ios Safari specifications doc)

is'nt it the same kind of behaviour ?

update: https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/appleapplications/reference/safariwebcontent/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone.html (https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/appleapplications/reference/safariwebcontent/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone/CreatingContentforSafarioniPhone.html)

Know iOS Resource Limits

Your webpage performing well on the desktop is no guarantee that it will perform well on iOS. Keep in mind that iOS uses EDGE (lower bandwidth, higher latency), 3G (higher bandwidth, higher latency), and Wi-Fi (higher bandwidth, lower latency) to connect to the Internet. Therefore, you need to minimize the size of your webpage. Including unused or unnecessary images, CSS, and JavaScript in your webpages adversely affects your site’s performance on iOS.

Because of the memory available on iOS, there are limits on the number of resources it can process:

The maximum size for decoded GIF, PNG, and TIFF images is 3 megapixels for devices with less than 256 MB RAM and 5 megapixels for devices with greater or equal than 256 MB RAM.

That is, ensure that width * height ≤ 3 * 1024 * 1024 for devices with less than 256 MB RAM. Note that the decoded size is far larger than the encoded size of an image.

The maximum decoded image size for JPEG is 32 megapixels using subsampling.

JPEG images can be up to 32 megapixels due to subsampling, which allows JPEG images to decode to a size that has one sixteenth the number of pixels. JPEG images larger than 2 megapixels are subsampled—that is, decoded to a reduced size. JPEG subsampling allows the user to view images from the latest digital cameras.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)