Claude Code Helped Me Save 130€ on an iPad Battery Repair

I’ve been using iPads (for something productive) since college and I’ve always loved the form factor. I owned and sold multiple ones so I am very well aware of the features, display and other feature differences.

One thing I love about every single version of iPad I owned is the ability to put it down on the table and pick it up a few days later with only a few percent missing in its battery fullness. This “feature” is pure magic and it makes iPad available wherever you need it.

However I’ve been experiencing huge battery drain with my iPad Pro. It started happening around three years ago. Ever since I’ve started using my iPad less and less. First I thought that since I’ve finished college, I didn’t find the perfect use case for it. Every time I wanted to actually use it, the battery was dead. Quite annoying.

   _       _       _       _
 _| |_   _| |_   _| |_   _| |_
|#####| |     | |     | |     |
|#####| |#####| |     | |     |
|#####| |#####| |#####| |     |
'-----' '-----' '-----' '-----'

For a long time I thought it’s just an old battery giving up. I almost sold the device (with the battery notice of course) or changed the battery, but never got to it.

Then one evening with my Claude Code opened in my terminal I decided to find out what really is the issue behind this before I fully commit to replacing the battery. I connected the iPad using the cable and told Claude to find out what’s going on.

It used system_profiler, ideviceinfo, idevicediagnostics even installed libimobiledevice with Homebrew. I even checked the battery drain settings page and sent the screenshots over. There were some longer than expected background activities but nothing out of the ordinary.

I decided to also reset the device just to cross out any OS related drain. It didn’t help.

At first Claude said nothing was wrong and that battery was healthy. The results were surprising. I was sure it would tell me that something’s wrong with the battery and that’s what’s causing the drain.

We did some more tests.

After the overnight drain “test”, we found something was draining the battery in predictable cycles. Claude realized that it was probably external so he asked about any cases, Apple Pencils or Apple Keyboards used. Well of course I always had the Apple Pencil attached to the device.

We did another test and guess what... it was THE APPLE PENCIL. Since this revelation, I’ve been using the iPad without the Pencil attached and I haven’t noticed ANY drain. I guess the battery in Apple Pencil is the one that’s dead and actually needed lots of charging. Since I always have it attached magnetically I never even suspected it.

Truly amazing how useful LLMs are sometimes. I liked that Claude pushed back multiple times that changing the battery probably won’t fix the issue. It solved my problem and I’m happily using my iPad for magazine and other reading activities again.