Apple says that iPads are good to at least 10,000 feet.
But how much higher can they go?
Xavion can detect and warn of cabin de-pressurization, and in our experiments will even talk to a TruTrak autopilot to descend the airplane to a lower altitude automatically after de-pressurization… and a de-pressurization in a light plane could happen at much higher altitudes than 10,000 feet! In fact it is ONLY de-pressurizations well above 10,000 feet that are even a concern!
I have used Xavion on my various iPads in my UN-pressurized Columbia-400 at 25,000 feet for many, many hours… right?
Well, yes… but did I just get lucky?
To find out, I collected ALL of my iPads and iPhones (iPhone 4! iPhone 5! iPhone 6! iPad-3! iPad-Mini) and fired up Xavion on ALL of them and took off in my UN-pressurized Columbia-400 to climb to 25,000 feet to see if they ALL worked.
And they did.
Then I exited Xavion on all of them.
And re-launched Xavion on all of them.
It worked on all of them.
Then I turned them all off.
And then back on again.
And then launched Xavion on all of them again.
And made sure that Xavion was working properly.
Yes it was.
So, if you want to know how high an iPad or iPhone can go and still work, the answer, from my experiments, is “AT LEAST 25,000 feet”.
(I could not test higher since my Columbia-400 is not legally allowed to fly higher than that).