Charging issue with Logitech Rugged Combo Case 2

[ewettach]

We are in the process of looking at moving toward using the new Logitech Rugged Combo 2 Case for the newly released iPad. This case seems to be one of the most popular cases in education. We were given a sample and immediately began testing it. The only issue, which to us is a big issue, is that about once a day it seems the iPad will not charge via the case's lightning port. Dissembling the case and reseating the iPad in the case resolves this issue.

We obviously haven't had our hand on this case for long and just have one, so our sample size is very small. However, there are a few discussions out there involving the exact same issue with last years (1st generation Logitech Rugged Combo Case), in particular another school that has instructions on how to reseat the iPad. See below:

Logitech Support Discussion Thread
Another school with instructions to reseat

Has anyone been using the previous generation Logitech Rugged Combo Case and if so, can you share any experiences you have had and if you have had this issue before?

We appreciate any feedback and don't want to get caught with a ton of cases that will constantly need to be reseated by young students. I know there will be issues, but trying to find out if this is an epidemic.

I see that something similar has come up in this thread on JAMF Nation ,@dogden , @galionschools . Did those issues get resolved?

[blackholemac]

We are having to wait for our cases here for this (and other) reasons and have been told that a version 2.0 of these cases should be shipping in June.

[Micah]

Our school is currently testing a few Rugged Combo 1 units, and we're considering purchasing Rugged Combo 2 for the next academic year.

Like you, we've had our testers report this charging issue, but it's not necessarily every day. I haven't analyzed it too closely, but it's probably after half the current charge has been used. I've only noticed it happen when I've not charged it for a couple days, or if it has been in standby over a weekend. Luckily, we've never had to remove or reseat the iPad. A power cycle always temporarily resolves the issue for us. Have you had any luck just doing a power cycle?

I was hoping the Rugged Combo 2 would have resolved this, but it sounds like you're testing the Combo 2 and not seeing an improvement.

I'm using a Rugged Combo 1 with a 6th Gen (2018) iPad on 11.3.1. I also had this problem when I was testing on a 5th Gen (2017). Same case.

[galionschools]

@ewettach We purchased about two dozen back in the fall and haven't had any show stopper issues. Two have had charging and or keyboard detection issues but restarts fixed 99.9% of that. A reseat has only been performed twice the entire year. I have one on mine and knock on wood it's not had a single issue.

Our next years deployment will be using the Rugged Combo 2's so I'm hoping that we won't have the issues you all are having.

If this is a wide spread issue then I would hope or imagine a firmware fix should correct it like they(Logitech/Apple) did with 11.2.5.

[mmcallister]

We have about 2400 of the Gen1 Rugged Combo that we purchased last summer. We have been dealing with charging issues most of the school year. Hard restart of the iPad corrects the issue for a while, but it will come back. No need to remove/reseat the case, as this is purely a software issue.

The charging issue is supposed to be corrected in iOS 11.4, I have not had time to sit down with the beta and do any testing of my own yet.

[dogden]

We've been preparing iPads all summer and have run into a very small percentage of iPads with the rugged combo 1 units not allowing the iPads to charge. After updating to the latest version of iOS 11.4 and 11.4.1 (as of this writing), we have seen zero charging problems. The iPads in question were operating on iOS 11.1 and 10.x. We also purchased about 140 of the Logitech Rugged Combo 2 cases and although we have had zero charging issues - all iPads were running 11.4 when we configured them, I have to say the keyboard leaves something to be desired. I understand the change, but typing on that thing makes for many typo-mistakes.