iPhone 12 Pro Severe Battery Drain

Battery drain is crazy!!!!!!, Fri night went to bed 100% and forgot to turn off the phone. I wondered if someone played with my phone during the night cause when I woke up, I only had 64% left! The phone stayed on the night stand.

So I looked at the settings, I switched the phone to LTE only, turn off background app refresh, turned off the location, put the dark mode on.

So Sunday was a great day to test the phone: 1h15 of video of WiFi, 35mns talk (LTE), 18mns of email, 45mns of browsing. As you can see you call this a slow day right? So at 4:15pm I looked at the battery I got 26% left. Remember it is a kind of a slow day.

During the work week I'm 100% sure I will have to recharge the phone at 2 or 3PM. The bloggers sponsored by your favorite fruit company will tell you that it is not an issue because you can recharge quickly the phone. YES IT IS. What's the point of having a phone if you have to recharge it half day?

The perfect benchmark is the the iPhone 11 Pro that I love so much because of its battery. I can use the phone for a day and a half without recharging it.

In all seriousness, why do you launch a phone that drains its battery so fast? A majority of people will have to recharge the phone in the afternoon?

I have a call with an Apple Tech at noon today. We will see what happen. I will continue to use the phone for few days. If the problem continue, I will return the phone to Apple and restore my dear iPhone 11 Pro.

It seems that Apple has yet to come up with workable solution to this issue. I have done some research and found out there's a lot of cases/reports on this abnormal battery drain issue of iPhone 12/Pro in various countries.

I know some countries allow 2 week grace period during which you can return the device and get a refund.

But unfortunately it's not allowed here where I live.

I have summerized some of the suggested solutions here on this new page, pls check it out.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252018510

I think this is proof - Mine went down 27% last night - with no use! (Funny it was after I added a Lock Screen photo and went down a further 10% compared to other nights) - yet apple don’t seem to think there is an issue or really care

Hi,

Yes I have noticed the battery drain is quite high. What I was shocked by though is the idle battery drain. When I went to bed the phone had 100% battery life. When I woke up, it was at 65% with no notable background activity. I understand there's a smaller battery but this is many times worse than the 11 Pro rather than just a bit worse which I was expecting

It doesn't matter if it's on WiFi, as unless you have it in Airplane mode it still needs to keep contact with your local cell tower so you can receive calls and SMS messages.

If you are in an area with only 1 - 2 bars of cell service, you will use a lot of battery as the radios need to ping the tower.

If you have 5G enabled the use will be even higher as the 5G radios draw more power.

Sorry, but that is not true. It is not the connection to the cell tower for phone calls and sms that is draining the battery. It’s the data traffic going through the cellular modem. This obviously doesn’t happen when using WiFi.

Either Way. The constant flipping between 5G and 4G seems to be fixed in the most recent 14.2 public version. Hopefully that improves battery drain.

It's going to be an issue for a while as only data is sent over 5G, phone calls are sent via the LTE network so the phone needs to constantly jump between both.

Also, connection to the cell tower will drain the battery if your signal level is low (one to two bars.)

Same for me, waited 3 years and got a phone with almost the same battery of a 3 years old phone.

Been doing a few tests the past few days and it seems that my iPhone X with 80% max capacity battery is losing a little bit more battery than the new 12 pro but at the same rate almost.

this morning an hour in after I woke up playing with both phones same apps at the same time now I’m with 92% on my 12 pro and 91% with my 10 (remind you, it’s 80% max capacity)

losing almost 10% an hour on a new phone without using any videos by the way, this is ridiculous.

That my problem, why would I buy more accessories to support basic demands from the phone.

also the MagSafe isn’t strong enough to support the car magnet so I’ll have to add a case that can be strong enough to be mounted, and it need to be MagSafe compatible or I’ll lose the ability to charge with it, and the 5G completely useless.

really disappointed

well the 14.2 update didn’t provide any relief. Apple told me to backup, reset to factory and then restore. Also useless. I, like many of you see a constant drain of battery while on wifi and idle.

Yesterday morning I switched off one of the two lines I've been using, after a whole day it turns out that both the night time battery drain and overal battery life have improved. This seems to be a temporary relief but I can't keep the second line switched off forever. I know many iPhone 12 users who suffer from bad battery drain have found this method to be workable in reducing battery discharge. From this experiment and my previous experience, I do suspect my iPhone 12's ADDITIONAL battery discharge is within the range of 2-3% per hour with both lines turned on.

In my opinion, Apple needs to work out why this happens and FIX the problem with the next IOS update, before more users found out about their battery issues and start persuading their friends NOT to buy the iPhone 12 / 12Pro.

I have a stable discharge of 30 percent overnight ! ( all services are off ) the problem is definitely in the cellular module, when I withdrew the SIM card, the phone held 100% for 5 hours ! Now I went only e-sim, the problem is the same ( -30 % per night ) I now think only about iOS 14.3 ..... If they don't fix it, I will have to return the device !

Hi,

I have had the same issue in the UK. I returned my first device and the second is the same. Had a call with the Apple Tech team, and they advise I did a complete factory reset from iTunes (not a back up) and download all your apps again - so basically you are starting as if it is a brand new phone - but they made no difference either.

I am still getting around 5 hour basic use (and that just social media and emails) in a 24 hour period with the rest of the time the phone is on standby before needing to recharge . It drains 15-20% overnight - and everything background is turned off. (and that is without 5G as we do not have it where I Live). I was told if this didn't work the only other thing would be a new ID - but cant see how that would work , especially with other having the same issues

There is obliviously a bigger issue here, as I didn't have this issue with my 11, which lasted a few days . Come on Apple - how can you still be having this issues 12 phones in !

Just noticed yesterday my battery also lost most of its charge. So far today from 6am to now I’m on 82% but noticed the battery usage says torch 5 hours usage in the last 24 hours but I have not used it !? I think I found the problem software thinks the phone is using the torch! Come on apple iPhone 12 Pro Max not a good start! ☹️

So there is a constant rapid drain on the battery while idle. You can see that here. Phone was on wi-fi, no activity