iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Experiencing the exact same "issue" with my iPhone 12 pro (128GB).

I compared it with my girlfriend her iPhone XR (64 gb) last night. Her phone started of with 64% remaining where mine was at 94%. Both phone were left idle over a time of 8.5 hours. The next morning the iPhone 12 pro drained two 84% while the XR was at 63%.

Both phones had almost no background activity and are connected to wifi (5ghz).

The only difference between them is that the iPhone 12 pro has dual sim set up and the XR only uses one (physical) sim.

But that shouldn't drain your battery that much, should it?

I’m still experiencing inconsistent battery life... last night a11pm phone 100% charged but woke up at 8am and phone lost 25% just at idle . There’s something bad going on here and I believe software will not fix. Have our 11 pro max sitting next to it both taken off charger at same time at 100% and it lost 1% battery both running same iOS .

That is simply not true, I'm an engineer working in the mobile telecom industry and the discharge rate currently seen on my iPhone12 is a faulty curve. I feel no point in debating that, as this is just a simple scientific observation that I already cross-referenced with a known-to-be-good situation both both the iPhone11 and the iPhone12 under normal conditions.

Please check both curves, on the top you can see a drain, regardless of any handset usage during day OR night AND despite low-power mode. Any engineer can tell you this is abnormal behaviour. On the bottom you will see a 'normal' discharge curve, where you can clearly see it's not a straight line down the hill but is depending on usage etc. Note: both are made on my iPhone12Pro, the bottom one differs in 1) no second 5G SIM (in 4G mode only) enabled and 2) low data mode mode enabled on the first primary eSIM. I'm currently testing to see what actually caused the difference in discharging by disabling low data mode on the first eSIM. If the discharge rate continues to be 'normal' then there is a clear indication that enabling the second SIM caused abnormal behaviour. That is not 'me too', that is just a normal observation. If you think it's normal then you're perfectly entitled to that opinion, but then there is little you can contribute in this topic I'm afraid. It is my personal and professional opinion that this is not normal and considering the fact that Apple has accepted bug reports, fixed the issue and contributed them to me in the release notes I think I'm still doing a useful job here :-)

Vodafone UA, esim.

I saw ios 14.3 was fixed this issue for some users.

I've decided to return cellular data on LTE (from 3g) and turn on auto select of network. Network data is disabled.

01:30 -> 10:00

43% -> 20%

Seem like I should return to 3g/2g with manual carrier selection with low-power mode.

With these settings battery lost just 7%.

Nuff said.

Guys, please leave ur feedback here:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I spoke to Apple support today & they ran diagnostics saying that everything checks out. I imagine what this means is that there is a software issue causing the battery to drain - hopefully they sort it soon. It 100% isn’t normal for all apps to be closed, background app refresh off, Bluetooth off & lose 40% charge overnight. To illustrate here’s my battery view overnight.

I always start my day with a fully charged phone and my 12 Pro, by midday only has around 40% battery left. The battery cannot last an entire day without charging in the middle of the day. Also the MagSafe charger is ridiculously slow. After close to 2 hours of charging I only got 10% more.

NittyMDev wrote:

Adding few bits from my experience thus far.

Device: iPhone 12 128GB

Location: India

Physical SIM provider: Airtel

eSIM Provider: Airtel

I have read much possible comments on this post - over a period of time. Have been following this thread for long now, even before it was picked up by Forbes.

All I got to say is based on my own experience and experimentation to validate some of the recommendations provided here by other users. This is not the desired state in which I wish to operate my device!

I "believe" (like many others) it relates to "modem firmware", and I do agree with the statement "that's not why I purchased this device" as many have stated. Also this may not even be a workaround for regions where there is only 4G / 5G+4G OR with individuals who would majorly be on Mobile Data for communications.

Okay, with all that said, ONLY state in which the battery usage is what could be called "Normal / Acceptable" - as per my experience, is with 3G selected for Voice & Data. This is an "okay" state for me as long as I am on Home WiFi, with WiFi calling enabled. The moment I step out and enable 4G, I get back to "Ground Zero".

What I am more curious is to see if  addresses this in future update for Modem Firmware.

Until then, I'm just dropping this post here, along with screenshots.

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/de6b5cb9-f817-45bf-96a9-98875a49ce04

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/6da7550b-d92b-450a-97a5-3b719be4885f

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/6da7550b-d92b-450a-97a5-3b719be4885f

Alright, here for an update on my experience thus far.

Following other discussions after my last post, I came across the post by @oli1605 which mentioned of possible issue with Physical SIM connection. His logs made sense to me as well, as I keep getting these intermittent full screen notifications, for sending carrier message (generally sent for network registration) on my Physical SIM only.

So, all I did was set my eSIM back on 4G and my Physical SIM on 3G, having both Data Roaming and Mobile Data Switching enabled. Results thereafter were much better!!

This again, is not an option for regions / network / users where 3G is not available but Only 5G / 4G.

Try setting both SIM on different mode for Voice & Data; I am not sure of 5G / 4G, but 4G / 3G setting is definitely working for me.

Here are my results.

Charged to 100%

Charged to 84%

For the level of crazy drain I was experiencing earlier i.e. ~20% to 30% on 14.2.1 and ~12% to 18% on 14.3 during idle - in about 6-7 hours, with

Voice & Data set to 4G on both lines

+

WiFi / Bluetooth / Mobile Data turned off,

this is a Much Better!!!

Current idle drain is just about 2% to 3% 🙂

Hey that's great. Hope its fixed!

I have been chasing a battery bug on my iPhone 12 Pro that I got last December up until around August this year. That was the first reason I came to this forum because every night the phone would lose anywhere between 20-50% consistently and leaving it plugged in all the time just didn't cut it for me. Months of frustration and anxiety passed until I found the culprit which was causing my individuals devices battery drain (which however was looking exactly the same as other peoples devices). So I pretty much now know now what thing is causing how bad of a battery drain. Well. At least I think so.

So long story short. I had some sort of subscription within my carrier plan that would dynamically change my IP address whenever I was on cellular network. But I think this add-on was active whenever I was not in airplane mode. For many months (at least while at home or anxiety any place I could get Wi-Fi) I only used my phone in airplane mode with Wi-Fi calling enabled which allowed me to still get calls while not suffering from terrible battery drain. I unsubscribed from the dynamic mobile IP thing and the battery drain was gone.

Recently I had the same drain as you again and changing the iPhone Wi-Fi thing fixed it for me also

This was the post that fixed it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251956914?answerId=256416307022#256416307022

In case the link did not work, here's the TL;DR; (curtesy of user0197):

• Connect the iPhone to your computer
• Have a look into the Finder on Mac or iTunes on Windows and inspect the device settings
• Disable 'Show this iPhone on Wi-Fi'
  • OP suggested, that in case it's already disabled, you should toggle it on and off again
  • OP also suggested to reboot all devices, but I did not need to do that

I am also experiencing the same issue ... all my iPhones in past have been great with battery idle but this time around nothing running in background and battery drains faster then usual even with 5 g off.

+1

I buy a new unit every year and I know that the new phones are extremely busy the first 24/48 hours with all kinds of stuff but this battery drain will just not stop. I’ve even done a factory default and refrained from restoring a backup this time but the drain will just not stop. I’ve asked Apple support to diagnose my phone remotely which they did and “all is within specs”.

However, there is a clear and distinct difference between the iPhone 11Pro from my partner and my 12Pro. You can clearly see this, my battery just goes down in a straight ski-slope while the 11Pro has plateaus over night, then slight decreases, plateaus etc.

This is not because it the smaller battery in the iPhone, but it simply stays active all day. Putting it in low lower mode, disabling all background refreshes, killing apps, closing safari tabs. Nothing helps...

#batterydraingate

I have been testing for the past few days (more info here---https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252018510).

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.

Before

After

Hi all,

I have the same issue. I've my iPhone 12 Pro for 2 weeks now and I've had this issue twice.

Overnight, with no activity what so ever, the battery drains from around 50% to 0%.

I've enabled dark mode, disabled background app update, disabled 5G and all the other "battery" saving tips out there, but it hasn't helped. The straight line down, with no screen activity is just not normal.

I also have an audio issue (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251958844) so really considering returning it and switching to Android...

Hi,

I purchased the iPhone 12 Pro last week. I did not have this problem initially. Standby was great loved the phone. Then one morning I found my phone had lost 30% of battery overnight. Like below.

I contacted apple support and they were like "the battery is consumable and there is nothing wrong with it". How the **** did they even think that was a proper justification. With no help from them I set about looking into other options. I initially tried a network reset because the drain seems to be pointing to the modem. Why I say this you ask, because the standby is great in airplane mode with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on. I assumed the issue with the 5G modem. Anyways, the network reset did not help.

With lost hopes, I finally tried to restore my iPhone using iTunes. Wola!, that kinda fixed the standby issue for me. This is the battery report from last night.

Definitely not as good as when I bought it. But will take it any day over the crap I saw a few days ago. You might ask why not perform a "Erase All Contents & Settings". Well that only clears the data on the phone and restores the settings to its default. Where as the iTunes restore strips the OS and firmware of the iPhone completely and rebuilds it from scratch. That way any major issues are generally resolved on the iPhone. Here is the article on how to perform the restore using the recovery mode.

If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

Try it and let me know if it helped. Lets hope apple comes up with a fix soon. Cheers!!

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