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iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Hi all,


Trying to work out if I have a defective unit I need to send back or if there's a wider issue here. The iPhone 12 Pro is advertised as having a smaller battery than the iPhone 11 Pro so I expected to have slightly reduced battery life (which is fine as 11 Pro was excellent).


However I'm noticing that the iPhone 12 Pro is draining when idle with almost no background activity at a rate of 4% which is much faster than my previous iPhone 11 Pro, and to be honest a faster idle drain than I can actually remember from a new iPhone. First instinct was to disable Mobile data to see if it was a 5G thing, but I actually don't see any real difference from doing that (which makes sense as I've been on Wifi 98% of the time since I got it).


No matter what I try, it seems to be going down oddly quick. Not to an useable level or anything world ending, but I guess its sort of suspicious. I check the battery report, and it's not showing any real culprit, just a rapid decline for no clear reason.


If anyone can share their idle battery with either 12 or 12 Pro I'd really appreciate it.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 14

Posted on Oct 25, 2020 8:14 AM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Nov 2, 2020 7:46 AM

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 :-)


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2,818 replies

Dec 29, 2020 2:40 AM in response to Sonic_69

I am less and less sur that it can be fix by software update, I mean for those of us who don't have amazing slope as we can see above.


Apple has reduced the capacity of their batteries, relying on the 5nm engraved CPU but seems to have completely forget piece of sh*t of modem... So with a smaller battery, it cannot make miracles.


On my side, endurance for endurance is not the biggest deal. Indeed, I was used to plug it every night before this, and it was the case with my 11 Pro Max. I have stopped only to investigate this situation.


But the biggest deal for me is to pay 1400€ for a phone which will not last an entire day with a heavy use like in holidays. I mean when you take pictures, videos, make phone calls, use apps, fly a drone and use the GPS ... all this without plugging it to the wall or to a car.

I was able to do this without any doubt with my 11 Pro Max and I had never ended a day like describe before with less than 20%. But I am really not sure that the 12 Pro Max is able to do the same :( And of course, I don't want to have to switch off the 3/4 of the phone's features to do it!

Dec 29, 2020 3:11 AM in response to sudharshanj25

I already got my first 12 pro replaced and the new has the same issue. So do you think I am just unlucky or it‘s more like a software issue?

Strange enough, when I was at my girlfriend‘s place the drain was completely gone. At a friend‘s place it was still there. So pretty random. Being at home it‘s always there. Guess I have to move to my girlfriend‘s... :D

Dec 29, 2020 3:48 AM in response to Selzere

Yes, I am always connected to wi-fi. I also thought it might be with the different routers, so I disabled 5GHz at home since her router does not have that, but it did not help. But what actually helped was disabling wifi connection at home, so only using LTE. But those may come from background refresh only being enabled on wifi, but I don‘t think it affects the drain that much in comparison.

Dec 29, 2020 9:25 AM in response to roT-

Tbh, i may have let go of the lock button after screen went totally black. Then after waiting about 5 sec, apple logo never appeared. So I kinda pressed on the power/lock button bc of that. So far on day 2, it again prevented the drain during my sleep last night so I guess it kinda went well. Let me know about yours.

Dec 29, 2020 9:34 AM in response to helder33

helder33 wrote:

STOP messing with your settings, the fix is just temporary.

As i being saying, the best solution is for the problem being acknowledged by Apple, and for this to happen EVERYBODY should report the problem at customer support by mail, by phone or at Apple stores...DO THIS


Absolutly true! All ‘solutions’ here do NOT work in the long run... It may look like something is better for a few days untill your iPhone 12 will drain again over night in stand by. At this time of writing there is simply NOTHING that fixes it. We all wait for Apple...

Dec 29, 2020 1:56 PM in response to Selzere

Yes, I'm using the same carrier on one card. But our situation is slightly different - he lives in the center of the city with mobile towers all around him:) And I live near the center with slightly worse signal strenght (four bards). Also I have dual sim configuration in my phone, he has only one physical sim. But what drives me mad that he is able to reach such usage with delault settings and I was able to reach 5% usage at max while dancing with the drums (by turning off various iphone services) :)

iPhone 12 battery draining fast

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