iPhone 12 battery draining fast

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

Lestat09 wrote:

Yes I have the dual physical for HK. Last night I paired it with my series 6 watch and I was expecting a major drain since Bluetooth will be active all the time. This morning my phone's battery only lost 7%. Not what I expected but acceptable.

Bluetooth uses essentially no measurable energy, so I’m not surprised.

Are you using dual sim cards or just one ?

If you are using dual sim cards, you may try to turn off one of the two lines for a day, and see if the battery drain situation improves.

Some of us tried it out and found this method to be workable as temporary relief.

Odiebla wrote:

Last night I've killed all my widgets, Safari tabs and closed all 'open' apps (swiping them up)

Swiping up on apps does not prevent them from running if they receive a notification. iOS just restarts them (but doesn’t show them in the quick launch screen until you open them). For example, unless all of your mail accounts are set to “manual” and not Fetch or Push all incoming mail will launch the mail app, even if you have “killed” it. The same is true for the messages app, visual voicemail, and most other built in apps such as weather, stocks, Calendar and news.

Respectfully, you're wrong here. our phone triggers an MME Update Location Request or ULR towards the HSS and updates the location. As long as the phone remains in the affiliates tracking area of that eNodeB basestation there is no need to keep updating the location. At any given time the MME needs the UE/handset it will page the TMSI of the handset in that particular tracking area and the UE will respond asking for radio resources.

So yes the network has a rough idea where the handset is but there is no meanwhile and regular 'pinging' or call it whatever you want.

You mean you have the dual sim capable iPhone 12, but you have inserted only 1 sim, and you did a reset of network settings, and the battery issue resolved ?

I also use the dual sim version but I used both slots (2 sim cards inserted), the battery issue occurs only with both lines activated.

I experimented last night. I turned off a SIM card and immediately Idle consumption dropped from 4-5% per hour down 0.5% per hour. Now I sit expectantly and wait for what will happen to my consumption but it seems to rise again after activation of SIM 2.

I thought it was just me! This iPhone is draining fast! I turned off 5g and background refreshes. This is unacceptable for a phone I paid $1500 for. I’m incredibly fearful that this isn’t a case by case issue and more of a widespread battery issue.

In one day, I find I’m charging the phone at least twice. This is ridiculous.

For your info guys, here a screenshot of the battery usage I took of my 11 Pro (got it September 2019 and battery peformance is still 99%)

I did that because some here were claiming that over night there was battery usage and it was normal the drain... lol make me laugh.

So I began to charge around 7pm.

Unplug it at 8:50 pm it was 100%

Left it over night

and it's only around 11am the day after that it dropped under the 100% bar.

On my 12 pro, when I had passed 12h without charging it, on idle, without any SIM, in airplane mode, background apps off and energy saving mode... 50%... in 12h, doing NOTHING, like in 'not a thing'... and this, was the same by Day or by Night.

I have returned my 12 Pro, and I will wait until they admit there is a problem before thinking buying one. I have lost confidence. But I'm pretty happy with my 11 Pro for now.

Apple service was very good with me, and even offered me to replace it. But I did not want to, as I didn't knew if the problem would still be on the new phone, and going over the delay I had to get refund. Because I did not want to have a brand new phone's battery or circuitry replaced when they find out. Lets hope it's just software though... for you guys that still have it.

1. For all who wrote about dual-sim problem: this is DEFINITELY NOT a dual-sim problem. Battery drain depends on 4G/5G operator/cells, not on esim/sim or dualsim mode. I have 1 sim with huge drain, 1 sim without, 2 esims with middle drain, and battery does not depends on sim modes or types. In my case, battery drains with specific operator (in single-sim and dual-sim modes) and does not drains with any combinations of other sim cards. So i can claim that it depends only on internal network tuning and hardware, not on your sim configuration. This explains, why some people have this problem and some are not, some have with dualsim, some with esim - only because of specific network.
2. For all, who have plans to test 14.3 beta, please note, that iOS have non linear charge indicator, they show fake same percentages for a while, and this system works not only with 100%. Even if you charge phone to 75%, don't trust your percentage, until it descends for a 5% at least.

Which iPhone do you have?

I appreciate your input, I’ll definitely try that however I strongly doubt that’s the case.

latest test. After restore only Telekom Germany eSIM active with LTE only. Charged to 100% at 9pm woke up at 6am with still 100%. Next night same charging but with second line physical sim Vodafone Italia actively. Both lines active second line no data network. Battery drain same time period 20%.

I’ll try the same and reverse the active lines and report back.

I’m aware that iOS got a different charge indicator than Android. However if I have less battery or the same as on my iPhone SE 2020 there is something wrong.

i have the iPhone 12 Pro 128gb.

I know some people have already tested the widgets, BUT DUDE, I was reading this post all night before sleep yesterday and I know that I had reset network settings maybe a week ago, so decided to try removing the widgets from my home screen and see what happens overnight. GUESS WHAT?! 1% lost overnight with apps left on the background!

F! widgets 🖕🏼. If you have them on your home screen REMOVE them right now! When I bought my 12 pro graphite I thought to put some on my screen at top and bottom so it looks cool on my new phone but boy if I knew it was eating my battery like that I would have thrown them in the garbage a long time ago.

I don’t know if people already tried this and it’s still eating their battery but I just wanted to say this worked for me. 👏🏼

Oliver S. wrote:

Yes, your testing suggest that it’s not a problem with the operator but a dual sim bug in the new 12 series. It should be obvious by now and I hope Apple will release a fix soon. All should contact Apple support. Eventually this will get Heard- if it isn’t already by now.

Yes, we 'd better to send more feedbacks to Apple.

There is no single sim variant. My is eSIM and physical sim like most except Asia models. I suggested to December girl to restore because I had the battery drain once when using only eSIM. After restore just one line works flawless with great battery life. Though my issue is not fixed as I normally use two lines which still suffers from excessive battery drain, now only if having both lines active.

Actually the only countries that have the dual "physical" sim variant are China and Hong Kong. The rest of Asia will be having the single sim tray that doubles as dual sim the other one being eSim. I happened to have the Hong Kong variant with dual physical sim not the eSim. But I never used 2 sim cards ever. I only have one number so I'm perplexed why my battery drains like crazy when only one line is active.