iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Well, let me put an X to those background activities I've turned off.

• Incoming text messages (did not recea single text while as asleep)
• Incoming iMessages and messages from any messaging apps you use - X
• Push and Fetch email - X (turned off)
• Notifications from apps - X (wifi off)
• iCloud sync for any items that you have set to sync - X (iCloud turned off)
• The phone pinging the cellular network to report its position every few minutes
• Data updates from apps such as weather, stocks, news, podcasts, shopping apps, calendar, etc - X (wifi off and app background refresh is off)
• Any apps that do housekeeping using the background app refresh feature - X
• Incoming visual voicemail messages if you have Do not Disturb enabled (if you don’t, any phone calls you get) - X
• Multiplayer game updates (e.g., Words for Friends) - X

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.

1. When I use dual sims(China Mobile and China Unicom), if I set China Unicom as the cellular data sim, the battery drains 20%-30% over night. But if I set China Mobile as the cellular data sim, the discharge curve of the battery is back to normal.
2. When I use single sim(China Unicom), the discharge curve of the battery is still good.

The above results indicate that it is a potential bug in iOS.

iPhone 12 Pro Max user here. I originally bought the iPhone 12 however I noticed the battery was draining abnormally quick during idle. Overnight was especially noticeable. I was so disappointed I returned it and waited for the iPhone 12 Pro Max (which I have right now).

Unfortunately I am here to report the iPhone 12 Pro Max is also having the same symptoms. Let me briefly explain what has been done so far:

• Picked up iPhone 12 Pro Max early in the morning 8:30 AM
• Manually set up the iPhone 12 Pro Max (did not restore from backup)
• Less than 1GB of iCloud data to be synced (I don't sync photos with iCloud) only messages, whatsapp messages, contacts, calendars, I do not use iCloud mail that is turned off
• Podcasts are turned off, I manually download what I want, no automatic downloading
• I use low power mode (even when it's at 100% battery level)
• All location system services are turned off except for Find my iPhone and Emergency Calls & SOS
• Most of my apps location services are set to "while using" and some are set to "never"
• Notification services about 80% of my apps are set to "off

I fully charged my iPhone 12 Pro Max to 100% at 6:00 AM, I set it to low power mode. I go to sleep. I wake up at 10:00 AM and shockingly it's at 90%. I go to Battery settings and I don't see any apps hogging up battery. The chart just shows a decline accordingly. Screen time is 3 h 37 min while screen off is 11 min.

The iPhone 12 was the same experience, abnormal battery drain with very minimal usage patterns.

I came from the iPhone XR and that was a beast. It would last me 2 - 3 days without a charge, 4 days if I really cheaped out. 13 months of using it my iPhone XR battery health was at 97% before selling it. I am very disappointed with the iPhone 12 and especially the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I contacted Apple Support but they gave me the generic "it needs to sync, give it some time" however when I got my iPhone XR I've set it up the same way and the battery never drained the way it does right now. I've had the iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 5, iPhone 4, iPhone original. Never had I experienced such terrible idle times.

I'm going to closely monitor this but I am disappointed to say the least.

Just got my iPhone 12 last Friday and I’m experiencing the same problem with battery drain when idle.

Overnight and when idle my phone drains on average 3 to 4% per hour.

• I’m from The Netherlands
• Using dual sim (eSim + SIM card)
• No 5G, both lines are 4G
• Using Wi-Fi 100% of the time (2.4Ghz with perfect reception)
• Phone reception is great, full 5 bars for both lines
• Have tried to reset network, turned off Exposure Notifications, removed all widgets, nothing works.
• Weird enough is that one day I charged my phone to 97% and left it idle for 8 hours, after 8 hours the battery remained at 97%! However that only happened once, for all the other instances I’m experiencing battery drain.

Hope a software update can fix this issue.

Really disappointed with Apple, this is my first iPhone coming from Android and I’m starting to regret it, having to charge twice a day with moderate use.

my story with 12pro:

1 SIM Card, LTE, no 5G, no esim

I declare "battery drain" = 3-5% lost in idle, no app open, display off

• bought it with 14.2, so no idea what would have been under 14.1
• copied settings from old phone -> battery drain
• waited 2 days, hoped it might have been "indexing" -> battery drain
• updated to 14.3b1 -> battery drain, but some idle periods without drain, but then drain again
• connected to finder yesterday and set it to recovery mode, fresh install of 14.2 (download on mac in finder)
• setup as fresh phone, new phone, I had to put all the credentials and wifi settings ("ME very unhappy user now!")
• update to 14.2.1
• installed some apps, but not all I use usually
• battery drain, now I have to charge

Well, just to decide to give it back and wait a couple of months buying a new one, or give 14.3b2 a try...

This is no good start for such an expensive device!!!

There is a tip from an Apple forum in Canada.

1. Disable Siri in Settings (Turn off the toggles for “hey Siri” and Press for Siri)
2. Restart the iPhone
3. Turn Siri on again
4. Disable background app refresh for Shortcuts

Does anyone have experience with this tip?

I MIGHT JUST HAVE A FIX FOR Y'ALL WHO ARE FACING MAJOR BATTERY DRAIN WHILE YOUR DEVICE IS ON STANDBY !

So I just bought a regular iPhone 12, 128 GB variant few days ago and I was really happy with the design, UI, features and the premium looks of it. Until I found out that my device just lost over 20% of battery under 8 hours while I was asleep. I was disappointed and nervous that I might have got a defected piece just like everyone in this thread. I could be a good example for this problem since I'm a brand new iPhone user who switched from Android. So yeah, I didn't have to backup anything from my older devices. I used it as new as it can be but still the battery drain on standby was inevitable. I messed with the setting in every possible way to find a solution before I head to apple store for help. Some of these changes that I made would not be really necessary but I suggest you try it so it can get the same response as I did.

1. Hard reset your iPhone by tapping volume UP once and DOWN once and hold the side button until you see the apple logo and only then, you should let go of the side button. Watch on youtube if you want to know how exactly it is done.
2. Once booted, remove your sim, backup all your files and go to settings < general < reset < reset all content and settings. This is will reset your phone back to factory settings. (Highly recommend you do this)
3. Now you have a fresh iPhone just like it came out of the box. You can insert your sim now. Go to settings < mobile data < mobile data options < switch it to 3G. (I strongly believe that this particular battery drain issue has something to do with the latest modem that's messing up with the network settings so until Apple cares to release an update, I suggest you prefer this alternate method)
4. Go to your iPhone storage and delete all unnecessary free Apple apps that you won't be using in the near future. (You can skip this if you want)
5. Go to settings < privacy < location services. Switch all available apps location request option to "ASK". Then go to system services and disable all location request for ones which you don't need. As for me, I disabled literally all the options except "Find My iPhone" and "Networking & Wireless". Make sure you turn OFF "significant locations" and all 3 product improvement options.
6. Scroll down in settings and select Mail < Accounts < Fetch New Data < Turn off "Push" and select all the available options to "Manual"
7. This is absolutely not necessary but you may keep this as a last resort. Remove all the widgets that is available on the far left of the Home Screen and change your wallpaper to plain black that is available under Wallpaper options.

*These are all the settings I tweaked personally. All my notifications and background app refresh are turned ON by default. I never made any changes to those settings but you can always turn off those options per your preference.*

So this was my final test. I charged my phone to 99% and kept my WiFi on and Mobile Data OFF and left it on my desk when I went to bed. I slept at 11 PM and woke up at around 8 AM. Guess what ? Voila ! My battery percentage remained the same 99% ! I have been using the phone non stop since I woke up and its doing much better than my One Plus 7 pro. I never noticed any battery drain on standby but I noticed the battery consumption was a bit more when it reached 80%. However, it is pretty impressive given the 2815 mAh capacity.

I highly recommend you follow these instructions so you may feel a bit relieved from all the anxiety and stress this issue gave you since you bought the phone. I hope this really helps all of the users who face this issue. Peace

Hi there,

As many others, I am on the same situation...

I have read some people returned the device and got a new one. Then, the new device worked fine. I am really happy for them. I am on my third one and I am still getting the same problem. Don't think John Lewis will be changing my phone a 4th time but give me a refund.

I have an iphone 12 with giffgaff (O2 UK). Same as others, overnight my phone discharges like 15,20 or 30%. My brother bought same model but 128gb for himself in Spain. He is with vodafone and his phone overnight in idle discharges between 2/3% in about 8/9 hours.

Last night, I decided to take off my SIM card. Results were excellent. 100% From 9pm until 7am. Tonight I will be performing another test where SIM will be on the phone under 3g instead of 4g.

It is definitely a problem with the signal. My questions here are:

• do you think is a hardware or software problem?
• Why does not affect everybody?
• Will I really get a terminal that works like a charm if I keep returning the devices or buying it somewhere else?

As suggested on this forum, I contacted Apple support to discuss the matter with a senior advisor. They dont want to listen there is a problem out there or they already know and they dont want to confirm it.

Surprisingly, when lower power mode was ON, my battery used to discharge around 15/20%. However without the lower power mode, my battery discharged only 9%. The senior advisor said this was finally normal and acceptable behavior when we know it is not.

Hopefully the will eventually come around and replace faulty terminals or fixing it with a new firmware.

Bummer, it’s costly indeed!

Same here, the severe battery drain issue on my iPhone 12 happens only when both lines (SIM cards) are activated. I have tested to shut down either of these two lines while keeping the other line turned on, the battery life is actually good in both occasions. From my experiments I’d like to assume:

1. The severe battery drain may not be related to specific carriers. It may NOT be a compatibility issue between some specific carriers and the iPhone 12 modem. Rather, it seems to be an internal issue between iPhone 12 modem and the iOS. And, of course, many other iPhones of previous generations are also using the same iOS system. So...
2. The issue may not be region related. As a matter of fact this issue is also reported here in Asia, there’s a lot of users here using dual SIM.
3. In my case, dual sim mode drains 12%-29% overnight and it’s unpredictable. Unsurprisingly, according to my observation, the severe battery drain doesn’t just stop during the day time, and for most people there’s no way not to use the phone and keep it idle for testing during the day. But still, it affects the overall battery life and I believe more and more people will realise that.
4. To calculate, 1.5 - 3.0 percent per hour’s idle battery drain equals to 36%-72% per day. Man that’s on idle alone. That puts the phone’s battery life to the worst rank of all phones in 2020.
5. Luckily for me I don’t need to use my second line much these days. I turned it off temporarily to make me feel like I’m using a year 2020 phone instead of a 2014 phone. But still, I’d hope like many other users do, that the issue will be dealt with soon, hopefully with iOS 14.3

i did 2 things one night about 3 nights back.

1. I told Siri to tell Apple techs they better fix this expletive battery issue on this expletive phone with a software fix and she said she didn’t know how to respond to that but trust they listen.
2. I told Siri I guess it’s back to iphone 4 having to keep it on the charger all night I guess the retro case is matched with the retro battery! So I left it on the charger all night like 8-9hrs already at 100%.

And now it’s running as good as if not better than my iphone 11promax!

min totally serious about this. I’ve had an iphone since the original and everyone sense. I’m not sure if Apple snuck in a software fix overnight ir maybe the **** battery needed to be stretched to work with software. Whatever I don’t care it’s fixed!!

Little update:

• 9:00-12:00, 100% (Wi-Fi at home)
• 12:00-20:00, 87% (cell data, 1h 05m screen time, no game or others heavy app)
• 20:00-23:00, 85% (Wi-Fi at home, totally in stand by, i’m texting from old 6s)

So,being reading the latest posts and this is the conclusion:

• Those who have 14.3, the drain dropped from 15/20% during night to 4/6% (including me)
• Those o think their phone is better after installing F.4 are wrong...it is the same behaviour as 14.3
• Yes, in 14.3 helped but is not the solution...maybe is in the final public release of F.4
• During the day the battery drain continues more obvious and more rapid
• Apple clients should not be messing with settings just to get a better experience with the battery.

[Edited by Moderator]

I don't know if it's solely related to modem.

I tried many different configuration on 14.3, here are my results for a 7 to 9hr night:

• Wifi on / BT on / dual SIM 4g ==> 30% lost
• Wifi on / Bt off / cellular data disabled + low power mode==> 20% lost
• Wifi off / BT off / 4g + low power mode ==> 10% lost
• Wifi off / BT off / 3g + low power mode ==> 10% lost

In My new 12 pro, I observe the below issues

1. charging is quite slow especially after 80%
2. Battery discharges quite fast even for a normal web browsing(no videos, just for a news website)
3. Battery takes a while to go down to 99% from 100%. But once it reaches 99%, it discharges very fast as said above.
4. No overnight draining issue for me though.

keeping fingers crossed for IOS 14.4. Contacted apple supprt for 4 to 5 times. But no luck. They are not ready to accept the issue. Pathetic!!!