iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Definitely a carrier problem, I have a 5g plan on EE in the uk with no drain. Had this for a few days now, last week on Vodafone uk 5g plan, massive battery drain. Seems to only be with some of the carriers

I agree, that makes no sense.

For me I have an iPhone 12, zero battery drain on EE.

In the same location another iPhone 12, on vodaphone with battery drain. If I switch sims to EE, then I get no drain.

Replacement iPhone 12, exactly the same behaviour.

This proves it for me however, there could be other variables with other carriers, locations etc.. that don't obviously apply in my use case therefore I am not denying that this is the same issue for you.

Apple just need to sort it, we have all invested a lot of money in this phone. I can confirm switching the handset did not resolve it for me, neither has restarts, resets, network to manual instead of auto, charging the phone for 12 hours, turning off optimised charging.... NOTHING.

In my case it is not necesssary to switch full to airplane mode, the draining stops when I switch off wlan and mobile data . So it is possible to get phonecalls.

PS: Manually choosing the network provider seemed to be a solution. But in the second night with this setting the battery drained more than ever 😳 (30% in 8 hours idle).

Please tell me which provider did you have and which new one?

I have MegaFon (Moscow), the battery consumption is 20% per night in standby mode.

If you choose 3G or turn off cellular data completely, the consumption is reduced to 5% per night.

Thanks.

Found another oddity.

If you select 4G (LTE) and turn off cellular data, then the battery consumption again increases to 20% per night.

It seems that the problem is really in the new modem, but not for all providers in Russia and Europe.

Same for me on my iPhone 12 Pro. Try to disable WiFi, that stoped the drain at least for me (which of course is no solution I can live with...). So my issue does not seem to be related to the new 5G modem, but who knows.

Iphone 12 Pro with LTE Sim (4G, congstar, germany):

Really bad performance of battery. Beta 14.3b3 does not fix it. Idle drain of 4%/h.

There is an article about this topic here : https://www.heise.de/news/iPhone-12-Probleme-Kein-Netz-Akkuleerung-und-Qi-Laden-4981009.html

Well, I don't know what to do. Do I have to wait until next year for a fix? Will it come suddenly? Will it never come and this is the best Apple can do with A14 and 5G-modem?

The phone itself is great, I like it a lot and more than the 11 Pro!

Apple, please talk to us!

Just my contribution. I have the 12 Mini and felt that, initially, the battery life was on par with my expectations.

Following an update to 4.2.1, which I believe was the turning point, I noted a marked increase in battery drain during standby times, or with screen on but little or no activity, idling in Lock Screen, for instance.

Interestingly, I come from the 11 Pro, which I still use alongside the Mini and I have made a couple of battery drain comparisons, purely out of curiosity.

Playing an hour of Mario Kart with brightness set as close as possible by eye, with matching wireless settings, I was shocked to find that both devices were almost neck and neck, both sitting at around 14% loss. Web browsing was a similar story, 7% lost on the 11 Pro after an hour, 8% on the Mini, visiting similar (white heavy) sites. For the record, my 11 Pro has suffered just 77 charge/discharge cycles in total and is still sitting at 100 percent battery health. That’s a pretty astounding result for the Mini.

That said, in practice, there is a world of difference, the Mini is constantly depleting, the Pro barely moves when not under load, standby is incredibly strong. The Mini has dropped a couple of percent each time I light the screen. Something seems wrong with that. I hope this gets fixed soon, I am confident that it will.

Certainly seems to point towards a Qualcomm modem issue, hopefully not the hardware.

Assuming it’s firmware or software related then Apple should hopefully issue a resolution in the form of an update,

Of course, using airplane mode is not going to prove anything specific, as it simply cuts all processes which rely on an active data connection, which doesn’t really narrow it down all that much.

My mini seems solid enough in use compared to other prior models, but just drains heavily when not under load.

Just an ideea:

Maybe the phone keeps trying to connect to the best quality mobile signal in the area, disregarding the fact that is from another provider than the sim and getting dropped for that reason again and again. Maybe that is why some people don't have issues with certain mobile service providers, their offering the best quality in that area. And choosing manually the network operator will stop the phone from trying to connect to other better network.

I have no tehnicall knowledge in the mobile communications field, it's just a thought process and I'm aware that it might be flawed on all levels so don't stone me to death for it :)

True. I turned off the wifi and kept it on stand by for 3h, it lose 3% (usually it loses 2% in 3 hours). Mobile selection manual. Tonight I will try to keep it without wifi for 7-8h and see what happens. Unfortunately I cannot select 3g mode instead of LTE mode. In any case, the consumption during use is incredible, just take it in hand for a few minutes without opening any app to see a visible drop, 1-2% in 5-6 min.

I have clocked a mediocre 1h 21m screen on time on my 12 pro max in the last 24 hours...and during that time it has drained over 50% battery. I’m due to receive a THIRD replacement tomorrow but, I’m gonna be honest, I’m not expecting that to be any different. Vodafone UK network.

Heck, even when in use the battery depletes at an alarming rate. Roughly 2% per 5 minutes on Safari. Meanwhile old 11 Pro Max with same WiFi and same brightness will lose 0% in that amount of time.

Guys, one more observation from my side. You should also notice, who had this battery drain issue, that under the cameras the surface is a bit warmer.

I had conversation with Apple support, in Hungary, and they mentioned that the cellular modem can be found there.

I believe that as Apple came back for Qualcomm's modem from Intel, there could be a firmware problem with this new modem and this is the reason why it consumes a lot of battery.

Just guessing, because still no prove of that.

I think they simply aren't allowed to acknowledge the issue unless Apple already has a solution ready and explicitly allows service personell to disclose information about it to customers. They just want to be as legally safe as possible. I bet they are already working on a solution.

I'm pretty sure returning phones doesn't help anyone. If it's a hardware fault then all phones are affected, including current replacements. If it's a software bug then there will be a patch. I'm keeping my phone on Wi-Fi until then and hope that they will release a patch soon. Everything else is just a pointless hassle unless you actually want a complete refund.

Reran my night#1 test with replacement iPhone 12 pro Max, as initially could not tell the exact battery %. Discovered that when charging on my MagSafe chart the % was displayed. So, iPhone, out of the box, turned on at 22:00 last night (10-12-20), 98%. This morning 11-12-20 at 09:05 93%.

on a separate note, the MagSafe is really fast. Charged it with MagSafe while I went to brush teeth, shave etc....started off at 74%.....