iPhone 12 battery draining fast

This is so strange...

At home in Germany I have the constant drain (Congstar T-Mobile 4G).

Yesterday I went to Czech Republic, used the phone for navigation (about 7 hours) and had still 25% battery in the evening.

And here in Czechia (T-Mobile CZ 4G) everything’s fine. No abnormal drain...

So the problem doesn’t seem to be 4G in general but just in some places.

Yesterday I've contacted Apple support via telephone, my intention was just to let them know about one more user with that issue and I've communicated that way and pointed also at this thread and your experiences.

First level support did run remote battery diagnostics and forwarded me to second level support which ran extended remote diagnostics and asked me to provide screenshots of the battery stats screen (24h, 10d activity) so he can forward this issue to the development department which will take a look into it (in the new year). I think they will probably just say they know about it and are working on it, but who knows. We will see.

I noticed the same. At home the battery drains 3-4% per hour on idle. At my girlfriend's place the drain is gone with 1% in 2 hours.

I don't understand why this is happening when I am constantly connected to wifi.

Also, when turning off wifi at home (so LTE-only) battery drain drops half to 1-2% per hour. Really strange...

Wifi settings with 2,4GHZ vs 5GHz already tested with no change.

Still thinking about switching from physical SIM to eSIM. Could this have any effects? As already mentioned by previous posts there seems to be an difference between Telekom and Vodafone contracts.

Hello,

So far I have a 10% drop overnight on 14.3, so I tested the very last version.

It was very good the first night with 3% lost although I noticed that the drop occurred at the end of the night.

The next day it dropped 7% and this night was terrible with 20%... So I DFU restored to 14.3.

My settings:

Wifi on, BT off, LPM enabled, Physical SIM Orange (FR)

Selzere wrote:

Theoretically, I agree with you. But it is when he is roaming away from his home that the drain stops ;)

Apple is doing magic, it drains at home then it stops when it starts for the other manufacturer ...

Or maybe some magic like at home the phone is idle and can see WiFi and a charger, so it does an iCloud backup, but when roaming it has no WiFi so no backup. There are probably many other possible reasons which need to be ruled out by logic, leaving only a short list of suspects.

My 12pro max , did a comparison.

A day ago, put into flight mode overnight, battery dropped about 2-3% which seems OK.

Last night flight mode OFF, but also turned OFF wifi, Bluetooth and mobile data, yet battery dropped about 20% overnight.

Does anyone know what what other functions flight mode turns off ??

Yes. I’ve been on the latest software with the new modem firmware for over a week now and while I have seen an improvement in the idle drain (anywhere from 3% to 10% a night...usually 4-6% though last night was only 3%...compared to earlier software where it was 15-20% a night...by a “night” I mean a period of 7-8 hours). However, the drain while in use has not changed much at all. The only reason the phone is now struggling to last 6 hours of screen on time, factoring in idle time, instead of the previous 3 hours is because of the improvement in idle drain. But drain while in use is still a big problem. Using the camera (for photos, not videos), browsing Safari, or even just loading up the Mail app can see the phone lose a percentage every few minutes. Even just tapping the screen to wake it so I can see my notifications...a split second job...can see it lose an entire percent! Yesterday I lost 3% in 3 minutes doing exactly that! Waking the screen periodically over a period of 1 hour...clocking 3 minutes of screen on time...3 whole percent! Today...50 minutes in the camera app saw a drain of nearly a third of the entire battery! Even typing this message I’ve lost a whole percent and I’m a quick typer (2 mins SoT).

If light usage can cause such an extensive loss of battery I don’t even want to imagine what intensive usage, such as gaming or photo editing...which is what the iPhone is made to excel above all else in...anyway I don’t even want to imagine how much battery that uses!

Last night (~8 hours).

• iPhone 12 mini, 14.2.1, 100% battery health, airplane mode ON: 3-4% drain.
• iPhone 6s, 14.3, 75% battery health, airplane mode OFF: 0% drain.

In past days draining on iPhone 12 mini with airplane mode was “only” 2%.

So this is the only your conclusion with your personal situation. I’ve seen only one feedback telling that nothing had been solved and this is yours. And I’ve seen thousands of feedbacks on a very popular tech forum in Russia, all the users in Ukraine, Russia, UK are reporting that the very latest firmware is fixing that issue. If you saying that this problem is happening even with airplane mode ON - this is not a modem issue in your case.

In conclusion: you will never tell me what I would tell and what I wouldn’t. I can and I will do everything I decided to to do and to tell.

this is my graph with latest fw that totally fixed everything

I had Apple on the phone, they believed me having that problem without asking further the questions.

they suggest to “update” Via recovery mode, so I exchanged 14.2 with 14.2. No I guess I have the same problem again and 14.3.

Maybe this problem is a little bit older:

someone tried to reset all settings without deleting content as described at zdnet

www.zdnet.com/article/iphone-ios-13-6-battery-draining-fast-for-no-obvious-reason-try-this-fix/

I’ve had the iPhone 12 Pro Max since it became available and the battery life isn’t as good as my 11 Pro Max.

Even while using WiFi and light web browsing with Safari, once the battery hits 99%, it drains rapidly.

Also, when I plug in the iPhone to charge it and when/if I reset it, the battery loses life doing that — while plugged in. Last night, I plugged it in at 99%, and restarted the iPhone. When the phone came back up, it was at 96%.

Apple support ran diagnostics on the phone and said everything is fine. They said best option is to wipe out the phone and reset the firmware. I won’t be doing that. That’s not a solution.

I don’t get the crazy overnight drains like some users have reported but across the day I find the battery of my 12 pro max seems to drop even if it is idle. Like 1-2% every hour even if I’m not using it. I have iOS 14.3 installed, full strength signal for WiFi, on LTE off 5G, Bluetooth toggled off.

I also have the 2020 11” iPad Pro on exactly the same settings and the battery does not drain on idle. I go to sleep with 87% at 1am and a wake up at 9am with 87% conversely on iPhone 12 Pro Max that battery will drop to 80%. The only difference is my iPad Pro is WiFi only model so I suspect it’s the iPhone 12 Pro Max modem.

tried resetting all settings and the hard resets but it doesn’t solve the problem. I even occasionally get random apps draining in the background overnight despite having killed it before sleeping. This was never an issue with my xs max

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...

I have made the same experience. When I am closer to the center of the city (+ having wifi) the drain is gone, but being closer to the border „activates“ the drain. But signal strength is good at every place.

I also compared that in details with iPhone‘s Field Test Mode using/calling *3001#12345#*, but everything is identical except some cell ids.

I would say that for a mini it is not so bad, maybe with all this we have too big expectations.

I mean that maybe 6 months ago, we would have considered your graph as perfectly normal for a device with a smaller battery like the mini ;)

Try to not activate the airplane mode for one night, and see how it behaves. Of course the number of minutes of use can give a trend, but as the use can vary a lot during those minutes it is not always comparable.

Whereas in idle overnight, it is really more easy to make a reliable comparison.