iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Well, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. I’m not stating “there’s no hw issue” (e.g. poor integration with smth else), l’m saying “if it’s Qualcomm modem”. The modem does not have this issue on other devices, otherwise we would have lots of angry Androiders.

Merci for your reply dear Selzere.

In the second picture of your last post the drain (between 00 and 06h) with 14.2.1 is the same I had (on e-sim cellular) too.

This indicates that 14.3 has maybe improved something already (despite several others did not experience this benefit).

May you please try to assess as well (on top of what you concurred in terms of idle consumption on e-sim vs physical sim) if the battery consumption is the same when calling on physical sim vs call on e-sim? In this frame and if possible, calls longer than 10min would be required.....

Thanks a lot

EC

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.

califfo1975 wrote:

I live in France too and I noted that I do not have the same behaviour on physical sim or on e-sim. The former is Orange and the latter SFR. Orange is main line (SFR secondary).

With cellular phone on Orange the idle consumption is about 3%/8hr but it is 5%/9hr on SFR.

Moreover, when calling on SFR (e-sim) the consumption is 1%/8-10min and on Orange is 1%/20min!!!!

Both constatations above are maybe linked to different carrier despite I am sure that on SFR I had better performances beforehand.....==> indeed I do not understand why the modem would not behave the same when being on physical or on e-sim.....

There is a very simple and rational reason which might explain the difference. You are using two different networks, probably using cellular masts at different locations. Each phone’s power output is controlled by the cellular base station so the mast/tower receives a standard strength signal from the mobile device. The power output of your iPhone can vary between a few milliWatts in good conditions to a nearby base, up to Watts under more difficult conditions and the drain on the battery increases as necessary to generate the output power level commanded by the network - there could be a difference up to / around x1000 in battery consumption just from this reason. If you change your location you will probably find the relative battery drains change, depending which tower is nearest to you.

earthberth wrote:

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.

Please see my post above relating to variable battery consumption due to changes in transmit power commanded by the network. Also remember if you are roaming away from your home network you might see increased consumption because the phone is constantly scanning for the preferred home network, which also adds some extra battery load.

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.

oli1605 wrote:

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

Because even when you are using wi-fi for data, the phone is still maintaining a 4G/5G connection to the cellular network for registration purposes, so the network knows in which cell your phone is and so it can route incoming calls to it.

I think you misunderstand these issues. I for one am suffering from the same issues. And, the reason I’m complaining about them is because none! Of this ever happened on my XS Max, or indeed any other iPhone/iPad I’ve ever owned.

be sure to re-read your above comment when Apple finally do acknowledge this issue publicly.

people suffering these issues with the 12 series are comparing them to their previous iPhones, a lot of which were pretty recent models.

look, I clearly said for a normal google news browsing 1% discharge per min is unacceptable. Except point 1 in your reply, other answers are not convincing and yes it’s still pathetic that the issue is not understood and pathetic that cannot get a convincing answer or a solution

Dear All,

I also face the same experience like you. Previously I used I Phone X which had the good battery life and no need to charge twice a day when I turned on wifi and bluetooth. Iphone 12 pro battery is drained very fast even wifi and bluetooth are turned off. I bought mine (12 pro) last month. Should I return to the apple store? Is there any solution to fix this issues. Thanks

The drain might be back for me...I really hope not...but after a few nights of losing 4-6% instead of the usual 15+% I once again lost 1% per hour last night. Which is too much. Nothing changed between last night and previous nights (so no rogue app was running). The new modem firmware seemed to dramatically improve my experience at first but last night was once again back to 1% per hour (39% down to 31% from 01:00 to around 08:30).

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 ...

I live in a 4G only area atm so no 5G signal whatsoever. My phone has 3 options... 5G ON, 5G Auto (which is default) and 4G. Reckon setting it to 4G will help? Previously it’s been set to 5G Auto (but has always had 4G signal). Or will it not really make a difference?

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)