iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Those who are still facing the issue do this:

Turn off Hey Siri and Press for Siri

Turn off Dictation from keyboard

Reset all settings (data will not be cleared)

After resetting you can turn on Press for siri but better to keep the Hey Siri off only.

After doing this my drainage has been reduced from 25-30% overnight to 3-4%.

Try and tell if it works for you guys too!

Thanks for your answers, they helped me solve the problem with fast battery drain!

iPhone 12 mini

iOS 14.2.1

Provider MegaFon (Russia, Moscow)

5G network is not working yet, not available. You cannot turn it on or off, there is no such item in the settings. There is only 4G (LTE) or 3G.

One physical SIM card.

Wi-Fi is always on, Wi-Fi calls are always on, 4G (LTE) or 3G cellular data is always on.

The phone in standby mode overnight is discharged by 15-20%.

Solution to the problem: disabled 4G (LTE) in the settings, enabled only 3G.

For 3 hours in standby mode, consumption 0%

Thanks to all!

*** *** ***

Спасибо за ваши ответы, они помогли мне решить проблему с быстрым разрядом аккумулятора!

iPhone 12 mini

iOS 14.2.1

Провайдер МегаФон (Россия, Москва)

Сеть 5G пока не работает, недоступна. Включить или выключить нельзя, нет такого пункта в настройках. Есть только 4G (LTE) или 3G.

Одна физическая SIM-карта.

Wi-Fi включен постоянно, вызовы по Wi-Fi включены постоянно, сотовые данные 4G (LTE) или 3G включены постоянно.

Телефон в режиме ожидания за ночь разряжается на 15-20%

Решение проблемы: отключил в настройках 4G (LTE), включил только 3G.

За 3 часа в режиме ожидания расход 0%

Всем спасибо!

I am seeing this too on two iPhone SE (1st generation) after the iOS 14 upgrade. When I connected them to Xcode for debugging it seems the mediaanalysysd never stops, even when charging cable is unplugged. There are some other junk processes that constantly write and trash the flash of the phone too. I have resorted to deleting all photos and videos on one of them and the drain at idle has been reduced a bit, but this is definitely iOS issue, it is not related to the particular phone model.

Press on "Show Activity". Your Siri probably was like 1m active in background. You can see on the graph in the middle that nothing was active (no bar in the bar chart). This "Battery Usage" in Presents is a bit misleading

It has started for me after about two days of using iPhone 12 mini. I had 14.2.1 iOS installed from the very first day. At the beginning everything seemed to be fine (probably for the first night), but a few days later I experienced 30% battery drain in the night (Wi-Fi, bluetooth were off, all possible location services disabled, no push notifications etc), and I was really shocked.

Then I tried flight mode in the night - 2-5% would be lost (honestly, I would expect 0-2% in this case). But I've also noticed that my phone dies like crazy during the day without flight mode, probably 1% per hour being idle. And of course, flight mode is not the solution here.

After reading thread here and on other forums what really helped me is going to Settings > Mobile Data > Mobile Data Options > Voice & Data = 3G (I had previously LTE, no 5G in my country). I was comparing battery usage with LTE and 3G, and with 3G the situation is really great. However it's not a solution for such an expensive phone, plus I need to use LTE when I'm not home. I am expecting Apple to fix it, have already submitted my feedback. But until some fix is provided, this option might be helpful for others.

By the way, my husband has iPhone 12 Pro and no issues with the battery, we use the same carrier - Vodafone (Ukraine)

OK, so 1. why does Airplane mode stop the drain for me? 2. changing SIMs to an EE SIM from Vodaphone also immediately stops the drain?

Bottom line is, there is an issue, there are multiple variables at play. I have eliminated it being to do with me receiving a dodgy phone as I'm on my second replacement which has the same issue. I have eliminated it being with my apps as I have fully restored the phone, set up as new and used without logging into iCloud or restoring backup.

It is a network issue of some sort hence why Airplane mode resolves it for me and most people on here.

I would not have say this, it is linked for sure to network and more likely to the network chip.

Indeed, on my iPhone 12 pro Max I have an eSIM and a physical sim with the same provider (pro & perso). The phone is also linked to my cellular Apple Watch (which is in charge by night).

Yesterday evening I have tried to switch off the physical sim and the drain was very low.

(please note that it remains a long time at 100% because according to coconut battery the battery has 250 mA higher than the design capacity, so it drains but remain virtually at 100%).

here is the graph

When the two sim are activated, it gives this

As you can see the wifi is on and the network is not so bad ;)

I want also to add that my iPhone 11 Pro Max with the same config, iOS 14.2, Apple Watch linked, in the same place, two sims and a battery at 96% didn’t experienced battery drain.

I started nights at 100% and woke up at 100% during my tests... And of course, at the end of the day my battery was in average much higher than on the 12!

So I have still in mind to return it to be refunded before January 8th if it is not solved.

When I looked yesterday there were over 63k posts on this drain topic. Apple must know about it, just too scared to own it.

My findings so far....trying out different solutions posted in the thread:

Replacement 1 iPhone 12 Pro Max

Night  1 Powered on straight out of the box. No Sim or setup. 

10-12-20 2200 battery 98% left on.

11-12-20 09:05 battery 93% turned off.

Night  2 Install O2 PAYG Sim. Connected to 4G

11-12-20 22:00 battery 92% left on.

12-12-20 09:06 battery 62% turned off.

Night 3 Phone charged for awhile on MagSafe charger. Setup performed. O2 Sim left connected to 4G Manually set network. (5G sim not available for O2 PAYG yet). iPhone set up with iOS 14.2   Connected to home wifi, mobile data off.

12-12-20 battery 22:00 88% left on

13-12-20 battery 09:03 60% turned off.

Worse then my first phone, although that was setup with 14.2.1,  so won’t jump to conclusions yet. Will test with selecting 3G next. Not restoring backup just yet.

Night 4 charged up and manually select 3G manual select O2, mobile data turned off. Connected to home wifi.

13-12-20 22:10 89% left on

14-12-20 09:05 85% turned off

Seems like setting to 3G makes a real difference!

Ok so as per testing my 12 Pro Max and my brother's 12 Pro after updating to iOS 14.3 with "carrier update", both phones' batteries are performing normally, finally. So I think I can safely say it's carrier related. They have to update to configure their network system according to the new modem.

On standby, the battery hardly drains. When on use, battery consumption is no longer drastic.

I thought I’d test dual sim mode on 14.3. It started fine, but then it got worse as time went by. By the end of the 3rd day it’s draining like crazy. Going back to single eSim mode again...

eSim - EE UK

Sim - O2 UK

The weird thing is that O2 signal is a lot stronger than EE, but enabling O2 causes the drain. Makes no sense from signal strength point of view.

So it looks a lot like a memory leak. Who knows

No. If I disable the mobile connection and only use Wi-Fi including Wi-Fi calling the drain is gone completely.

I also didn't seem to receive a carrier update after updating to iOS 14.3. At least there was no kind of notification in that regard.

Problem seems to have been resolved for me with iOS 14.3 on my iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Previous Carrier Settings version - 44.0

New Carrier Settings version - 45.0

Drain is more or less non existent.

FYI - I am with Sky Mobile.

Are you talking about Beta? I can confirm that 14.3 fixed the dual SIM standby issue for me. I‘m now in day 3 after update and enabling the second line again. Voila, no more excessive battery train. I‘m located in Germany eSIM Telekom physical SIM WindTre in roaming using o2 by default.

Also many thanks to Apple. They actually read this thread and contacting me for further information. That‘s what makes the difference, they do care about customer satisfaction. THANKS!

Tried switching “Voice & Data” to 3G – you can clearly see when I did this on the screenshot 🙂 It’s like 3x slower drain than before, so will stick to that for now, but still feels like it’s to fast as for standing by. There clearly is some issue with staying connected to cellular towers.

It won’t last. I’ve been through that. In fact, the first time I restored from iCloud, the second time from encrypted file backup and the third time I set it up as new. It helped at first but then after a while the issue is back.

However, I manage to keep it under control now. I can use my phone either with eSim only or with dual sims but in dual eSim data is off and only using data from physical sim. That seems to do the trick. I also do occasional force restart when the drain becomes worse.

Apart from that, Siri is off, background refresh is only for selective apps, same with notifications and location services.

I had iPhone 8 Plus before that and I never ever had to adjust default settings, battery life was always excellent. I regret I didn’t wait another year, my iPhone 8 Plus was still perfectly usable for at least one more year... But hey, new camera! 😂