iPhone 12 battery draining fast

Hi all,


Trying to work out if I have a defective unit I need to send back or if there's a wider issue here. The iPhone 12 Pro is advertised as having a smaller battery than the iPhone 11 Pro so I expected to have slightly reduced battery life (which is fine as 11 Pro was excellent).


However I'm noticing that the iPhone 12 Pro is draining when idle with almost no background activity at a rate of 4% which is much faster than my previous iPhone 11 Pro, and to be honest a faster idle drain than I can actually remember from a new iPhone. First instinct was to disable Mobile data to see if it was a 5G thing, but I actually don't see any real difference from doing that (which makes sense as I've been on Wifi 98% of the time since I got it).


No matter what I try, it seems to be going down oddly quick. Not to an useable level or anything world ending, but I guess its sort of suspicious. I check the battery report, and it's not showing any real culprit, just a rapid decline for no clear reason.


If anyone can share their idle battery with either 12 or 12 Pro I'd really appreciate it.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 12 Pro, iOS 14

Posted on Oct 25, 2020 8:14 AM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 1, 2021 5:25 AM

After a couple days of experimenting.


Let me give you scenarios/examples with no regard to any other settings other than those mentioned being turned on or off.


iPhone 12 Pro running iOS 14.3


SIM card installed, WiFi on, Cellular On, Bluetooth in Standby (Turned off in CC to disable new connections, but still enabled)

Battery drops between 15 and 30% over an eight hour time frame while not being in use. (This was the case for a couple days, until I realized something was clearly wrong)


SIM card installed, WiFi off, Cellular off, Bluetooth standby same as before

Battery drops around 10% over the same time frame (Better, but still not satisfying)


Now get this!


SIM card taken out, Wifi on, Cellular off, Bluetooth same as before, I also turned Airplane Mode on for the sake of it

Draining between 1 and 3% , over the span of 8 hours.


I know, it seems absolutely silly to use an iPhone without a SIM card, but as long as this bug is not fixed taking out the Sim card might be your best option to prevent your battery from draining over night. Or you just simply keep it on a charger. Keeping the SIM and at least turning off WiFi and cellular or putting the device into airplane mode should make the battery drain a little less too.


Some other things you might want to switch off, if only to test for a couple days to see if battery life improves and slows the drain. Keep in mind, you can disable everything temporarily and don't have to worry about anything breaking. If something needs a certain thing enabled, iOS will most likely give you a prompt anyways. You can go back and enable everything again, but until a version of iOS 14.3.x or 14.4 is released that addresses the those kind of issues, it's the best and to be frank, the only thing you can do.


  • Location Services > System Services. Be bold and turn off EVERYTHING. Toggle the status bar icon (the switch on the very bottom) so when you slowly enable them one by one again, you can keep an eye on what triggers the location to update. With the status bar icon on, you can check and investigate closely how and when a certain service is updating. I found the Find my iPhone location feature updates like crazy.

System customization also updates in the background constantly ( if you turn it off, Dark Mode/ Appearance will still be able to work in sunset/sunrise mode, night mode however will work only when you put it on a custom schedule, and optimized battery charging will not work (even the option itself in the battery menu is enabled) if you have Significant Location and/or System Customization disabled).


  • Put Bluetooth into standby so it stops searching for new devices (Toggle it via Control Center so the icon becomes white.)


  • Turn off 'Ask to Join Networks' and set 'Auto-join Hotspot' to Never in Wi-Fi settings to stop the device from constantly checking for sources, notifying you and trying to connect to other routers.


I don't mention any of those things like turning off Background App refresh, dimming your display etc as those can be found in literary every 'iPhone battery savings' video or article.


It is clear that the issue can be pinpointed to the cellular modem, which can only be put into completely pause if there is no SIM card in the device. Airplane mode alone does not seem to fix the issue fully nor does turning off Cellular data help much if anything.



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2,818 replies

Jun 1, 2021 3:07 PM in response to maikm23

Hi I just looked at my battery and it seems to have stabilised over the last couple of hours (I've been recording it every hour). The only thing I did in this time was to clear the history of my cookies on my Mac (Safari). Could this have been causing it? External cookies on my Mac which is using the same wi-fi connection as my phone! I'll keep monitoring my phone and let you know if this has solved the problem.

Jun 5, 2021 2:49 AM in response to mkrdesign

This really can’t be a solution, its just a coincidence that you cleared your history and your battery problem got solved. Non of us have been able to solve this issue with this method. A lot of people have mentioned so many ways like this but its just a coincidence that their battery problem is solved. We have tried even more than these solutions like contacting the apple support team and going to the service centre and if that has not been any help, then these weird solutions will definitely not be of any help.

Jun 5, 2021 10:01 AM in response to glanz

I have restored my phone multiple times, its been at the service centre under observation for 24 hour's. Nothing has helped till date so I don’t even wanna try and do anything more to fix this issue until apple has a fix from their side. I’ve pretty much given up on this issue and if the mew iphone coming in September or October doesn’t have this problem I’ll just trade in this device for a new one.

Jun 22, 2021 7:16 AM in response to haroon7rxt

The warranty on the phone just exists for namesake. Apple support doesn’t value their customers anymore. They tell me losing 25-30% for a 1.5 hours call is normal. I have been using iphone right from the 2g and have never see this much battery get consumed during talktime. With previous iphones i have seen that talk time consumes the least battery but this is iphone is no where close to that. The 12 pro heats up too very easily and while using the lidar scanner it heats which maybe normal because of the mechanism but using the camera shouldn’t cause so much of a drain.

Jun 22, 2021 7:17 AM in response to krish280

Can we turn off standby. Your information is very helpful for me. I am debating on this. I have 11promax and I have problem with this. Apple has no answer for me. They say get a new one. When I try to answer my call my call gets disconnected. I have to let people know I will call back because of this situation. I am frustrated.

Jun 22, 2021 9:33 PM in response to haroon7rxt

Turning off optimised battery charging means that the time taken to charge the iphone from 80% to 100% would be quicker. If optimised battery charging is on the charging rate to slow to down to large extent between 80% to 100%. If you charge your phone at a fixed point of time everyday, iphone will recognise your charging pattern and your iphone would only be charged to 100% when you actually need to use it.

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iPhone 12 battery draining fast

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