iPhone 12 pro won’t wirelessly charge

Hermanator182 wrote:

It will not charge wirelessly as Apple has changed charge method implanting magnets in a ring on back of phone . Will only charge with lightening cord or an Apple MagSafe charger. If we knew we would certainly avoid Apple. I am positive it is not a software issue. Instead a hardware issue. Could it be another rip off forcing users to buy MagSafe chargers??? As if I really don’t know!!!!!!

No. I'm successfully charging iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro Max with wireless chargers, which have nothing to do with MagSafe.

Maybe not. I think the failure to wirelessy charge is a combination of software and hardware. I observed two things over the past two days with my 12 Mini after updating to 14.3. First, although a problem with wireless charging still exists, I perceive the ios update improved that somewhat. Second, I discovered, on the three stand up wireless charges I had since June, and with a new one of a different design just received, my 12 Mini will not reliably charge when sitting, as intended, on the bottom shelf. However, if I raise the phone above the bottom shelf by 1/4", it charges perfectly 100% of the time.

So, I am purely, guessing, but I hypothesize there are two things going on. First, I think it is reasonable the phone does a quality check of the inductive coupling before it allows wireless charging to start. Apple might have lowered the required quality threshold a bit and that might explain why charging appears to be somewhat less problematic after the 14.3 update. Second, the success associated with placing a 1/4" shim under the phone in order to make charging 100% reliable, might be related to the exceptionally small size of the 12 Mini where its charging coil sits lower than required for good inductive coupling. Anyway, just really reaching here but these guesses do offer an explanation for what I observed.

Same here. It did at first, but only for a few minutes. Then it just stopped working all together. I was getting ready to return my Mophie then remembered I had purchased a MagSafe with my phone. I tried charging on the MagSafe...same thing. Won't charge at all. My iPhone 12 will charge on the MagSafe but not the Mophie. But my 12Pro won't charge on either.

You did buy the 20W charging brick with your MagSafe Charger?

You have updated your phone to iOS 14.3?

You have performed a Forced Restart on your phone after the update? (not restart, Forced Restart)

Hello All,

Updated to IOS 14.3 still have issues with both iPhone 12 pros not wirelessly charging. Over 2 grand for 2 phones and wirelessly doesn't work. OMG.. Steve Jobs is turning in his grave with all this crap. Sad!

I spent an hour on Apple Support. The reason for most of the wireless charging issues is that the older wireless chargers

are 10 watt chargers. Apple recommends at least 20 Watts for an I phone 12. The wireless charger that worked on my I phone 8 is 10watts and will not work. I found a 36 watt wireless charger from Otter Box , purchased through Apple, for $54.95

In addition, I could not get my speaker phone to work on incoming calls. That is because my Cell carrier still had my

4 G service on. I had to call them to activate 5 G for an I phone 12. You can go to settings/Cellular Data/Cellular Data Options

Roaming ON, select LTE. This basically turns your phone bac into a 4 G phone. Your speaker phone phone will then work

until you are reset to 5G. Just don't forget to set it back to 5G after contacting your carrier

For those of you who are willing to try this, I suggest you do a DFU restore. This will install the latest version of the Baseband, and a completely fresh copy of iOS on the phone. A DFU restore has cured issues for some people who were having dropped calls with iPhone 12's. Maybe it would cure this charging issue too. No harm in trying.

So I'm not sure if maybe this could be an alternative explanation, but I used to use the charging pad integrated into the base of my HP ENVY 32 AIO, and with my new iPhone 12 Pro Max it no longer charged reliably, constantly disconnecting and reconnecting, while the charging light blinked orange.

And this is where a possible explanation comes in, that maybe is the cause of malfunctions with other chargers as well. Because when I read the explanation for the blinking light on the HP charging base, it said the following:

"Blinking amber: Metal object detected around charging area. Not charging."

So it seems that the MagSafe ring is what stops the charger from working, as it has a build-in security 'feature' to stop it from, I guess, heating up metal too much. Therefore charging any iPhone with MagSafe is no longer possible, unless, maybe, because now and then it DID still work, you place the phone juuuuust so and the distance to the ring surrounding the coil is acceptable to the charger.

Either way, is seems that Apple's claim that the new iPhones will still work with all existing chi chargers unfortunately is just not true. :-(

Been fighting and learning about this since my iPhone 12 Pro arrived, a few days post-launch. Some observations:

1) The more apps are open, the less it seems to want to wirelessly charge

2) It doesn't matter if I'm using an Aukey, Anker, or HP Qi charger, the outages occur regardless

3) Closing all apps, then powering it off and back on, invariably restores the wireless charging function

Seems like some sort of firmware fault, annoying but not fatal. I'm not inclined to pop for Magsafe chargers, and there are reports in this string that iPhone 12 variants sometimes don't charge on them, either.

Not what I've come to expect from Apple, but not enough to drive me away. Never any problem charging with a lightning cable.

Just got a new iPhone 12 Pro Max. I had a XS Max that worked perfectly fine until this model came out. Typical Apple. Really frustrating considering I paid $1,500.00 for the XS Max and after trading in that phone (less than 2 years later) I still paid around $1,000.00. Wireless charging was working fine when I first got my iPhone 12, but now it’s not working. I tried force restarting my phone numerous times and that did not work. Extremely frustrating considering how much money was spent. I love Apple products, but for how expensive their products are, their reliability has declined a lot. Hopefully they will fix this bug.

I too was not able to charge my I phone 12 wirelessly. I was trying to use the wireless charger that I used on my I phone 8.

After talking to Apple Support I was told that the older chargers were 10watts. Apple recommends at least a 20 watt

charger. I bought an Otter Box 26 watt charger directly from the Apple site. Even with the silicon case on it now

works first time, every time. Good reason to own Apple stock. They can sure come up with more ways to force us

to spend more $ to use their products

the 36W doesn't explain why my iphone 12 mini doesn't charge on my current charger and my other half's iphone 12 does. So excuse me if I smell BS. My iphone x charges fine too, and also some people manage to get theirs to charge if the force re-boot it. The freeking lights will be dimming before long.

You are missing the point. I have 2 wireless chargers. Both charge my iPhone X and my other half’s iPhone 12 but neither charge my iPhone 12 mini. If they charge one iPhone 12 then it should work for all. I’m not the only one here having charge if issues. Extortion Apple

Please look for my posts above. Assuming you have a standup charger, simply place a 1/4"-3/8" or so spacer on the bottom shelf so the Mini sits about 1/4" higher. I have some mini-levels that are 3/8" square and 1 1/8" long (10x10x29 mm) that work perfectly. This fixed the problem on all four stand up chargers we have. A six piece set is available for $6 at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VTQG17V/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1. I used a small piece of double sided tape to hold each one in place. All our bigger chargers, including two iPhone SE-2020 wirelessly charged without an issue but also work with the spacer. As I said above, it appears to me the extra small size of the Mini results in its charging coil probably lower than optimum and this results in poor magnetic coupling with the charger.

Barryng, that seemed to resolve it, I think. I have sat it on an eraser and it charges fine now. Here's hoping. Thank you for the advice. Saved me going through the whole painful Apple thing.

Many thanks