iPhone 12 is so slow

Yes tour phone was just working right out of the box too. Would you expect it to work in an area where there is no cel phone reception? Why would you expect either phone to work where you have terrible WiFi. Apple is not in charge of making sure that your router isn’t too old to deliver the speeds you pay Cox for.

You have actually described a perfect trouble shooting scenario where the problem could only have been your own router. Checked it with another phone, checked it on another network, even checked it against a new modem from Cox. Everyone has the same issue as you. Wherever you get your router, you need to replace it periodically or you can’t take advantage of new speeds that your phone can use.

Could my 5yr old AirportExtreme( 6th generation) be part of the problem - possibly. It still would not explain why I was able to complete large operating system update downloads on all my Apple products.  Maybe in today WIFI standards the time required to complete these updates was considered too slow, BUT IT STILL WORKED.  But again, only my new 2020 iPhones basically froze trying to download 1gb+ files through my 5yr old AirportExtreme( 6th generation). I believe there are some Apple compatibility and software issues. But my problem is solved with a new combination modem/router. Thanks for everybody’s comments

I have a Time Capsule which is basically that same generation Airport Extreme with a hard drive inside… and have no issue downloading multi-gigabit files from my iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Is it connected directly to your cable modem or other router, or do you have another router between it and your modem?

AirportExtreme(6th generation) settings have never been modified, and the unit was connected directly to my modem.  It “just worked” when doing all operating system updates  and large file downloads on my numerous iPhones, iPads, iMacs during the last 5 years.  Was the time it took to do these updates what I should take - I don’t know.  However, when trying several times to download large files to my new iPhone mini and iPhone pro max, the phones basically froze during the download process and “it just did not work”.  My new combination modem/router from COX solved this problem and the new phones with no modifications now “just works” the way they should.

Without traces, it's hard to know what precisely is going on.

One thing I do know is 6th Generation Airport Extremes did have some heating issues late in their lives so it may be they are overheating on long transfers because their internal fans have failed. I bought two for relatives back then and each has had to replace them due to issues; when you notice the transfers have stopped, the LED on the front doesn't change from green to orange, does it?

Note if turning off private Wi-Fi makes your browsing faster, it's actually an issue in either your Wi-Fi router or with your ISP.

Nothing inherent to private Wi-Fi will slow down browsing at all.

It's great that it works as a workaround, but essentially it's hiding an issue elsewhere in your infrastructure (or your employer's or whomever provides your Wi-Fi) and may return someday.

I’ve been facing issues with my home xfinity WiFi. I tried turning the private address off on multiple iOS 14 devices in our home and all of them are faster now!!! So I’m glad this trick works. i tried this with my friends WiFi also and it is now faster there also. Of course both our routers could have some bugs but it seems more likely to me that it’s in the private address feature than just came in iOS 14 and made our devices slower.

I would rather have it turned off and enjoy my fast browsing than :)

All the private Wi-Fi address feature does is use a randomized MAC hardware address for your connection and changes it every 24 hours to a new value.

This can slow down browsing on wireless access points and routers that cache "known" hardware addresses for various reasons.

However, that's bad behavior on the part of said router; this behavior means that if you added a new device that wasn't previously known to your network, it too would be slow for some period of time, something you probably wouldn't notice because it was a new device and you had no personal experiential baseline.

A fun aside to private Wi-Fi addresses is it also breaks parental controls/limits on many Wi-Fi routers, as each 24 hours the device becomes a "new" device to the router.

Actually, let me issue a mea-culpa here.

Originally the feature was intended to randomize the MAC address every 24 hours, but it turns out it actually randomizes the address per-SSID.

So it appears the main issue may be that certain routers behave differently depending upon which device they believe is connected, and it can't figure out that the device is say an iPhone anymore.

It's still a Wi-Fi router issue, but not in the way I originally thought.

That makes sense. So if you have a cheap router like me, it’s probably still best to turn off that function? Interestingly, that just happened to me again on my older iphone and I turned it off there too. So this is definitely not an iPhone 12 issue, it’s this new feature in iOS

The thing is, it's not the new feature in iOS, it's your router that's at fault.

There is nothing about a randomly generated MAC address that will slow down your Wi-Fi from your phone's point of view.

There are all sorts of wacky things your router may be doing.

Ultimately router manufacturers should fix this, but in the mean time you can shut off private Wi-Fi addresses as a workaround, though at some loss in privacy.

Me to B I bought a a iPhone 12 pro max and my no old google pixel 2 xl on 4g was 2x faster what is going on here B this phone is V way to expensive to be stuck paying for a phone that cost this much with this bad Of performance issues the speed is terrible I will search something on the Internet and the page or just sit there and load unload and load and never come up and i have to turn off my phone and turn it back on and sometimes that works I hope you guys fix this with an update or issue some recalls or something because somethings definitely not right

My new iPhone 12 pro is slower than my iPhone 7. It’s so annoying when you pay a lot for a newer, “ faster” phone and it takes forever sometimes for an email or news story to open or waiting for more news to upload. This was not an issue with my 7. The battery also does not last as long as it should. Doing a zoom meeting with family worked much better with the 7 than the new 12. The phone is less than a month old. Solutions?

I agree, I have the 12 pro and my 11 and x before that were both great. This one is horrible I wish I could return it. Not sure if it was the pandemic and they had low staffing or what but whatever they did this time around has got me itching to switch away from apple phones. I’ve already swapped out my MacBook Pro for a pc and loving It.