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iPhone 12 iPhone 12/12 pro have worse battery life than the 11/11pro

barondebxl

barondebxl

macrumors 6502a
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Sep 21, 2013
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Early 5G is a known battery hogger no matter how optimize the software is or what CPU it has. This was expected with a smaller battery. We’ll see if the Max does any better with 5G.
 
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barondebxl said:
www.tomsguide.com

iPhone 12 battery life results: All four models compared

See the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max battery life results
www.tomsguide.com www.tomsguide.com

Pretty noticeable difference. 5G taxes us an extra 2 hours of battery life compared to the 4G LTE.
Click to expand...

Actually, the Tom’s Guide test shows the battery life is better on the 12 Pro :)

iPhone 12 Pro on 4G: 11:24
iPhone 11 Pro: 10:24
iPhone 11: 11:16

So I’m happy I will be getting 1 hour more of battery life. Might want to change that title ;)
 
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These are not really real life scenarios anyway... unless you surf the web like 10h a day...
5G in auto mode will likely be running much less in normal usage.
 
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deuxani said:
Actually, the Tom’s Guide test shows the battery life is better on the 12 Pro :)

iPhone 12 Pro on 4G: 11:24
iPhone 11 Pro: 10:24
iPhone 11: 11:16

So I’m happy I will be getting 1 hour more of battery life. Might want to change that title ;)
Click to expand...

Title is accurate, 5G taxes 2 hours of battery life which makes the battery life worse than the 11 pro. If you disable 5G then you’ll get better battery life yeah. And this is for 12 and 12 pro not just 12 pro
 
The problem is 5G is has multiple bands and different modem hardware...
If you exclusively use the 5G mm Wave (24-28GHz) then the modem does burn more battery life.

But if you are not next to a short range 5G mm Wave tower (most people are not), you may have 5G Sub 6 bands which don't consume as much on the modem.

I think currently, most people will see some speed increases in Sub 6 bands using "5G Auto".

The biggest gain is for the majority of people who only have 4G access - they will also see speed improvements due to a change of modem hardware (Qualcomm).
 
barondebxl said:
Title is accurate, 5G taxes 2 hours of battery life which makes the battery life worse than the 11 pro. If you disable 5G then you’ll get better battery life yeah. And this is for 12 and 12 pro not just 12 pro
Click to expand...

But battery life in general doesn’t seem to be worse, because it depends on your usage. If you’re on WiFi all day, it will probably be better on the 12’s, if you’re on 4G it will probably be better too.

It seems battery life might only be worse if you are on 5G using 5G to browse the internet or download stuff, but you can’t compare that to the 11’s as they don’t have 5G ;)
 
deuxani said:
But battery life in general doesn’t seem to be worse, because it depends on your usage. If you’re on WiFi all day, it will probably be better on the 12’s, if you’re on 4G it will probably be better too.

It seems battery life might only be worse if you are on 5G using 5G to browse the internet or download stuff, but you can’t compare that to the 11’s as they don’t have 5G ;)
Click to expand...

Yeah but the point is that the 12s have 5G and that’s how people will use them for he most part except us here. And even without 5G the 12 doesn’t do as good as the 11 as seen on that article. So it’s fair to say they don’t have as good battery life I think it’s pretty simple to understand
 
barondebxl said:
Yeah but the point is that the 12s have 5G and that’s how people will use them for he most part except us here. And even without 5G the 12 doesn’t do as good as the 11 as seen on that article. So it’s fair to say they don’t have as good battery life I think it’s pretty simple to understand
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying of course. I just have a different view on the better/worse battery life situation :)

If these numbers are correct I will probably get better battery life on the 12 Pro in comparison to my 11 Pro. If someone is outside a lot and connected to 5G most of the day, their battery life will be worse.

But I think these comparisons are bad anyways as the phones are so different. The 11 Pro went from 5.8” to 6.1” on the 12 Pro. And the 11 went from “720p” LCD with big bezels and bigger body to a high res OLED screen with smaller body and bezels.
 
deuxani said:
I understand what you are saying of course. I just have a different view on the better/worse battery life situation :)

If these numbers are correct I will probably get better battery life on the 12 Pro in comparison to my 11 Pro. If someone is outside a lot and connected to 5G most of the day, their battery life will be worse.

But I think these comparisons are bad anyways as the phones are so different. The 11 Pro went from 5.8” to 6.1” on the 12 Pro. And the 11 went from “720p” LCD with big bezels and bigger body to a high res OLED screen with smaller body and bezels.
Click to expand...

I get that but that doesn’t matter because at face value that’s what you get. Obviously there’s always a reason why a phone gets better or worse battery life whether it’s the bigger battery, smaller screen, refresh rate etc...I’m simply saying that you’ll get more battery live in the 11 series than the 12 series, generally speaking.
 
I think it’s fair to say that it the IP11 had 5G its battery would be the same as the 12 is now. So not really comparable.
 
barondebxl said:
I get that but that doesn’t matter because at face value that’s what you get. Obviously there’s always a reason why a phone gets better or worse battery life whether it’s the bigger battery, smaller screen, refresh rate etc...I’m simply saying that you’ll get more battery live in the 11 series than the 12 series, generally speaking.
Click to expand...
No, not with the 12 - if you compare apples to apples.

If you use the 11 in 4G mode and turn off 5G on your 12, effectively making it a 4G, you will see that the 12 will have faster data (12 has different modem hardware by Qualcomm) and the battery will be just as long as the 11 because of the more efficient A14 chip...
 
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4sallypat said:
No, not with the 12 - if you compare apples to apples.

If you use the 11 in 4G mode and turn off 5G on your 12, effectively making it a 4G, you will see that the 12 will have faster data (12 has different modem hardware by Qualcomm) and the battery will be just as long as the 11 because of the more efficient A14 chip...
Click to expand...

Perhaps you should take the time to read the article that debunks what you just said...
 
barondebxl said:
www.tomsguide.com

iPhone 12 battery life results: All four models compared

See the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max battery life results
www.tomsguide.com www.tomsguide.com

pocketnow.com

iPhone 12 reveals everything under the hood, along with a 5G issue

It seems that 5G won't be so great after all in the latest iPhone 12 lineup, as new tests show that it has a massive impact on battery life
pocketnow.com pocketnow.com

Pretty noticeable difference. 5G taxes us an extra 2 hours of battery life compared to the 4G LTE.
Click to expand...

Hmm so looking at the table from Toms Guide:
- the iPhone 11 has better battery life than the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 even in 4G LTE
- The iPhone 12 Pro has better battery life than all of them in 4G LTE.
7e732b0afc189235ea58d95b5c8d1c7d.png
 
Tsepz said:
Hmm so looking at the table from Toms Guide:
- the iPhone 11 has better battery life than the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 even in 4G LTE
- The iPhone 12 Pro has better battery life than all of them in 4G LTE.
7e732b0afc189235ea58d95b5c8d1c7d.png
Click to expand...

Correct but notice that I said that 5G taxes us 2 hours of battery
 
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The article is one person's review.
I was listening to the radio (local Los Angeles AM channel) and they said that in Los Angeles, the 4G did much better on the 12 than a comparable 11 - both speed and battery life.

In Los Angeles county, we don't have 5G mm Wave towers all over yet unless I drive 30 miles into downtown LA city.

The tests that were run was using 5G Sub 6 frequencies which made the battery last longer than mm Wave frequencies.

We ALL know that 5G mm Wave is a battery pig due to the modem but that's expected from a first gen 5G hardware.

And since 90% of us will currently not live next to a mmWave tower, we can forget about 24-28Ghz short range microwave cell towers.
 
Tsepz said:
Indeed.

Here is a comparison.
Spoiler alert, does not totally bode well for 12 and 12 Pro

Click to expand...

I just watched it lol. They’re actually good, it’s just that the 11pro and 11 pro max are insanely great. But considering that even in that test 5G was turned off then it is a must to keep it off in order to have decent battery life.
 
barondebxl said:
I just watched it lol. They’re actually good, it’s just that the 11pro and 11 pro max are insanely great. But considering that even in that test 5G was turned off then it is a must to keep it off in order to have decent battery life.
Click to expand...

I wish the 12 and 12 Pro had blown the entire 11 series out the water the way the 11 series did to the XS series, lol. Right now it’s like Apple has taken a step back in battery life.

I hate that Apple put smaller batteries in the 12 series, I wish they had at least kept the same capacities from the 11s and then let the A14’s efficiency do the rest.

But anyway, I guess this leaves some pretty big room for the iPhone 13 series to improve.
 
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Tsepz said:
I wish the 12 and 12 Pro had blown the entire 11 series out the water the way the 11 series did to the XS series, lol. Right now it’s like Apple has taken a step back in battery life.

I hate that Apple put smaller batteries in the 12 series, I wish they had at least kept the same capacities from the 11s and then let the A14’s efficiency do the rest.

But anyway, I guess this leaves some pretty big room for the iPhone 13 series to improve.
Click to expand...

Yup. But the 12s still have solid battery life it’s just that the 11 pro and pro max were incredible. That’s the cost of a lighter phone with a smaller battery
 
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