iPhone 12 Mini's Battery Life is One to Two Hours Shorter Than iPhone 12 When Comparing Video Playback

[Abstract]

People were begging for a smaller iPhone.

Welcome to battery physics...

Exactly! Be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it.

People who are saying this are posting as though this phone doesn’t easily last a full day, maybe 2 days on a weekend.

According to Apple’s numbers, it’s just a little bit worse than the XR’s battery life, which was the iPhone with the BEST battery life according to some tests. After 2 years, mine can still last me 2 days if it’s a weekend, and I’m not playing around on my phone all the time.

If the 12 Mini is really just a tiny bit worse than that, it would be incredible.

So no, there’s no need to be careful what we wish for. We wished, and got exactly what we wanted. 👍👍👍👍

 

[psxp]

I have like... six extra adapters in my house, did you need one? I mean, I’m sure you probably have an extra one laying around to, but I know it’s easier to make a big deal out of nothing on the internet, amirite?😁

you have 6 USB-C high Wattage adapters lying around? did you specifically buy them or did they come with other devices?

 

[Braderunner]

People were begging for a smaller iPhone.

Welcome to battery physics...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[roobarb!]

I was going to buy a mini, but I think they've killed it for me. No USB-C, no Touch ID, no mmWave 5G in the UK. I think I'll just get the battery replaced in my original 128 GB iPhone SE, it runs iOS 14 brilliantly. I actually quite fancied one of these, but the most adventurous thing I use my iPhone for is tethering.

 

[eMacKilla]

My iPhone 11 Pro is dead after 6-7 hours of use. How are these devices rated at 17 hours of video playback? Is straight streaming video playback less battery taxing than surfing and instagram?

 

[GeoStructural]

My iPhone 11 Pro is dead after 6-7 hours of use. How are these devices rated at 17 hours of video playback? Is straight streaming video playback less battery taxing than surfing and instagram?

That does not sound right. I have the 11 Pro Max and it consistently lasts more than 1 day. I recommend you to check your settings:

- Deactivate locations services for anything other than Maps and FindMy, I often encounter this problem when my friends ask me to optimize their device. Simply put, Instagram may be using your GPS several times a day and that is a battery kill.

- Deactivate any app using background refresh.

- Disallow automatic updates.

- Disable Push or adjust its frequency for your accounts (for example in your email).

- Take a look at the battery settings, it will tell you both in percentage and time which apps are using the most battery.

- Also consider using Battery Save (Low Power mode). It automatically adjusts settings to battery saving measures and can give you about 2 hrs extra usage time.

 

[aleni]

Smaller device, less space for battery.

We can't expect Apple to defy the laws of physics, can we?

We can, just make the mini 2mm thicker. We’ve never complained about the thickness of the iPhone 4.

 

[Septembersrain]

No chance the 12 Pro Max is seeing the same battery life as the 11 Pro Max.
Where are all my peeps telling me for the past week that the 12 Pro Max battery would blow away the 11 Pro Max? Its being listed as lasting as long but at that considerably smaller size there is no way it will last as long.

With 5G, it being smaller mAh is concerning. I will be sitting this one out because I've had nothing but battery nightmares from the two Android devices I got with 5G.

I'll stick with my 11 Pro Max.

 

[magicman32]

Why would they? They need your $ and it's easier for them to just offer lower battery life to force you to buy a higher-end model. It's been Apple's strategy since the dawn of time.

Really? I mean, the battery life is is pretty damn good (if the numbers are accurate) and people who want this size of phone aren’t going to be pushed into a higher-end model because, well, they want this size of phone.

The other phones have been available for years. This is the holy grail sweet spot for those users have been craving. Period. No up-sell here at all.

 

[DocMultimedia]

My iPhone 11 Pro is dead after 6-7 hours of use. How are these devices rated at 17 hours of video playback? Is straight streaming video playback less battery taxing than surfing and instagram?

I agree that the numbers they list are always a bit exaggerated. If you shut down everything and just watch video on your iPhone (at minimal brightness of course) maybe you'll get those numbers. I do a lot of photography on my 11 Pro. Won't last a full day when it's bright out. If I do nothing but read my texts then it will last a weekend.

But the 11 Pro really is the biggest jump in battery life ever. I never used to get a day. And to be honest, iOS 14 has shortened my battery life. I used to hit 20% around midnight, now at about 9pm. I'm hoping the next update fixes that (just like the watch update has drastically improved my watch). End of day with a two hour workout and still at 60%.

 

[cpnotebook80]

Have iPhone xs and the lighter weight of iPhone mini and screen size almost close to to my xs is temping me after trade in.
Don’t need all the fancy of the pro or big phones. Lighter weight is important for holding for long periods especially for me. Would save rest or money for the arm MacBook.

 

[iemcj]

Buy a TV.

For real you can get a outstanding 50" LG CX OLED for the price of an iphone now. This has gotten beyond crazy.

 

[Jony Ive and Co.]

Wow, the pro Max battery is insane.

But they didnt manage to improve it from the 11 Pro Max, and Kang was wrong when he said that they would increase it by at least 1 more hour.

 

[yeknommonkey]

I'll never understand why Apple won't just add a few mm to the thickness for a significant increase in battery life. It's just like the MacBook Pro that got a miserable keyboard so it could be N mm thinner. Stupid. IMO.

Yeah for me the few mm thickness for better battery plus lose the camera bump would be a compromise I'd like, but then I'd like a plastic case and screen as per lumia 720 too so no need for a case,,, there's always something that I guess a subset of us want different but I'm just so glad they finally went back to the size they knew years ago was right, Hand sized! My SE1 can finally go off to the big iPhone farm in the sky.

 

[yeknommonkey]

For real you can get a outstanding 50" LG CX OLED for the price of an iphone now. This has gotten beyond crazy.

I can't justify spending £1k on a phone knowing that an imac starts about £1100.

I mean it's all crazy money (cheap) for what these devices do and the technology we take for granted these days but it kind of highlights that the price isn't necessarily tied to what you're actually getting, it's just what they can get away with asking. That big ol spaceship campus and a bank full of cash tells you they know what they're playing at though.

 

[macgician]

Misleading title, apple website says 15 hours and 17 hours for mini and regular, the difference is clearly 2 hours, why title has to be 1 to 2 hours?

 

[locrumo]

I can't justify spending £1k on a phone knowing that an imac starts about £1100.

I mean it's all crazy money (cheap) for what these devices do and the technology we take for granted these days but it kind of highlights that the price isn't necessarily tied to what you're actually getting, it's just what they can get away with asking. That big ol spaceship campus and a bank full of cash tells you they know what they're playing at though.

Check ipad pro prices..

 

[macplaymates]

That’s okay. This is a great form factor for a “phone”. Get an iPad and watch your movies.

even though i have an ipad i find i prefer watching movies on my phone. i have a 6.4 inch asus zenfone 6 with 5000mh battery life, i think the 6.7 iphone would finally be in ipad mini territory and perfect all around device for everything. movies, remote desktop for pc support. etc. i just wish apple integrated with google infratsructure as i'm tied to google and would be too expensive to replace everything. google cast, google home max speaker, etc.

 

[robinp]

Just a couple of gripes about these new phones:
- mmWave bands only on US models
- Wide and Ultrawide cameras on the Iphone 12. Would much rather one of them be the telephoto

Otherwise I think it is a really strong line up. If they had the telephoto camera on the non-pro iPhones it would probably encourage me more towards them rather than the pro. I guess they know that it is a good differentiator.

 

[deckard666]

Big big win for me as I am tempted to get this moving down size wise from my X which is only marginally bigger - I see Apple would offer my 240 pounds towards a Mini which would then be 19 pounds a month for 2 years.....just too easy although tbh I'd sell it on eBay for 300 plus as its flawless.

 

[JulianL]

With 5G, it being smaller mAh is concerning. I will be sitting this one out because I've had nothing but battery nightmares from the two Android devices I got with 5G.

I'll stick with my 11 Pro Max.

For me the really critical thing is will I be able to turn off 5G in Settings and, if I can, will that genuinely power down the unused circuitry to make it as if 5G capability wasn't there at all and completely nullify and extra battery drain concerns?

Apple did have a 3G toggle in Settings when it launched the iPhone 3G and that stayed until at least the iPhone 4 which was my first ever iPhone and I kept 3G turned off for at least my first year of ownership to maximise battery life. From your experiences it sounds as if your Android devices either didn't allow you to disable 5G and stick entirely with 4G or, if they did, they didn't actually power down stuff to actually stop power drain due to the extra 5G circuitry. I really, really (really, really, really) hope that Apple doesn't make that mistake.

On the smaller battery I do note that, despite the iPhone 12 Pro Man being 0.71mm thinner(*), it's actually a mere 2g heavier (https://www.phonearena.com/news/apple-iphone-12-pro-max-vs-iphone-11-pro-max_id127263) so maybe Apple did manage to squeeze out some dead air in the 11 Pro Max to use to at least maintain the battery capacity. We only have one pre-launch rumour so far don't we that claimed to have seen a slightly lower capacity 12 Pro Max battery?

(*) grrrr . 0.71mm doesn't sound a lot but with ifixit reporting the 11 Pro Max having a 4.6mm battery an extra 0.71mm would have given an extra 15% battery capacity - even more if they have made the 12 Pro Max battery thinner. Frankly I wish they'd gone the other way and taken the opportunity with this move back to the iPhone 4 design language to go to the same thickness as the 4 (9.3mm). I don't remember massive complaints about that being too thick but then again maybe with the bigger screen sizes weight would have become a problem. Maybe Apple decided that the 11 Pro Max really was at the limit of the weight that a significant percentage of its customer base would accept hence the almost identical weights of the 11 vs 12 Pro Max models.

 

[JulianL]

I'm disappointed that Apple didn't manage to deliver any increase in battery life this year but I think I'll still get a 12 Pro Max. One factor in my decision is that I was surprised how competitive the Apple trade in program is. I had the idea lodged in my mind that the trade in prices were derisory(*) but looking yesterday and comparing with the results of a price comparison site for what various places would offer me for my phone only one could beat the Apple price and then by only £20 (£580 from the winner vs £560 offered by Apple). That makes it pretty convenient and nothing like £1,000 outlay for me to upgrade.

(*) Was my impression of Apple trade-in prices being pretty pathetic simply wrong from the outset or has Apple upped its game there, at least in the UK, and become more competitive recently maybe as part of its environmental focus?

The one way I will be holding back some cash because of my disappointment about battery life is that I was planning to go straight from my 64GB phone to a 512GB phone so that I could store more music locally and go to uncompressed formats rather then my pretty rubbish 128kbs AAC at the moment. I think this year I'll go to the 256GB model instead and up my format to 256kbs AAC rather than going all the way to ALAC and then see what next year or the year after brings.

 

[deckard666]

I have a 256gb X with about a third of MP3 / AAC music collection on it and its fine but it is nothing compared to my lossless AK70 and Aptx Melomanias or Senheiser HD700 if I am honest but sometimes convenience wins out !

 

[JulianL]

I have a 256gb X with about a third of MP3 / AAC music collection on it and its fine but it is nothing compared to my lossless AK70 and Aptx Melomanias or Senheiser HD700 if I am honest but sometimes convenience wins out !

Interesting. Thanks for the info. Always nice to hear what others do.

I used to travel a lot (and hope to again) so I liked having ideally my whole collection with me in case I had some random "I really fancy listening to X" impulse on a plane/beach/hotel-balcony/wherever. I was willing to sacrifice quality for quantity especially given an airplane's noisy environment but about a year ago I bought a pair of Sure SE846 which make me want better than 128kbs AAC now!

I also bought the Bluetooth cable for my SE846s (as you say, sometimes convenience wins out!) but, given Apple's perplexing (to me) lack of higher quality Bluetooth codecs, means that at least as I understand it 256kbs AAC is the highest bit rate I will get from my phone to the IEMs. I'd still like to have all lossless on my phone for a couple of reasons however - (a) it would avoid transcoding. The master copies of my music for home listening is all lossless so to put it onto my phone I would simply have to point iTunes at the same folder that my home system (Roon) uses, and (b) again this is just my understanding and might be wrong but I am concerned that even with local files stored at 256kbs AAC the iOS audio subsystem might un-compress the 256kbs local files to pass to the Bluetooth codec that would then recompress them, something which clearly couldn't happen if the local source files on the phone were lossless.

What bit rates do you use to encode your on-phone MP3 & AAC stuff and do you use CBR or VBR?

 

[deckard666]

XLD , VBR, High quality mode, all settings as high as possible as space is never an issue.

Its not too much heartache tbh carting round my AK70 with EVERYTHING in FLAC and my ENTIRE music collection Just a few more memory cards to carry about and one large set of headphones if I dont fancy AptX.