iPhone 12's Battery Life on 5G Lags Behind Samsung

It was already clear that the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro would consume their battery faster when connected to 5G networks than a 4G network, but we didn't know how fast it would consume. Now the resulting battery tests have produced interesting results in the Tom's Guide test, where a new webpage is installed at 30-second intervals through a browser script running at 150 nit screen brightness.

Under these conditions, the iPhone 12 offered 8:25 hours of battery life on 5G and 10:23 hours on 4G – a difference of about 20%, which is important for the already short battery life. The iPhone 12 Pro performed a little better. It took 9:06 hours at 5G while taking 11:24 hours on LTE. It was about 20% lower again. The iPhone 12 offers 53 minutes shorter battery life than the iPhone 11, which comes with 4G. The iPhone 12 Pro lasts exactly an hour longer than the iPhone 11 Pro.

The Galaxy S20 and S20+, which come with larger 4,000 mAh and 4,500 mAh batteries, pass the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro when tested at 60 Hz. However, it falls short of the iPhone duo when running the 5G scan test at the highest 120 Hz refresh rate. The Google Pixel 5 and OnePlus 8T outst the iPhone 12 duo even at a higher screen refresh rate (90Hz and 120Hz respectively).

The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are right in the middle of Apple's new iPhone family in terms of battery capacity. It would be interesting to see how the smaller iPhone 12 mini and larger iPhone 12 Pro Max offer battery life.

It should also be noted that the iPhone 12 series automatically switches between 5G or 4G, depending on what you do. Listening to music while the screen is off is a scenario in which the phone goes to LTE by default.