Apple's new iPhone 12 smartphones are the company's first to support 5G, but using this feature comes at the cost of battery life.
These findings come from tests conducted by the review site Tom's Guide, which compared the battery performance of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro when using 5G and 4G mobile networks.
The results are less than ideal: the iPhone 12 lasted 10 hours and 23 minutes on 4G but only eight hours and 25 minutes on 5G—a roughly 20 percent decrease. The iPhone 12 Pro showed similar results, with its battery lasting 11 hours and 24 minutes on 4G, but just nine hours and six minutes on 5G.
Tom's Guide's testing involved continuous web surfing on the phone at 150 nits of brightness, launching a new site every 30 seconds until the battery was depleted.
The same test was conducted on other devices as well. Apple's previous iPhone 11 and 11 Pro performed similarly to the newer models on 4G, lasting 11 hours and 16 minutes and 10 hours and 24 minutes, respectively. These results aren't particularly surprising given that Apple's specs for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro quote roughly the same battery life as their predecessors. However, the iPhone 12 Pro outperformed expectations, but only in 4G mode.
Tom's Guide also conducted the same test on some Android phones, and the results were more favorable than those of Apple. For example, the Google Pixel 5's battery life remained nearly the same on 5G and 4G, at 9 hours and 56 minutes and 9 hours and 29 minutes, respectively. The OnePlus 8T's battery performance was minimally affected by 5G. While Samsung's Galaxy S20 and S20 Plus performed worse with 5G on, they still outperformed the iPhones.
The issue of 5G-related battery drain was noted by several iPhone 12 reviewers, and this test provides additional evidence of the problem. The question remains whether Apple can address this issue through software updates.
We have contacted Apple about this issue and will update this article when we receive a response.