While we are generally quite impressed with the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, there is one thing that has been pulling in reviews around the world, including ours.

Our tests have shown that the iPhone 12 family's battery falls short compared to the iPhone 11 as well as rival Android phones.

And it seems we are not alone: exhaustive testing by PhoneArena proves that the iPhone 12 is particularly weak when playing 3D games, showing the full extent of the problem.

In a 3D game battery test, both the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro lasted just one minute shy of three hours, while the iPhone 11 lasted 7 hours and 37 minutes. even the Pixel 5 (5:05 minutes) and iPhone SE (4:59 minutes) left the new generation iPhone the new generation of iPhones.

PhoneArena suspects that the A14 Bionic chip in current games may not be fully optimized. The site tested the results by installing Call of Duty Mobile and Minecraft, and "in both cases, the iPhone got quite warm and the battery began to melt. When the games were left alone, the iPhone returned to normal battery drain.

In other tests, PhoneArena found that the iPhone 12 held up a bit better. In a web browsing test, for example, the 12.5 hours achieved by both the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro was comparable to the Samsung Galaxy S20 and Pixel 5, and nearly four hours longer than the iPhone 11 Pro achieved in the same test.

The same is true for video playback, where the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro's score of less than 7 hours, while not spectacular, is at least on par with the iPhone 11. However, all iPhones are marginally beaten by the Samsung Galaxy S20 (10 min 20 sec) and the Google Pixel 5 (8 min 49 sec).

Hopefully, software updates will improve performance - especially with regard to battery drain in games. In fact, this generation of iPhones is limited in what it can do because of the smaller batteries: the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro had 3,110 mAh and 3,04 6mAh batteries, respectively, while the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have 2,815 mAh.

The size difference does not explain the large discrepancy regarding real-world stamina, but those expecting the iPhone 12 to last as long as the iPhone 11 during intensive work will likely be disappointed.