With the iPhone 12 finally available, prospective buyers probably have many questions about 5G. How fast will 5G be in my area; what can 5G do that 4G LTE couldn't? And, perhaps most importantly at this point, what will 5G mean for my battery life?

According to our iPhone 12 battery test results, the news is not optimistic. We put both the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro through a custom test in which we surfed the web continuously over a data connection with the screen brightness set to 150 nits. During these sessions, both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro were connected to 5G, with the iPhone 12 lasting 8 hours 25 minutes and the Pro lasting 9 hours 6 minutes.

These times are not great, as the average smartphone charge time is about 10 hours. iPhone 11 Pro was not known for lasting longer than other iPhone 11 models, but it lasted nearly 10.5 hours when tested a year ago.

To measure the impact of 5G on the iPhone 12's battery life, we decided to re-run our tests in LTE. The results were striking: both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lasted about 2 hours longer when set to avoid 5G altogether. The results were 10:23 for the iPhone 12 and 11:24 for the iPhone 12 Pro. This result for the iPhone 12 Pro LTE puts it on the list of models with the longest battery life of any device tested in the past 18 months.

Now, there could be two different factors at play here. In our tests, the 5G signal may have been too weak. AT&T's 5G network in suburban eastern Pennsylvania showed an average of two bars out of four. When a cell phone can't pull off a strong, stable signal, it looks for a better signal. And if it can't find one, it will switch back and forth between slow 5G and fast LTE, all of which consumes power. We can't rule out this as the cause of the iPhone's poor performance during the battery test, but it could play a role.

Alternatively, it could simply be that 5G consumes more power than LTE, causing Apple's newest device to perform poorly when connected to a high-speed network. This is certainly a strong possibility.

Whatever the cause, it is true that the charge lasted longer over LTE. Also, 5G is still in its infancy, and even though carriers have launched their networks nationwide, 5G infrastructure has largely failed to meet its speed targets, especially in long-range deployments in the sub-6 GHz band. This means that nationwide 5G will not necessarily reduce speeds compared to LTE, at least at this time, but may result in faster cellular downloads and uploads.

With this in mind, we have a suggestion. If you buy an iPhone 12 and notice that the battery life is not as good as you would like, just turn off 5G. Fortunately, there is an easy way to do this from the iPhone's "Settings" app.

Open "Settings" and head to "Cellular"; from there, tap on "Cellular Data Options," then "Voice and Data." Here you will see options for the type of data you want your iPhone to use. The option you choose won't be the only type of data you receive; rather, you'll get everything under it, so 5G still allows LTE, for example.

Just tap LTE from there and you're all set. iPhone 12 will no longer try to connect to 5G networks, potentially saving you charging time.

We still recommend that new iPhone 12 users leave 5G on and at least see how the network affects their device. The results we observed will surely not be the same for everyone, as data performance is obviously highly location dependent. Furthermore, if 5G is really fast where you live, you might choose to keep 5G on, never mind battery life.

For what it's worth, Apple has designed a feature to aid 5G battery life called Smart Data Mode. This setting is built into the iPhone 12 and is the 5G Auto option that is active by default. If the screen is off but data is streaming up and down (for example, when listening to Spotify or Apple Music), it will instruct the device to fall back to LTE.

The idea is that if you are not actively scrolling, looking, or interacting with the display in any way, you don't necessarily need all the throughput that 5G allows and can instead use LTE to make your iPhone last all day The idea is.

Smart Data Mode was on when we conducted our tests, but probably did not play a role in our tests due to the nature of its design (it only really becomes a factor when the screen is off). However, it is certainly possible that Smart Data Mode could be a positive factor in everyday use, as people in the real world do not use their phones for 10 hours straight of web browsing. Therefore, it is recommended to at least observe the mileage on 5G before discarding it altogether.