Skip to content 
How To Turn Off 5G On iPhone 12 – iPhone 15 (2023 Guide)
Turning off 5G on your iPhone will greatly improve your phone’s battery life – here’s how to turn off 5G on iPhone.
If you want better iPhone battery life, the easiest way to do this is by turning off 5G. Turning off 5G means you will only be able to use 4G data when you’re out and about, but it will give your iPhone 12 hours more uptime.
How To Turn Off 5G On iPhone (All Supported Models)
- Open the Settings app.
- Tap Cellular.
- Tap the SIM you are using.
- Tap Voice & Data.
- Now, tap 4G. This will make 4G your primary connection.
And that’s it: 5G is now switched off on your iPhone. Please note, this method works on ALL iPhone 12 models – inc. the iPhone 12 Mini, the iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max as well as later iPhones that support 5G, including the iPhone 15.
You Can Turn 5G Back On Whenever You Want
Also, just because you’ve turned off 5G doesn’t mean it has to stay off forever. You can go back in and switch it on whenever you like.
For instance, if you know you’re going out after work, for food or drinks, and you haven’t topped up your iPhone 12’s charge, you could switch off 5G – as well as other types of 5G like 5G UC – and not have to worry about the battery life dying on you.
Obviously, this isn’t ideal. But them’s the breaks with new technology. It’s always the case: new technology in phones ALWAYS has issues that, nine times out of ten, aren’t resolved until the second or third iteration. In this context, that’d be the iPhone 13 or iPhone 14.
iPhone 12 5G Battery Life Issues
The iPhone 12 was the first iPhone to feature 5G. At launch, Apple said it had redesigned the iPhone from the ground up to make the transition to 5G as painless as possible.
Using a technology called Smart Data, Apple designed the iPhone 12 to ONLY use 5G data when appropriate.
The idea with Smart Data is that it will conserve your battery life. But it didn’t really work all that well – as you can read here inside our iPhone 12 Battery Performance Guide.
The iPhone 12 has a smaller battery than the iPhone 11 and it also runs 5G. These two things combined made the iPhone 12’s battery performance considerably worse than the iPhone 11 – by almost four hours in some tests.
Could An Update Fix iPhone 12’s 5G Battery Issues?
It is also possible of course that Apple could make some improvements to the iPhone 12’s battery life via an update. I don’t know how this would work, from a technical perspective, but there could be some room for improvement via tweaks to how Smart Data works.
Apple’s engineers are pretty smart, so if there is even a smidgen of performance left untapped, you can bet your ass the next installment of iOS 14 will set about to bring more battery life to the iPhone 12.
Speaking personally, given that the iPhone 12 has 5G, I have ZERO idea why Apple decided to use a smaller battery inside it than the iPhone 11. The iPhone 11 had a 3110 mAh battery, while the iPhone 12 uses a 2815 mAh battery.
I know the A14 CPU is more efficient and OLED panels use less power. But I just can’t help but think all of the issues caused by the iPhone 12’s 5G would be negated somewhat had Apple increased the size of the battery, not made it smaller.
Or, failing that, included ACTUAL fast-charging for the iPhone 12 – like the kind you can now get on nearly all cheap Android phones released these days.
Keep Reading
Explore more →
