Here’s how to calibrate your iPhone 12 Pro battery and why it’s worth doing every so often. The benefits will surprise you!
As your iPhone ages, your battery performance decreases — that’s just a fact of life. However, did you know that something as simple as calibrating your iPhone 12 Pro battery can help? Let’s take a closer look at how to calibrate an iPhone 12 Pro battery and why calibration is important.
Why You Should Calibrate Your iPhone 12 Pro Battery
Calibrating your iPhone battery (also referred to as resetting an iPhone battery) is a surprisingly important part of iPhone battery health maintenance. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize its benefits, and even fewer take the time to perform the necessary steps.
Lithium-ion batteries degrade as they age and undergo repeated charging and discharging cycles. Operating systems, such as iOS, track the battery’s operating range. Regardless of wear and age, battery tracking requires occasional adjustment. Battery calibration helps iOS re-calculate the range of battery life. You should calibrate your iPhone 12 Pro battery periodically (every 1 – 3 months) and after every major iOS update. If you upgrade iOS and notice fast battery drain, inaccurate battery metering or unexpected shutdowns, try calibrating the battery before anything else.
Without a correctly calibrated battery, you’re likely to experience inaccurate and erratic battery percentage readings, fast battery drain, and a shorter total lifespan for your battery. If your iPhone 12 Pro shuts down unexpectedly when your battery life percentage hits single digits, poor calibration is almost certainly to blame.
See also: iPhone 12 Pro Battery Draining Fast? Fix!
Many factors can cause a battery to become incorrectly calibrated. Software updates, background apps refreshing, new features, and even plain old day-to-day use can all cause discrepancies.
And even if you haven’t noticed an incorrect calibration, performing the steps will ensure all the ions in the battery are flowing, thus improving the battery’s peak performance.
While you shouldn’t need to calibrate regularly, it’s worth a try if you’ve had iPhone 12 Pro battery drain issues other steps didn’t resolve.
Preparing to Calibrate an iPhone 12 Pro Battery
Before starting the calibration process, there are a few steps you should take in preparation. They all revolve around disabling features and services so as few tasks as possible draw power.
This will help lead to an accurate reading later in the process. After you’ve reset the battery, you can re-enable all four of these options. It’s also worth ensuring you haven’t accidentally enabled low-power mode at Settings > Battery.
Disable Location Services
Here is how to disable location services on your iPhone:
Step 1: Launch the Settings app.
Step 2: Scroll down and tap on Privacy.
Step 3: Tap on Location Services.
Step 4: Slide the toggle next to Location Services into the Off position.
Remember, you can use location services to track a lost iPhone, so make sure you don’t forget to re-enable this after you’re done calibrating.
Disable Background Refresh
Here’s how to turn off the background app refresh:
Step 1: Launch the Settings app.
Step 2: Go to General.
Step 3: Tap on Background App Refresh.
Step 4: Tap on Background App Refresh again.
Step 5: Select Off.
Lower Your Screen Brightness
Here’s how to lower the screen brightness on your iPhone:
Step 1: Launch the Settings app.
Step 2: Go to Display and Brightness.
Step 3: Drag the Brightness slider all the way to the left.
Disable Automatic Updates
Here’s how to turn off automatic updates:
Step 1: Launch the Settings app.
Step 2: Scroll down and tap on App Store.
Step 3: Slide the toggles under AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS into the Off position.
How to Calibrate an iPhone 12 Pro Battery
Now you’re ready to calibrate the battery on your iPhone 12 Pro. Be warned that it takes quite a bit of patience; you’ll need to wait around for a couple of complete charge/drain cycles to finish.
Luckily, you don’t need any third-party tools or apps. Anything you see in the App Store professing to reset your iPhone battery is at best unnecessary and at worst a scam. iPhone 12 Pro battery calibration is easy to perform without extra help.
Step 1: Drain the Battery
The first step is to completely drain your iPhone 12 Pro battery. You can do so during normal usage. If you want to speed up the process, you can play a long video on YouTube with the volume turned up to the maximum level.
Step 2: Wait Three Hours
You may have noticed that your iPhone will automatically shut down even if the battery has a small percentage left. This process is by design; it gives the device a chance to save the current state of your apps so you don’t lose data.
It’s important to let the last embers of the battery life die away. The only way to do this is to wait. Longer is better, but you should wait at least three hours. If you have time, letting it sit overnight is preferable.
Step 3: Charge Your iPhone
Now it’s time to refill the battery. To ensure the optimal performance, make sure you follow these three tips:
Use a wall socket rather than a computer.
Ideally, use an official Apple charger. At the very least, make sure you use a trusted Lightning cable and not a cheap knockoff.
Continue to charge for a couple of hours even after your iPhone shows the battery as 100 percent full. You need to ensure you squeeze in every drop of power to ensure the calibration works correctly.
Step 4: Drain Your iPhone
Now you need to repeat the whole process a second time. It’s the same drill as before: completely drain the power out of your iPhone.
Either use it as you normally would, or play videos on loop to move it along faster.
Step 5: Wait Another Three Hours
It’s getting repetitive by now, but stick with it. Once again, you need to ensure you drain that last bit of battery power from your iPhone. Like before, the longer you can leave it, the better.
Step 6: Charge Your iPhone
To finish the process, you need to recharge your device. Follow the same guidelines as earlier, ensuring you let your iPhone continue charging for a couple of hours even after it’s full.
Finally, you need to re-enable the services and functions you disabled earlier. Turn location services, background refresh, automatic updates, and automatic screen brightness back on.
How to calibrate iPhone 12 Pro battery? Now you know!
The vast majority of people visit this site because of iPhone 12 Pro battery issues. Calibration can help in some cases, but it is not a panacea. If calibration doesn’t improve your iPhone 12 Pro battery life, it may be time to replace the battery. Fortunately, you can extend the lifespan of your iPhone’s battery by following a few tips. For more information, please read How To Extend iPhone 12 Battery Life .
Many users are skeptical of this process and feel it is superstitious. I hope I have shed light on the reasons why you should calibrate your iPhone 12 Pro battery.