Here is the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Review It’s that time of year again a little later in the year thanks to the pandemic but we have Apple iPhone 12 pro here we will also be reviewing the iPhone 12, not a pro and eventually the max when it comes out as well
So, this is new for apple insofar as the old pro was 5.8 inches and then the max was significantly larger at 6.5 inches the newer one is going to be 6.7 inches so you kind of had a big size range right with the regular iPhone not pro sitting in the middle at 6.1 inches which I always thought was a nice size you are getting big
But you’re not getting so big that you’re buying your pants to fit your phone and having a very heavy phone slamming into you thanks to that well premium stainless steel thing that apple love to do so 6.1 inches I think this a sweet spot for a lot of people I know it for me
We’re going to look at it new here obviously the design besides the size changes design we have the flat-sided look whether you go with the 12 or the 12 pro you’re going to get that design the 12 and the 12 pro take the same cases everything is the same in terms of the dimensions where the buttons are and all that
Apple iPhone 12 Pro Review:
But I like this straight-sided look because it’s easier to hold on to it’s not so much that slippery bar of sub sort of phenomenon I have a feeling that other manufacturers will probably copy it as they tend to do with apple including remember when they were all copying the notch
Yes unfortunately the notch is not new it’s still here and that’s for the true depth front camera onboard and that 3D very secure kind of camera takes up a lot of room still
So we still have a notch here the display however is a little bit higher resolution it’s still that OLED retina XDR whatever apple likes to call it in terms of marketing terms it’s a lovely display it’s low reflectance I find this one the easiest to see outdoors and here in Texas where we have a lot of super bright sunshine believe me
I get to test that outs 800 nits 1200 nits on auto max brightness which we see a lot of phones do these days they don’t let you drive it at the full 1200 nits all the time
Because you would kill your battery life but it brightens up when you go outdoors also new is the mag safe charger thingy on the back it’s a magnetic ring it’s a low-powered magnet so they don’t warn you about don’t put your phone near your chest and your pacemaker or your wall
But they do warn you if you combine the phone with a MagSafe case then keep your credit cards and other mag strips away from it for those who still have mag strips that you use on your credit cards and at first
I thought this was going to be the most brilliant selling point for the phone something so simple and that’s apple is good at right they don’t come out with a lot of wild new technologies they take something that existed and put it to use in a way that’s something a lot of people want and it might still be that
So the MagSafe charger is very compact compared to other wireless charger’s that’s nice enough but the fact that it magnetically clips on is so convenient because with wireless charging you know you are always jiggling
Your phone around sliding it to find the sweet spot maybe you bump it you just realize oh it was not on the wireless charger properly anymore and you didn’t get the charge that you needed that sort of stuff but beyond that, it’s a thing like stands car mounts tripods all those
Suddenly with a whole ecosystem probably that will come out of mag-safe accessories becomes as easy as just snapping your phone on so we tested this with several different cases and I can tell you leather cases that are not mag-safe cases which means they also have a little magnetic ring embedded inside of them no magnetism happens there you can still charge with them just fine
But no magnetism happens with the tpu and the plastic cases that we have tested here we have a total case which is a clear case that one charge just fine and there’s still a little bit of magnetism we try to partake case that is a very thin kind of aramid carbon fibre design case there’s still a little magnetism that works just fine
If you go for something super thick probably you won’t get much magnetic strength anymore you don’t need the magnets to charge the whole point of the MagSafe also is that’s a 15-watt charger whereas other qi charges charge an iPhone at 7.5 watts
You will only get 15-watt charging with these new iPhone 12 model, not the iPhone 11 or you know older so there’s that and I found that using even the existing 18-watt charger which is what Apple used to ship including with the 11 pro-family of phones works the same as the new 20-watt charger which by the way is maddeningly identical-looking except for it has a little 20 watt in light grey on grey thanks to apple make it hard to read so you can tell which is
But I mean the two odd differences for a 15-watt charger not so much speaking of that no charger in the box anymore no air pods wired ear pods anymore so the box is thinner apple says this is great environmentally and reduces shipping cargo space
I don’t know it’s probably really about keeping the cost of the phone down and keeping their margins up that’s what I think anyway that 20-watt charge that I was talking about didn’t ship with any iPhone so nobody has one
If you are dying to have the latest greatest 20-watt charger to maximally wire to charge your iPhone at 20 watts you’re going to have to pony up 19 bucks for that charger too while we are still on that topic the MagSafe charger is 39 bucks which are pretty inexpensive relative to other name brand wireless chargers say from Samsung or something like that but Samsung gives you the charger brick in the box
Apple still doesn’t do that so yeah and throw another 19 on so it’s more like 58 for the pairing also the MagSafe charger has a USB c cable permanently attached to the charger so if you find that it’s too short because you know apple never gives you long cords on things it will back to the phone itself it has the a14 bionic CPU as ever silly fast
Apple does find uses for it like computational photography and augmented reality and stuff like that but future-proofing, believe me, yes it’s very fast and typically apple does beat out the higher-end snapdragons and android land but you know all of our phones are faster than we need so whatever that’s nice we have new ceramicist glass on the front face only not on the back
So if you watch drop tests keep that in mind or scratch tests there will be a difference and apple says well it’s harder to crack it which is nice and so far in the drop tests and scratch tests I’ve seen it does seem to be a bit more durable but we’re still talking about a phone that is glass front and back handle your phone accordingly i.e.
Probably use a case it’s a little bit lighter get ready for Halloween folks 6.66 ounces which are 189 grams and I do appreciate that again because apple phones tend to be pretty heavy compared to the competition thanks to the stainless steel thing going on it’s a little bit thinner than the last generation at 7.4 millimetres versus 8.1 again that’s a welcome change and it’s probably a good idea
Because when you have straight sides if you know it doesn’t sit in the hand quite as comfortably for some people if it’s a stretch for your hand for example I have huge hands a 6.1-inch iPhone 8 stretch in my hand so it’s quite comfy
But the idea there is less width and more hand comfort you go that probably that will be even more important for the pro max which is going to be one big phone the cameras on this have incremental improvements in terms of the specs and the most of the shooting capabilities something new though is the ability to shoot in Dolby vision hdr 4k video which is cool and I think 6 months from now is going to be even cooler
Why because it’s the latest version of the Dolby vision standard or codec and right now not many TVs support that if you play it on your iPhone your iPhone does support that then you will see more vibrant colours it’s going to look nice and it does look nice but as you start to try to put that on your TVs or your monitors
It will default to a standard definition of colour or sometimes just look a little bit wonky right now so yeah I’m sure given apples millions of iPhones that they ship we are going to see all TVs get updated pretty soon for those who want to consume your beautiful videos on the screen other than that the aperture gets a little bit faster on the lenses and the big thing for the camera here is the ultra-wide angle camera gets night mode
Now so before we didn’t have that and well it’s pretty obvious right sometimes you want to use the ultra-wide and it was dead in the water at night so we are competitive with Samsung’s offerings and the pixel and all that would be on the shoot good night mode photos in an ultraviolet way in terms of the cameras you have got 2x optical zoom for the telephoto and 2x optical zoom for the wide-angle lens
The pro max will give you two and a half x optical zoom for the telephoto lens but the more interesting thing with that one is it has a bigger main sensor size which usually means more depth of field effects a little bit more natural bokeh and even better low light handling
So it will be interesting to see that to see how much of a difference that makes it’s still 12-megapixel and all 12-megapixel front and rear by the way the front camera can shoot Dolby vision hdr as well but I think it’s good that they did also go with super high megapixel account and complicated that it can be challenging for everyday photographer types, not the enthusiasts already know how to use their apertures and their lenses and all that
Getting that shallow depth of field under control to have your subject be fully in focus I have a feeling that apples probably going to do a good job of keeping it simple and keeping it sharp we’ll find out as usual apple increases the base storage amounts every year so you paid the same price
Also by the way 9.99 is starting to seem attractive now that we are seeing phones twelve hundred dollars fourteen hundred dollars in competition from Samsung one plus prices are even going up but anyway this starts at 128 gigs of storage as always
If you want to go up it’s 100 per storage increment and the up increments are still 256 and 512 gigs also obviously we have the 5G this the year of 5G so this is in the united states supports low mid-band and millimetre wave and in the united states
Because we have millimetre-wave, particularly Verizon’s big on that’s the super-duper fast but very very short range kind of 5G we have a little antenna window on the side so 5G right now I do find it gets a little bit better signal strength and coverage not much better data speeds how it’s going to affects battery life well I haven’t seen it impacting on the iPhone now with the iPhone what they are doing is they are switching between 4G and 5G depending on what you are doing if you are streaming a video
You are probably going to want to use 5G because that requires more bandwidth if you are just starting web pages it’s going to use 4G that’s the idea behind it anyway to help save battery life
So we only have low and mid-band 5G here mostly low band doesn’t really affect battery life much as I can tell but if you are in millimetre wave coverage well lucky you, you’ll get psycho fast data speed that you probably don’t even need on a phone and that probably will create more heat and reduce battery life too
So it’s got to be a little more challenging talking about battery life battery capacity is slightly down from the 11 series I don’t think a lot of people go every year anymore upgrading their iPhone but if you did that’s one thing you might feel like your battery life isn’t quite as good as last year’s model
If you are coming from an iPhone 10 or older you probably going to think the battery life on this is rocket unless you’re in a millimetre wave coverage area you always have the option of just going with 4G on the phone if you do find that it’s killing your battery life
So, what about the iPhone 12 versus the 12 pro there used to be a bigger divide in terms of price and features right the regular non-pro model had an LCD it didn’t have an OLED display there was a difference in the screen size
Now you have got the identical body design only aluminium on the 12. and again, we will be reviewing the 12. You get an OLED display on that one too you get the same CPU you get the mag safe well what don’t you
You don’t get three cameras you get two you lose the telephoto lens you lose some of the higher-end photography options probably just because they wanted to do that not because of computational reasons running the same CPU you get less ram than four gigs on the 12 versus six gigs on the 12 pro
But you do get a lighter aluminium phone and you get brighter colours on the regular line of phones they always go these subdued colours with the proline and this year it’s specific blue that we have which is very pretty with the regular 12 series you get some more bold colours and you get a glossy back on the phone now to make a note about the price between these two in the united states is 839 for the 12, not pro and 9.99 for the 12 pro but the not pro start at 64 gigs of storage so if you want to move up to 128 gigs of storage for parity that’s 879
You are only talking 120 difference which I think kind of upsells people to the pro you get the stainless steel you get the telephoto camera you get more ram you get the idea for face id it works pretty much the same as the previous generation which means it’ll be a little bit quicker than the iPhone 10
If you are upgrading from the iPhone 10 also we still have the ip68 water resistance so let’s talk a little bit about the iPhone and pricing and competition this phone is 9.99 which used to seem offensive a couple of years ago when it was the first phone to be so expensive and now it seems like well Samsung galaxy s20 plus is 11.99 1200 list price
We have got s20 ultras and note 20 ultras going around 1400 and well then the folding phones that cost even more so I can’t say now that apple is like the most expensive out there but clearly, one thing they’re not doing is anything different are they this is still an iPhone
Also Read: Apple iPhone 12 Review
It’s a lot of nice evolutionary things just a nice new design we get the MagSafe ecosystem but it’s still pretty much the same iPhone you knew and if you are an iPhone user you love this is not a galaxy z fold too exactly is it, of course, you could buy two iPhone 12
Pros for the cost of one z fold too couldn’t you but there’s no shock at all I know some people are migrating over to folding phones because they feel like there’s something new happening there that apple still really isn’t doing likewise there’s the galaxy z flip and z flip 5G as well around fourteen hundred dollars
If you like the idea of a foldable fashion phone going on and then we have things like Samsung always pushing the envelope in terms of not necessarily revolutionary things I mean they’re doing things like space zoom with the camera which is kind of neat and all that but they are very good at taking a phone like the s20 plus and making it feel smaller than it is so competition is a thing so that’s the iPhone 12 pro as you can tell I like this new redesign I think other people are going to be copying it I like the size of this at 6.1 inches
It’s a good size screen without being a humongous surfboard in your pocket but they will be making that surfboard model soon in November for you in case you want the biggest one and we have got 5g onboard for future-proofing other than that always with an iPhone fantastic video quality very good photography, in general, we have got a lovely display that works quite well in bright light we have a very good night mode we have got pretty much everything you want from an iPhone and in pretty stainless steel build. Also check out our: 5 Best Guided Meditation Apps For Android and iOS.
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