Apple iPhone 12 Review; This is the Apple iPhone 12 I feel like we have all seen an iPhone before at this point this is a pretty familiar iPhone, we have seen the rounded corners and the notch and the lightning port but there are a couple of key changes this year that are a first in the iPhone
So have been using this iPhone 12 for a bit and it’s my favourite iPhone ever mostly because of this design but if you are considering getting one there’s some stuff you should know in this sweet blue colour
I think it’s the best colour but these two phones are very similar same size like a case that works for one works for the other same main cameras almost the same screen same battery same charging
But there are a couple of things that only applies to the pro, with this new design shall we I love this super flat design it is so flat it’s not the typical almost flat where the screen is flat right up to the edges and then it curves over the very edge and they call it like 2.5d no this is flat like the phone happens to be a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter than last year
Apple iPhone 12 Review:
But I’m not as concerned with that but the square sides are the most efficient way to pack in that internals into the phones as efficiently as possible and I happen to think it looks and feels super-premium and modern on top of all that now this kind of red but also kind of salmon sometimes product red version after seeing it in person I’d probably not go for red one I’d go for either blue or the black
But yeah, for those aluminium rails are everything they are more grippable and maybe a little less comfortable at first but hey the buttons are clicky the power button is a little bit bigger.
It’s still ip68 water-resistant you have got your 5g antenna cut out on the right-hand side in some regions which trust me I’ll get way into that in a second and yeah, I just like holding this phone now if you put a case on it, I guess a lot of that doesn’t matter as much you’ll notice it less obviously
But still, even some cases are flattening out their dimensions for the iPhone 12 so that again will make it easier to grip harder to drop and speaking of dropping all these new iPhones come with on the front something new called ceramic shield and this is this speciality hardened kind of glass with crystal structure inside it and it’s on the front of these phones over the screen and it supposed to offer four times better drop protection
So, shatter protection basically which is great but I typically care just as much if not more about scratch resistance all the little micro scratches that your phone gathers over time and the thing about scratch resistance is it’s typically inversely proportional to shatter resistance so if you think about it the softer something is the less likely it is to shatter but then the easier it is to scratch it and vice versa the harder something is the less likely you are to scratch it
But the more brittle it is and the more shatterable it becomes so I see the headline of better drop protection and I’m sure people are already on that I have no idea how they’ll land on that 4x number but all right all know is I already have a little gash in my screen on the which is so sad but that’s probably out of level six no idea how that happened
But I’m feeling like the iPhone is not significantly more scratch resistance than before of course Zach will probably tell us the truth there so if it shatters a lot less when dropped we will see that would be nice
But I feel like a lot of the drop stuff is happenstance like if I happen to drop my phone a certain way it’s going to crack right and if I happen to drop my phone another way it’s probably not going to so I don’t know I don’t want to worry about too much use the case if you want to use a screen protector if you want to, I’m just going to live my life.
So possibly the biggest external hardware features of the new iPhone are mag safe and I think it has bigger implications for the future of the iPhone but right now mag safe is the optional new magnetic charging accessory standard on the back like right behind the apple logo so the number one MagSafe accessory that Apple sells is the puck charger it doesn’t come with a brick by the way
So, if you buy the charger for 40 bucks make sure you have a USB C charging brick but yeah just kind of slap it onto the back of the phone you line it up with the magnets you kind of get used to where it places right over the apple logo and that’s all good this charge at 15 watts while every other wireless charger on the iPhone still charges at seven and a half watts and a couple of other faqs on this number one
Yes, it is still qi charging so you can still charge the iPhone 12 with other wireless chargers and you can charge other phones with the mag safe puck if you are into that number two the durability concern with mag safe leaving marks on the iPhone, I have noticed that on mine too but I don’t think it’ll turn out to be a long-term problem it just seems to wipe off every time as you might remember
How the home pod was leaving the little white stained rings on certain wood tables which is kind of understandable because not every table is the same but I feel like I guess I hope apples probably tested magnetism a hundred thousand times and probably determined that it’s not an issue about the way they made this So should be okay
And yes, you can mag safe charge through most non-mag safe cases as long as they are thin enough and even that magnet will still work through some thin cases so I didn’t have any no mag safe cases to test, at the beginning of this mag safe bit I said something I said it as optional which it is for now
But I feel like we can all sort of see where this is going which is apple is slowly moving towards eventually making a port less iPhone which I think bottom-line is their solution to wirelessly conveniently charging a phone that doesn’t have a port is going to be MagSafe this thing right here so it’s not amazing but I guess it’s fine a couple of accessories they have a made for it
So far not bad there’s a regular case of course that you can continue to stack things through there’s a kind of weird-looking clear version of the case for some reason there’s a wallet that I mentioned that doesn’t have strong magnets but if you think about it, it’s not so peculiar that the one accessory, they chose to make outside of a case is a wallet like.
So, Apple wants to get rid of the port on the iPhone and go wireless charging for everything at a certain point maybe this year whatever right they already see ahead of time this particular headline which is people who use wallet cases can’t wireless charge their iPhone so they can’t charge the iPhone at all so apple needs to invent a way for people who use wallet cases to continue to charge their phone
So, they invent an accessory which is a removable wallet bit so you can charge the phone and when you don’t need to charge it you can put the wallet back on that seems to check out like I said it’s a whole thing
But today optional battery life on these phones has been pretty good but not noticeably better than last year at all matter of fact it’s a slightly larger higher-res display and a smaller physical battery
So, it’s pretty impressive that the phone still does okay you can kill it in the day with six hours of screen on time or just a lot of heavy use but this isn’t new with this standard size iPhone if you want a real battery champ you can go for the bigger phone the actual best new piece of the iPhone 12 though is the new display it goes from being that 720p LCD with bigger bezels that was easy to make fun of to this much better and even slightly bigger 6.1 inch 1080p OLED
It’s like night and day it’s basically on par with the pro which is pretty surprising to me just a slightly lower peak brightness now it’s 60 hertz again and while that’s kind of a missing feature at this point on an 800 phone in 2020 I was actually kind of expecting that I was just thinking the pros would get 120 hertz displays this year
But obviously, none of them did which is a bummer but let’s be honest they probably saw that as a battery-saving measure since this phone did also just get 5G so let’s talk about 5G I kind of love and hate 5G right now
So, this slogan apple and I guess the carriers 2 keep pushing that 5G just got real 5G just got just now 5G got real last time I checked like this year I reviewed like 30 phones with 5G so clearly 5G has already existed but there’s a reason they are saying it this way
So first of all I have tested all about 5G where I went to a 5G area testing it but the bottom line is it’s promising but it’s still being built right now but carriers and I guess the apple like the message that 5g just got real because now that all of the new iPhone has 5g built-in there’s about to be millions and millions and millions more people walking around with 5G capable phones in a few very short months and when that’s happens that tend to accelerate development that sort of makes it real which I get it
But also, the carriers would very very much like you to upgrade to their 5G plan please but we got to remember 5G 2021 has its up and it’s down like this iPhone 12 I’m using here has Verizon 5G which is surprisingly actually in my area it’s not millimetre wave it’s not ultra-wideband
But it can still give me roughly 20 faster download and upload speeds but 5G radios are also pretty power-hungry and the more time you spend on 5G the more battery you bleed though now Apple thought a lot about this of course so their solution and you might have caught it on stage during the announcement is called smart data mode and it tries to only use 5G when you need it to save battery so when you’re in a 4G area you are on 4G speeds everything works with LTE
No problem you are good it’ll feel normal when you are in a 5G area and you’re doing a lot of bandwidth-intensive stuff you are downloading a bunch of videos and music your face timing and crispy HD you’re doing a lot of that high bandwidth stuff that’s going to use 5G and that’s going to improve that experience a lot but if you are in a 5G area
But not doing anything that benefits from 5G then your phone will switch off and stick with 4G and as the verge reported it’ll still show you the 5G indicator in the corner but you’ll get 4G speeds which we’ll probably find but that also explains this sort of weird speed test result
So look my take is I get it the best technologies are supposed to be invisible like you shouldn’t even notice they work you go to download something while walking around you’re in a 5G area boom 5G turns on your download go super quick and then it turns off to save battery kind of like promotion on the iPad pro it goes up to 120 hertz
Also Read: Apple iPhone 12 Pro Review
When you’re playing games and scrolling and using it but when you’re not you are just sitting on the home screen or watching a video it will go down to 24 hertz to save battery so it’s sort of not there when you don’t need it it’s there when it helps you it’s just weird that the whole messaging has been in your face 5G 5G 5G 5G….
So yeah, I would say don’t buy this phone now because you want to get a 5G phone but if you do get this phone now then maybe it’ll be a nice bonus if you’re in a 5G area or the future when you end up in a 5G area you’ll be able to use that too cool
All right new iPhone equals the new best camera ever in an iPhone right well sure iPhone 12’s got a slightly updated dual-camera system with a standard and an ultra-wide the standard has a slightly wider aperture at f 1.6 instead of f 1.8 and to be honest it’s not much of a difference in the camera like it’s just not same as the pixel
They are not doing anything too drastic if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it the hardware improvements are almost impossible to notice in regular photos but they will get you an improvement in like the edge cases the most difficult photo and video taking scenarios
So, like handheld in low light that’ll be better night mode will be better autofocus on fast-moving subjects super high dynamic range shots like shooting straight into the sun thanks to smart hdr3 stuff
Which is to say some of the absolute best and most consistent crisp photos on any smartphone so that’s not a letdown but iPhone video though firmly in a league of its own is firmly like every time I test a new iPhone camera
It’s just the video camera is so much better and people care a lot about a video they take a lot of videos so you would want to know the yeah iPhone takes great videos and that’s despite not shooting 8k and not having a huge new sensor or anything crazy like that it’s just so fine-tuned and so reliable but I want to save my full analysis of that for the video about the pros because I think pros care even more about video stuff and there’s potentially well there’s even new hardware of the sensors in the 12 pro max.
You might have heard about Dolby vision hdr these new iPhones are the first cameras the only cameras in the world to shoot bit high dynamic range Dolby vision 4k video and that’s awesome hdr video is awesome higher brighter bright deeper shadows overall better images even better perceived quality
I love hdr but here’s the thing Dolby vision is just one hdr standard or format by Dolby and other hdr standards have been out you might hear of hdr10 is one of them and that some other smartphones have started enabling to shoot you might have a smartphone in your pocket right now that is already capable of shooting hdr10 video
But the issue with new formats is always compatibility so some TVs are hdr10 certified some aren’t some displays are adobe vision certified some aren’t so you can look at the display of the video you take on the iPhone and it’s Dolby vision certified and it looks amazing
And if you send this video to another iPhone 12 it’ll look amazing on that iPhone but as soon as you upload it to Twitter or Instagram or TikTok kind of anything at this point even YouTube it doesn’t show up as that hdr on most people’s screens it’s back to SDR
But the big deal here again is kind of like 5G, because there are about to be so many iPhones, and 12s in the world there are about to be millions of new devices and new people out there shooting tons of hdr videos and looking to share it and so now there’s more incentive for places and apps like Twitter and Instagram & TikTok to support hdr.
So maybe the tagline should have been hdr just got real anyway the rest of the iPhone is pretty familiar and that’s a good thing for most people iOS 14 we’ve all seen it by now it’s familiar even though there are a couple of bugs and apps that will probably get updated pretty soon face id it’s completely unchanged even performance is familiar since there’s nothing super new like high refresh rate
There is the new a14 bionic inside which is one of the very first 5 five nanometer chips in any device it is a more powerful CPU and GPU and is paired with 4 gigs of ram and everything’s great but that’s mainly for speed that you’re going to notice later down the road
When the phone is 2, 3, or 4 years old and hopefully still feeling fast but fundamentally there isn’t that much of a difference in these iPhones and the performance you get this year versus what last year didn’t already do just a little bit faster but yeah even at a somewhat premium 830 bucks that the actual price
Apple’s website shows carrier pricing at first so it’s a little misleading but even at that price yeah, this phone with best-in-class cameras best in class performance much better screen is pretty damn good
It’s this is the one to get for most people here’s a too long didn’t watch version for those of you lazy people that I know just went down to the chapters and skipped to this it’s a great phone the best new parts of it are the display which was a huge knock up from last year knock up
Why’d I say it like that the display is better battery life’s about the same cameras are a little bit better build quality and design are also an awesome improvement and mag safe it’s optional for now but might as well start getting used to it and the worst part is the price is a little higher because also 6G is built into the phone even for people who are never going to use it but that being said there you have it great work apple. Also check out our: 5 Best Guided Meditation Apps For Android and iOS.
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