Apple iPhone 12 review: Closer to a Pro than ever By Engadget

I, don't want to sound dramatic right off the bat, but the iPhone 12 and 12 pro feels like the start of a new era. At apple, the company not only announced the most new iPhones ever in one shot. It also signaled a shift in its design, sensibilities it embraced the world's growing 5g networks and saw the revival of MagSafe. I mean sure why not clearly the last year at Apple wasn't just business as usual and since apple's trying something different. We are too you're watching part one of our iPhone 12 and 12 pro review and in this video I'll be going over the many things these phones have in common and render a verdict on the 700 or 730 dollar iPhone 12. More on that later, in part, two, which is also live right now I'll focus more on what makes the one thousand dollar iPhone 12 Pro different and whether it's enough to make the premium worth the splurge got it all right.

Let's dive in the first thing, you'll notice about these iPhones is their new sort of iPad Pro like aesthetic, and I'm one of those people who think iPhone design peaked with the iPhone five. So I kind of love the semi-familiar look apple went with this year, it's a little more angular, and it has flat edges, all of which give the 12 and 12 pro a really distinct feels compared to the rest of the curvy smartphones. I've tested this year. More importantly, both of these phones are at least a little smaller than the phones they replace. If you're looking at the 12 pro, the differences are minute, but the regular iPhone 12.

What a difference a year makes the iPhone 11 was round and chunky, but this year's model is 11, thinner and 16 lighter according to apple, and you can really feel the difference in your hands, unlike before the iPhone 12 is every bit as sleek as the iPhone 12 Pro to the point where apple's cases can actually be used on both phones interchangeably. The only thing keeping the 12 from feeling as nice, as the 12 pro are, the materials' apple went with aluminum here, while the 12 pro's body is made of stainless steel. I have to say I do wish apple gave the iPhone 12, this sort of frosted glass backplate. It uses on the pros, because the 12 has a tendency to look pretty grimy after a while beyond that, though, the things that unite these phones far outweigh the things that divide them. Both are rated ip68 for water and dust resistance.

Both still have lightning ports instead of USB and this year both phones use apple's 6.1 inch. Super cinema Dr display these screens and their sort of ridiculous names debuted in the iPhone 11 Pro and pro max last year, and if there's any difference between the panels in the iPhone 12 and the 12 pro they're, not noticeable in everyday use and again, that's bigger news for the 12, because this screen is a huge improvement over the liquid retina displays apple used in its earlier budget flagships. Not only does it run at a higher resolution, it can also ramp its brightness as high as 1200 nits when you're watching HDR content, which makes it one of the best screens in your house most likely to binge movies on that said, the screen isn't going to be that bright. Most of the time, its max brightness for everything else is 800 nits, which is still plenty for easy readability outdoors. These screens are supposed to be a little tougher this year too, thanks to the ultra fine ceramic apple, blended into the cover glass, and there are two things I'll note here: one I am a total klutz, and I've accidentally dropped.

Both phones and both screens are still in one piece. Second, apple's so-called ceramic shield only really seems to matter for drop protection. I have been shoving these phones in and out of pockets and backpacks, and they've already started to develop tiny nicks and scratches, if you're, the kind of person who likes their screens pristine a screen protector is definitely a good idea. There's one more big design change. We need to talk about, and it's one that I don't think many of us saw coming MagSafe inside the 1212 pro along with all the usual wireless charging.

Stuff are two magnets one is ring shaped and that sort of keeps the MagSafe charger in place while another is below it and smaller and meant to keep accessories like card cases from sliding around it's a clever idea, and it addresses one of the biggest pain points with wireless charging. Finding the sweet spot apple also says that, by locking the charger in place with a magnet, they can achieve peak wireless charging rates, as 15 watts, with the right gear. Now, with all that said, I've never been much of a wireless charging person because I, like things to happen fast and wireless charging, is not that, but mag say fixes enough of the pain points that I'm starting to maybe change my mind beyond just charging MagSafe also has huge implications for the accessories market, but for now the options are pretty limited. Apple has a set of cases for the 12 and 12 pro with walk-throughs to help align the MagSafe charger, though I don't really think the magnets are doing anything to help keep the case in place. There's also kind of a nifty MagSafe card case wallet thing: you can slap on the back of your iPhone 12 and I have to tell you.

It seems like one of those ideas, that's just better on paper than in practice in pulling it out of my pocket. It's already popped off a few times, so, if you're, the kind of person who wants a MagSafe pop socket, I'm sorry it's probably not going to work out. I know what some of you really want to hear about, though performance, and we can actually keep this part pretty short, because they share apple's new a14 bionic chips that the iPhone 12 and 12 pro are exceptionally fast and honestly, nothing, no video editing, no games, no contrived multitasking. None of that could push either of those phones to their limits. Now that said, exactly how fast these phones feel will depend on where you're coming from.

If you have an iPhone 11 Pro, for example, the most you might see are apps and games launching or loading a little faster long story short. The a14 bionic is absolute overkill in terms of power, which is kind of the point. It might not really matter to you now, but when iOS 17 launches in 2023 you'll be glad that this thing still runs as well as it does, even with that performance overkill, though the iPhone 12 and 12 pros battery still last about as long as the iPhone 11 Pro did last year, which is about 11 to 12 hours of fairly consistent use off a single charge. Now the fact that the battery life hasn't gotten worse with a powerful new, chipset and 5g is some kind of accomplishment. I guess, but this is actually one area where the iPhone 12 is a little worse off than the iPhone 11.

To get a fuller sense of what it's like to use the iPhone 12 and 12 pro. You should definitely check out our iOS 14 review since that accounts for most of the stuff you're going to deal with day to day. But before you do that there are two more important things we need to talk about. The first is 5g, 2020 is the year.5G networks have really started to come into their own, but the thing is that, depending on where you live, and where you spend your time in your carrier, your experience could be wildly different from mine and that's mostly because there are two main flavors of 5g slower but more accessible, sub, 6 and faster, but geographically limited millimeter wave and naturally our carriers have invested in all of those things differently. I've been testing the iPhone 12 and 12 pro on Verizon and T-Mobile's 5g networks around Brooklyn and Manhattan, and I really cannot overstate this.

If you don't live near me, your mileage is going to vary on both phones. I saw data speeds, mostly on par with each carrier's LTE network in certain locations. I saw speeds as high as two to 300 megabits down, but overall my experience with T-Mobile 5g on these phones is that you probably won't notice major differences in network performance unless you live in a city. Regular Verizon 5g is a lot like T-Mobile 5g. In that, you probably won't see a huge difference in download speeds, so that can happen.

Things only get wild when you manage to find a millimeter wave node nearby, at which point you'll see a little UW logo pop up on your phone, and you can start downloading stuff at crazy, fast speeds. The fastest result I got was 1.4 gigabits down at Bryant park in Manhattan at those speeds. Hour-Long podcasts downloaded in about a second and I downloaded six and a half hours of music at the highest possible quality in Spotify in under a minute thing is other apps need to be fine-tuned to really take advantage of these speeds, and I think Netflix is the best example. You can download movies and TV shows at full millimeter wave speed on android phones, but the company hasn't updated its iOS app for the same experience yet, and let's not forget that millimeter wave just has some fundamental issues: speeds dipped by about half when I crossed the street at Bryant park, and it's all but unusable indoors. Of course, it's still pretty early days for 5g, and you can expect faster and more consistent speeds.

As carriers continue to flesh out their networks, but at least apple is now giving you the tools to start benefiting from those changes as they happen so far, most of the things we've discussed can be found in both the iPhone 12 and 12 pro. The one area where these phones are significantly different are the cameras, and I really want to hone in on the regular 12 here like last year. There are 12 megapixel wide and ultra white cameras around back and long story short. They take just great looking photos, but when you consider how much work apple put into its cameras last year, the changes' apple made for the iPhone 12 can't help but feel more subtle. The standard wide camera is the real star.

Here. It produces images with better exposure, plus lots of lively colors and slightly warmer tones throughout compared to last year. Apple did make some changes here that improve the mechanics of the camera, slightly like giving this thing a wider aperture and a new seven-element lens, but most of the changes in image quality you'll find here are because of the way apple changed its approach to computational photography. Smart HDR got a big boost this year, thanks to the a14 Bronx neural engine. Specifically, it can identify parts of a photo and tweak the way they look differently than it would tweak others, which means most of your photos, might seem a little punchier or more vivid than before, because those image optimizations are basically being spread out more evenly.

Of course, whether the look apple achieves here is bright, for you isn't for me to decide. Personally, I think the iPhone sits between the pixel, 5's moody feel and subdued colors, and the note 20 ultras tendency to saturate every color and sharpen every detail that works. For me. It might not for you the iPhone 12's photos can be a little more dramatic than real life now, but overall, I still think it does the best job of capturing the vibe of what you're trying to shoot these under the hood. Improvements also apply to the ultra-wide camera, which, as a utility player, isn't bad.

It captures as much space as last year's ultra-wide did and the iPhone 12 does a better job. At fixing this camera's lens distortions than the 11s did. We can also finally use night mode when shooting the ultra white or portrait shots, and I have to say I was hoping ultra-wide night. Shots would turn out better than they actually did. Samsung's Galaxy Note, 20 ultra processes, those kinds of photos to maximize detail, and I get why some people would prefer that google's pixel 5 does a pretty good job of capturing some of those fine details too, although it does have a tendency to lighten everything.

Both phones, though, lagged behind the iPhone, 12 and overall feel. I know that sounds silly, but I'm serious of those three phones. Only the iPhone's night shots kept the dark warm look of the places I was actually shooting apple also did a great job with video this year. To the point where I still look at some 4k video I shot and just sort of marvel for a little. That's because the iPhone 12 supports Dolby Vision, HDR and long story short.

That means, when you're shooting video with HDR enabled the iPhone 12 is also generating HDR metadata on the fly for every frame. Instead of just for the whole video, we can spend hours talking about the different standards in hdr10 versus Dolby Vision, and there might even be an upscale about that already, but just don't worry about it know that the iPhone 12's videos look amazing when you have the right kinds of displays to watch them on. So where does that leave us? Well look. I have no doubt that for most people, the iPhone 12 is definitely worth buying over the pro, if you're new to iPhones or if you haven't upgraded in a while or if you're, just not in love with the idea of dropping a thousand dollars on a phone. The iPhone 12 is very nearly the best you can do so.

Why should anyone think about buying an iPhone 12 Pro? Well, don't have to watch part two to find out. Thank you as always for watching. I hope that wasn't too long, and I hope to see you in part two which is available right now. You.

Source : Engadget