A Long-Term Review of the iPhone 12 Camera
I use my phone like most people. I scroll through my social media feeds, order from overpriced delivery apps, and even make the occasional phone call. But in 2021, there’s one feature alone that decides how much I’ll spend on a phone: the camera.
I take photos. At times, I do it professionally, but most of the time I do it because I absolutely love photography. I’ve used ( and even reviewed ) a lot of cameras. I figured: why not review the iPhone 12… purely as a camera?
The iPhone 12 launched four and a half months ago, to a flash flood of reviews. When you only have a week with a review unit, even with the best synthetic photography benchmarks, you end up with a first impression. Smart cameras call for real-world trials to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
Over the last four months, I’ve taken my iPhone to deserts and snow, mounted it on motorcycles, hiked into the wilderness, and gone swimming with it. I was left with a lot of photos and some interesting findings, and I’m excited to present a real-world review of the iPhone 12 lineup.
iPhones 12
Fall 2020 saw four new iPhones with differences ranging in size, features, and finish:
I’m privileged to work on a camera app, as we have to acquire every variant of every iPhone model each year. This review will focus on the two extremes: the iPhone 12 Pro Max and its tiny cousin, the iPhone 12 mini.
It’s easy to fall into the mistake of grading and comparing an iPhone on its year-over-year improvements. Most people do not upgrade their phone every year. Similarly, it’s not great to benchmark an iPhone against a full-frame professional digital camera.
A 40+ megapixel, full-frame sensor camera will win against an iPhone in hardware-based image quality. That’s just physics. What the cameras in our phones are fighting for, however, is a total equation where good enough meets ease of use, flexibility, and portability.
If I’m going on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, I’ll carry along a big camera. If I’m getting married, I’ll hire a professional photographer with a big camera. But what about a weeklong vacation? Watching your children growing up? Practicing photography, and observing the ebbs and flows of everyday life? I find myself carrying cameras less, and shooting with my iPhone more.
It’s a Hard(ware) Thing
Almost every modern camera refresh is one part evolutionary, and one part revolutionary. Hardware tends to evolve, with incremental sensor and lens improvements. Short of a surprise breakthrough in hardware, companies focus on revolutionary software to make the most of light gathered in sensors.
We dove into the hardware changes when the iPhone 12 launched, but it’s worth a quick recap.
The baseline iPhone 12 camera is truly a slight evolution. The main camera (we’ll call it ‘wide’) has a slightly larger aperture, moving from f1.8 to f1.6. That works out to 27% more light than the previous generation. Meanwhile, the Max-sized phone saw a larger evolutionary leap (so to speak) with a 47% larger sensor. Apple chose to not add megapixels on this bigger sensor, but pack in larger photo-sites, which makes for better low-light photography. Apple claims an 87% improvement in light collection, and it sure looks it.
This larger wide-angle camera includes a sensor-shift-based stabilization system. While other iPhones move the lens when stabilizing the shot, the 12 Pro Max moves the entire sensor assembly for better stabilization. It’s like the world’s tiniest gimbal.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max also received a 65mm equivalent telephoto lens, the longest lens ever put in an iPhone. This enables sharper shots of faraway subjects, but it’s a subtle improvement over last year’s 52mm. Prior “Pro” models ranged from 26mm to 52mm — you might know this as 1x to 2x — and the 12 Pro Max’s 26mm to 65mm equals 1x to 2.5x.
The presence of any sort of telephoto lens is the most obvious difference between the Pro and Non-Pro iPhones. If you have an on an older generation iPhone with a telephoto camera, and you’re tempted to downsize to an iPhone 12 Mini for the ergonomics, David Smith has a great check for whether you’ll miss it. Create a smart album in your Photos app, and quickly scan for images taken with the telephoto lens.
I’m trying out the XR, but was curious how much I’ll actually miss the telephoto lens. I realized I can check using a smart album in Photos on the Mac. For me the telephoto was used in only 16% of my iPhone X photos. — David Smith (@_DavidSmith) October 29, 2018
It turns out about half of my photos on the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max are taken with that longer lens.
I think it’s the telephoto lens— not the larger sensor, faster aperture, or even ProRAW— that makes the iPhone 12 Pro Max the photographer’s phone. You are forced to be creative; to choose what’s in the shot. You can make a background loom dramatically, capture flattering portraits, and take some distance from your subjects. The Max’s telephoto camera is now blessed with a sensor that has quite a nice output and even supports ProRAW.
Manual focus with the telephoto lens makes it even more fun, with its beautiful, ‘natural’ bokeh. There’s even more of it now with the slightly larger aperture. (You need an app like Halide to use manual focus)
Sadly, the telephoto camera remains the only camera on your iPhone that doesn’t support Night Mode. These beefy new iPhones still just crop part of your Wide camera image and pass that off as a capture from your telephoto lens. Even the Ultra-wide lens now supports Night Mode. I really hope we’ll see this done ‘properly’ in the next iPhone.
The Pipeline
If there’s any hardware revision to be excited about year over year, it’s not the camera, but the processor and memory of your new iPhone. Apple makes the fastest mobile chips hands-down, which unlock new tricks to create images previously impossible in sensors the size of your thumbnail.
Apple now actively markets their smart photography pipeline. They give brand names to algorithms, like Smart HDR and Deep Fusion. These complex technologies use all the power of the latest chipsets, such as real-time machine learning that selectively enhance details in areas, guesses white balance in night shots, detects subjects, and more. It’s no exaggeration to say that the iPhone 12 is the smartest camera Apple has built yet. Does it result in a better shot?
For casual photography, yes. Earlier generations (cough, iPhone XS) struggled to retain detail after aggressive ‘smart’ noise reduction. Apple’s new smart technologies generate much more natural images. Whether it’s people or animals, detail is retained in skin and hair.
Contrast this with the many Android phones that enable problematic effects like skin-smoothing, by default. Making automatic ‘enhancement’ of your image opt-out sets a scary precedent.
Will future phones make you skinnier, and give you bigger eyes? Our ideals of beauty matter, and while photography is subjective, an automatic ‘lens’ on the most-used cameras of our time will greatly affect society and those in it, especially impressionable young humans. I have no doubt that Apple considered ‘beautifying’ effects to remain competitive, but I’m happy to see them remain absent.
While the iPhone does a lot of processing, it’s conservative in its… editorial decisions. It’s not afraid to let you take a bad photo: color saturation and contrast are fairly neutral, with its white balance skewing towards taking warmer images. I don’t mind that: I think that’s a ‘look’ that we’ve come to expect from Apple.
The only time that I found the smart image processing on the iPhone noticeably bothersome is when skies get overly tinted blue. It’s clear that the iPhone can now easily detect and segment the sky in a shot, and it applies nice smooth noise reduction to it to get wonderful gradients. But even cloudy skies tend to get a blue cast that isn’t as neutral as you’d like.
Meanwhile, some Android phones make such aggressive changes that they’re accused of adding a fake moon.
Low Light
iPhone 12 collects more light, so it takes nice photos when the sun starts to set. I found that I got a lot less noise in my RAW files and more detail in my non-RAW files quite consistently. Once the sun goes below the horizon, the camera app can also manage to take photos without Night mode. The benefit to this is more detail (less noise reduction), and the ability to take low-light Live Photos.
It’s not really news that the iPhone 12 is the best low-light camera Apple has built yet. With the introduction of Night mode, Apple brought a very robust computational-photography-based long exposure option to the masses (I love a good computational long exposure tool).
You’ll find that you can take Night mode shots on the new iPhones in surprisingly dark conditions. Coming from an iPhone that lacked night mode can be kind of mind-blowing, and even larger digital cameras will feel some envy seeing an iPhone do hand-held ’10 second exposures’.
I add quotes there because while Apple gives you a nice duration setting, it always attempts to get a sharp shot. Night Mode is a classic Apple solution: ease of use through no real configurability. Getting light trails or soft effects is impossible, as it prioritizes getting a ‘sharp frame’ and then stacking additional detail onto it.
You can, however, let the iPhone get steady enough on a surface (hey, the sides are flat now) or on a tripod to select an exposure time of up to 30 seconds.
In a pitch-black night moonless night in New Mexico, that can get some really impressive shots:
Here are 10, 15, and 30-second exposures with an iPhone 12 Pro on Night Mode. This is impressive!
Now, does this stack up against a larger camera yet? I wouldn’t say so. What is harming Night Mode the most for serious photography is its inflexibility. Support for ProRAW helps a lot — that adds more detail and adjustability to the heavily processed output.
But as developers of a camera app, we’d love to have a Night Mode API to add options like how much frame blending is done, what level of noise reduction is applied, and more. Doing a ‘true’ long exposure like this:
Is just not possible right now as the iPhone will optimize to get those cars sharp. That makes perfect sense: Night Mode is optimized for most people, who will likely take photos of friends in a dim restaurant, or the moon over the city. You want sharp shots. But as always, taking away options to make a feature accessible and easy to use also comes at an expense of utility to those that are pursuing creative options beyond what the camera prescribes.
Let’s hope for a Night Mode API in the future.
LIDAR and You
iPhone 12 Pro has a particularly interesting looking shape on its camera mesa which does not protrude, unlike its camera lenses. Underneath this opaque reflective disk lives a sensor that does something very cool. It senses depth.
The LIDAR sensor debuted in the 2020 iPad Pro. Under that disc on the iPhone 12 Pro lives a similar, but slightly smaller unit. These sensors work by emitting light in a pattern of dots and measuring the time it takes for a photon from these dots to reflect off a surface and travel back to the sensor. You’ll also see these sensors referred to as ‘Time-of-Flight’ sensors for this reason, and it’s not just you — this is absolutely mind-blowing technology. Light travels very fast: these sensors are kind of a miracle.
In operation, it looks something like this (the LIDAR sensor projects a fairly wide-spaced dot pattern that covers your subject):
And if you were to be on the receiving end, something like this (what ‘you’ see when you are being blasted with the LIDAR):
The pattern of dots exactly fits the coverage of the iPhone’s ‘wide’ camera, to speed up autofocus. This is very useful in low light, when autofocus scans for whether your subject is close or far away. Normally, a camera looks for sharp edges to figure out focus, which is difficult in low light. With LIDAR, it instantly senses the subject’s distance, allowing you to shoot right away.
This is similar to how the Face ID (or ‘TrueDepth’) sensor housed the iPhone “notch” works. Here’s FaceID in action, shot in infrared:
Unlike FaceID, LIDAR fires its ‘dots’ once per second when in regular camera modes, and even when recording video. In portrait mode, it fires much faster. The intensity of the projected light is quite intense; in the above video, the LIDAR dots are about as intense on the subject as a car headlight. This is likely so it works in daylight.
You can test LIDAR’s efficacy easily: just cover it with your finger. You’ll notice it doesn’t make a huge difference in daytime. At times, it’s even a hindrance, as the LIDAR beams reflect and scatter off transparent surfaces. Shooting out of an airplane window or through a sliding glass door sometimes makes your iPhone slow to focus, as it confuses transparent surfaces with opaque ones. When that happens, just cover the dot with your finger, and your iPhone will fall back to conventional focus based on edges in the image.
The iPhone 12 Pro’s LIDAR sensor is designed to map things at a large scale, and in motion. This is very evident with the prototype app we built for the iPad Pro: when moved, the LIDAR sensor will work to map a sort of 3D mesh of its environment. With some machine learning and data from the cameras, it can turn this into a fairly crude 3D model of say, a room. It can map features like tables, doorways, and windows OK. It’s far too crude for say, 3D scanning smaller objects, though.
LIDAR-Powered Portrait Mode
In Apple’s announcement event, the LIDAR feature was hailed as something usable for a new dual-mode computational trick: Portrait mode Night mode — or Night mode Portrait mode, if you prefer. (Apple officially calls it ‘Night mode Portrait’)
Night mode combines several images to get a crisp shot in low light; Portrait mode uses multiple cameras to create a depth map that can let the iPhone assess its distance from various regions in the image to create a somewhat convincing shallow depth of field effect. There are two significant challenges for the camera here: determining what is in focus and generating a good map of depth in the shot.
I am perhaps unique in that I barely ever use Portrait mode. I just don’t find myself enjoying it. Too frequently, the effect of Portrait mode is still too artificial-looking, and I’m not a huge fan of the camera restricting it when I am too close or far from my subject.
For the sake of this review, I tested the latest Portrait mode on a few shoots and got a few shots that I was happy with:
How does it stack up? It’s still not as nice as a ‘proper’ camera, but far more flexible than having to tote around a big camera and lens for a similar shot:
Portrait mode doesn’t seem very optimized for shooting objects that aren’t people or pets, so you’ll find that it occasionally just doesn’t blur parts of the scene. That makes it challenging to use for creative setups like the shot above, where it will simply not blur the foreground.
It stacks up great against other phones, though: Even without LIDAR, Portrait mode on the iPhone 12 mini is significantly better than previous generation iPhones. If you are coming from an iPhone XS or X, it’s a major leap. The ability to adjust depth (in real-time or after the shot) is great, and Portrait Lighting creates more flattering portraits even in bad light.
In the past, the Portrait AI would improperly mask parts of your image, leaving segments of your image sharp or blurry when they shouldn’t. This jarring mistake seems much rarer.
Initially, I hadn’t tested Portrait + Night mode very much. In the few tests I did, though — comparing it to a regular camera and the iPhone 12 mini, which is unequipped with a LIDAR sensor, it works outrageously well:
This is also a testament to the utter computational magic on display here.
The image on the right was taken on Sony’s latest and greatest full-frame camera, the A1. At wide-open (1.4) aperture, ISO 12800 and 1/15th of a second, it captured a decently usable shot in this very dark setting. That an iPhone can take a photo like that here is nothing short of incredible. LIDAR comes in clutch.
I can hear you wonder: “does this really use LIDAR that much?” and the answer, as tested with an infrared camera, is yes:
In very low light, the Night mode Portrait feature actually goes from rapid blinking to ‘holding’ the LIDAR projection for a moment at higher brightness to ensure it gets sharp frames and, presumably, a better depth map. I would imagine detecting depth with the two cameras is much harder when there isn’t enough light to really see any parallax.
So yes, LIDAR is definitely nice to have in this camera. In addition to being a better night-time portrait taker, the autofocus is actually quite fantastic if you’re shooting some action-y scenes. ProRAW or not, the iPhone doesn’t really take fast RAW shots, so getting sharp focus or action in focus is essential. The LIDAR sensor makes short work of focus when opening the camera to get a shot.
ProRAW
On that note, let’s talk about Apple ProRAW.
ProRAW came out a little after the iPhone 12 Pro Max and Mini hit the market. At Lux, we were quite excited when ProRAW came out, despite some worries from folks that we would be threatened in some form because the stock camera app would be getting some type of RAW capture.
A rising tide lifts all boats! Apple introducing a special1 RAW format for the iPhone camera means a commitment to RAW shooting, and the more people know about RAW, the more people might be interested in a better camera for iPhone.
We’ve previously written a lot about ProRAW — so if you want an explainer about RAW and how it works, and how ProRAW is unique I recommend reading that, followed by Austin Mann’s excellent article on it.
I will just touch on ProRAW and its capture experience here.
ProRAW is a powerful new tool in the iPhone photographer’s tool chest because it brings some of the ‘smarts’ of the iPhone camera pipeline to the flexible RAW format.
Smarts? Essentially, your iPhone takes many shots in rapid succession and intelligently blends them to fuse together a great shot. Some shots are under- and overexposed, to get more detail in the shadows and recover highlights. iOS also uses machine learning to identify areas that should get more or less noise reduction, to retain the most detail.
One of the most mind-blowing examples of the ‘smart’ photography in the iPhone camera is that you’ve probably never actually taken a photo on your iPhone. The iPhone has done it for you.
The camera is essentially always taking photos when it is open, keeping a rolling buffer of shots. When you tap the shutter button, it can go back and grab a frame from right *before* you pressed the screen, giving the impression of a zero-shutter-lag camera. What’s more, because of the rolling buffer, it can quickly check several shots and choose the least shaky one when you’re moving to ensure you got the best shot.
To some, this feels a bit… wrong. You can’t quite place your finger on it, but it starts to enter an uncanny valley of sorts. At what point do you lose agency as a photographer? Is it you, or the camera that is calling the shots and making the creative choices?
Enter RAW. RAW files are often loved by photographers because they’re also (often) lossless and give you far more data than the typical output format of your camera (JPG or HEIC) which enables enormous freedom when editing your shot later.
But on iPhone, I really came to love RAW because it skips (almost) all of the processing and just gives you the image as it is. With RAW on iPhone, you take the photo, and there is no recombination of frames happening to get you a different result.
On iPhone XS, this was immensely beneficial — noise reduction on these cameras was aggressive and could really remove some detail. Since then, iPhone sensors have gotten bigger and better, which means less noise. But processing also increased, as cameras got smarter each year.
This year, RAW got smarter. ProRAW brings that advanced image pipeline — the merging of frames, selective detail enhancement, and more — to a virtually lossless, scene-referred format.
ProRAW output is excellent. While the ‘regular’ RAW files out of the iPhone 12 cameras are already excellent, with far lower noise than seen in previous cameras and tons of detail, the benefits of ProRAW shine when shooting in tricky conditions when available light would introduce a lot of noise to your shot, or when merged frames can give lots of extra dynamic range.
I don’t seem to be alone: in some quick polling on our Twitter, we found that most iPhone 12 Pro users opt for it, despite it being much slower to capture.
Only iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max get ProRAW, and not only because they have ‘Pro’ in the name. They have much more RAM than their unprofessional, less RAW-savvy siblings.
Note: It has to be mentioned that with an app like Halide, you can still shoot RAW on the non-Pro iPhone 12 and 12 mini to great effect — but even we developers cannot bring ProRAW to these phones.
ProRAW doesn’t end there: it brings RAW to modes and even cameras that do not normally support any type of RAW capture. The ultra-wide camera gets RAW, and so does Night mode.
ProRAW is an excellent tool to add to the iPhone camera, but like Night mode, it is somewhat lacking in flexibility. It can be aggressive in noise reduction, particularly when using a process like Deep Fusion which merges many frames to get a good result.
The Gripes
That’s all a very positive overall impression of the iPhone 12 series, but what remains a legitimate photographic issue on these phones?
Apart from inflexibility in the images you can capture — which is largely negated by apps like Halide that give you extra control — the iPhone suffers from a few camera issues that will probably be solved with upgraded hardware in the future.
Flaring on the ultra-wide and wide cameras is not just noticeable, but outright bothersome when shooting into light. In the above image, you can see the telltale iPhone ‘green orb’ flare that is a result of internal reflections in the lens. This can be fairly unobtrusive as in that shot, but when shooting many bright point sources of light head-on, can outright ruin a shot.
I will give this to Apple: It’s very, very challenging to eliminate this in optics, but it’s still a nuisance when shooting on an iPhone.
Then there’s noise reduction.
Noise reduction is something I never really enjoyed on iPhones, and I find it really bothersome that ProRAW does not give granular control over how much is applied to a final image. When shooting in dark conditions with the iPhone’s less light-sensitive cameras, you can get muddled images that would’ve looked nicer with some grain. It’s almost like a watercolor painting:
This looks fine at first glance, but even slightly zoomed in:
Ouch. I would’ve probably preferred the noise. Unfortunately there’s no way to see what that would’ve looked like, as native RAW is simply not available on the ultra-wide camera.
Conclusion
iPhone 12 is, at its core, a showcase of how much software really matters in cameras nowadays.
Five years ago, we would have likely looked at the camera improvements on the iPhone 12 by focusing on what is new under that camera bump. While an improvement in the lens is nice, we would’ve probably shrugged it off as a minor improvement. Evolution.
Apple did something smarter than trying to do the impossible with the limited space they had in the physical world: they spent a cycle refining, redesigning, and hugely investing in the software that gets more out of the cameras. What they achieved is truly impressive. But what I find equally impressive is the pitfall they avoided.
One of my dearest friends is a type designer. That means he designs typefaces for all sorts of things: he created the custom typeface we use in Halide, for instance. But he once had a job creating a family of typefaces for the local newspaper.
I asked him what truly defined success in the design of a typeface like that, and he just smiled at me and said, “when people don’t notice the typeface at all.”
Smart image processing, magical multi-frame combination, deep fusion, night mode: the best camera is the one that is not just on you, but gets out of the way. That takes a great photo, yet does this smart enough to make you feel like you actually took it. A camera that takes better photos but remains neutral — allowing the photographer the flexibility to edit it afterward to make it fit their mood and artistic vision.
Great cameras let you fail.
Apple largely succeeded in doing that. I have no doubt that the temptation for their camera team is immense: they have the most powerful chips in the industry, the greatest freedom to create a camera that can simply do no wrong: that can over-process any image to look good to most people.
Yet, the iPhone remains truthful. It’s a true tool for photographers while democratizing photography for a vast population with technologies that make challenging conditions easier to shoot in. It processes your images more, takes better photos for every user, and even offers substantial options for the pros — without sacrificing authenticity.
It’s a photographer’s phone. And it’s a great camera.
1 Based on open standards: ProRAW shoots into a regular DNG format, which is fantastic.
About the author: Sebastiaan de With is the co-founder and developer of Halide, a groundbreaking iPhone camera app for deliberate and thoughtful photography. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. You can connect with him on Twitter. This article was also published here.
Apple iPhone 12 review
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Although some new Apple products are undoubtedly more evolution than revolution, the iPhone 12 sports a brand-new design, a new screen, is powered by a new processor, and is capable of performing some new party tricks including, for the first time, 5G support.
But it’s also gained a more expensive price tag and lost a couple of things from its box along the way (namely a charger and pair of EarPods). Does the iPhone 12 still deliver that all-round ability and performance-per-pound value that made its predecessor, the iPhone 11, such a brilliant buy?
Pricing
As you’d expect, given its premium standing, the iPhone 12 isn’t the cheapest smartphone around. It’s actually £100 ($100) more expensive than the iPhone 11 across all its different storage sizes.
The 64GB iPhone 12 is £799 ($799, AU$1349), the 128GB version comes in at £849 ($849, AU$1429), while the top-of-the-range 256GB handset will set you back £949 ($949, AUS$1599).
This still puts a bit of distance between itself and the flagship iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, which start at £999 ($999, AU$1699) and £1099 ($1099, AU$1849) respectively. However, both of these boast 128GB as their entry-level storage size, topping out at 512GB. It’s a shame the standard iPhone 12 doesn’t offer similar.
Build
(Image credit: Apple)
That fancy new design isn’t quite as new as Apple might like you to believe. We’ve seen flat edges before, on the iPhone 4 from 2010, but there’s no doubt that the flat sides on that aerospace-grade aluminium enclosure gives the iPhone an impressively premium look and feel, especially in the Product Red finish of our review sample (the other finishes available are: white, black, blue and green).
Apple iPhone 12 tech specs (Image credit: Apple) Screen size 6.1in Type OLED Resolution 2532 x 1170 Operating system iOS 14 Finishes x5 Battery life 17hrs video, 65hrs audio Dimensions (hwd) 14.7 x 7.2 x 0.7cm Weight 164g
It’s solidly built and slightly easier to grip than the iPhone 11’s curved chassis, although it arguably doesn’t feel as nice. This also might be down to the fact the iPhone 12 is a little trimmer, with a few millimetres shaved off all round.
The new iPhone also feels light in-hand. This is because the iPhone 12 weighs 164g, which is 30g lighter than the iPhone 11. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but you can definitely feel the difference swapping from one to the other.
Besides the design tweaks, the big headline news for the iPhone 12 relates to its screen. Gone is the 6.1in Liquid Retina HD LCD display from the iPhone 11; in its place is a 6.1in OLED Super Retina XDR display with a resolution of 2532 x 1170 pixels and a pixel density of 460ppi.
It’s still a True Tone and Wide colour display but there’s now proper HDR support built in for HDR10, Dolby Vision and HLG content. This boosts the potential maximum brightness of the phone to 1200 nits (it's 625 nits with SDR content). The screen switch is a big and obvious upgrade for the iPhone 12 and one that immediately makes its presence felt.
The iPhone 12 display also sports what Apple calls a Ceramic Shield front cover, which is claimed to give it extra durability and make the display less prone to cracking and smashing than on previous iPhones.
Features
(Image credit: Apple)
The big changes go deep under the screen too, with the debut of Apple’s A14 Bionic chip and next-gen Neural Engine. According to Apple, it’s the fastest chip inside a smartphone for both GPU and CPU performance and can supposedly complete 11 trillion operations per second.
That’s not something we can measure, but the way the iPhone 12 works with Apple’s iOS14 operating system shows that this is one speedy customer. The phone is a breeze to navigate, whether you’re firing up Netflix for a quick binge or multitasking through a number of different apps. It’s a smooth operator and never seems to get bogged down during daily use. We find it quicker than the iPhone 11 when it comes to booting up video and music streaming services, but it’s not a huge difference.
On the camera front, you still get a 12MP dual-lens set-up on the back, but there have been a few subtle tweaks under the hood to allow for better pictures in low-light. As a daytime snapper, there isn’t much to grumble about, with the iPhone 12 producing nicely balanced pictures with even colours and a fine sense of realism. It’s worth noting, though, that unlike the Pro and Pro Max models, there’s no telephoto lens and, consequently, no optical zoom for the iPhone 12.
The iPhone 12 can, however, record video in Dolby Vision at 30 frames per second, which could come in handy for those using their phone for the occasional vlog. Battery life is close to the iPhone 11 (Apple doesn’t quote the size of the batteries), at around 17 hours for video and 65 hours for audio playback. Some Android rivals boast bigger batteries that last longer, but we still find a full day of average use doesn’t prove a problem. It is disappointing, though, to see the iPhone charger has been jettisoned from the box (you now only get a USB-C to Lightning cable).
The lack of EarPods is less frustrating. We’ve never been huge fans of Apple’s out-of-the-box earbuds, and if you don’t already have a pair of headphones to hand, we would recommend that you invest in some AirPods or a decent pair of alternatives.
The iPhone 12 also sees the introduction of MagSafe for wireless charging (up to 15W) and compatibility with a new line-up of accessories that attach to a ring of magnets on the rear of the handset.
Sound
(Image credit: Apple)
The iPhone 12 supports Dolby Atmos and Apple’s own spatial audio processing, available to enjoy through the AirPods Pro and the recently announced AirPods Max.
The speakers on the iPhone 12 sound just as good as they do on the iPhone 11 – the balance is good enough to watch the occasional YouTube video or play a few seconds of your favourite Tidal track. It’s nicely balanced by smartphone speaker standards, with decent separation and detail, though as you’d expect there’s not a huge amount of bass weight on offer.
Hook up a pair of wired headphones via Apple’s 3.5mm to Lightning dongle or partner the iPhone with a pair of quality wireless headphones and you’ll get a better idea of the iPhone’s strengths.
Apple has got into the habit of producing some of the best-sounding smartphones on the market and the iPhone 12 picks up where the iPhone 11 left off. It’s a case of more of the same with the smartphone delivering enthusiasm and musicality in spades. The iPhone works well across multiple genres and keeps you entertained right to the last second of every track.
Play Michael Jackson’s Man In The Mirror and there’s plenty of sparkle in those highs during those opening seconds. The iPhone picks out plenty of detail and texture from Jacko’s voice and its ability to handle dynamics with aplomb means you feel the full impact as the vocal switches from sounding delicate in the verses to punchier and more direct in the chorus, reinforced with the backing of the gospel choir.
Switch to a classical track, such as Time from the Inception soundtrack, and the iPhone 12 continues to impress. The tone and timbre of the strings are expertly judged, as is the weight and impact of the drums that form a powerful undercurrent and drive the track along. A lack of background noise allows the drama and emotion of the track to come to the fore.
Screen
(Image credit: Apple)
The switch to the new OLED screen brings immediate results for the iPhone 12. You’re greeted with a clean and clear picture that boasts impressive depth and realism. There’s a sense of polish and pristineness to the picture which the LCD display of the iPhone 11 simply can’t match.
Add that to the inherent strengths of OLED technology, such as black levels and viewing angle, and this is a picture that draws you in. Staring into the outer space of Star Trek Discovery on Netflix, we can’t help but be impressed by the inky black canvas the iPhone paints. Stars appear as tiny pinpricks of bright white light but there’s no bleeding into the rest of the picture. Each star shimmers in its own space.
Detail levels are excellent whether it’s the stunning CGI or the characters’ faces and costumes. As the Discovery reaches warp speed, the flurry of bright flashes against the galaxy backdrop make the picture pop in a way that its predecessor can’t match. The extra brightness and punch the OLED screen delivers becomes even more obvious when you place it next to the iPhone 11’s LCD display, too.
Verdict
The iPhone 12 is another model we can add to a successful line of smartphones from Apple. The addition of that excellent OLED display has elevated picture performance to another level and helps justify the slight price hike over its predecessor. Sound quality is as good as it’s ever been, too. All these positives combined make for a highly tempting and typically Apple package.
SCORES
Screen 5
5 Sound 5
5 Features 4
MORE:
Read our guide to the best smartphones
Read our Apple iPhone 11 review
iPhone 13: release date, news and what to expect
iPhone 12 Pro unboxed: Big things, small packages and how to pick the best iPhone for you
The iPhone 12 Pro is now shipping, alongside the iPhone 12. Whether or not you should buy one is something I will tell you in my full review that’s coming soon, but for now, one thing’s certain. Buying a new iPhone has never been this complicated. There are four iPhones to choose from this year. Aside from the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, there is also the iPhone 12 Mini and an iPhone 12 Pro Max — both of which will be available starting November 13 (you can pre-order them starting November 6).
Buying a new iPhone this year isn’t complicated because there are so many iPhones to choose from — I am not even counting the iPhone 11 and iPhone XR here which are still excellent value for money by the way, also there’s the pocket-rocket iPhone SE — but because how similar they are on so many levels. Yes, the iPhone 12 Mini is the gateway and the iPhone 12 Pro Max exudes the very latest and greatest that Apple can offer today, but you probably already knew that. The real question is, what is it that you will be losing out on, should you buy the iPhone 12 Mini, or what is it that you’re getting extra, when you pick the iPhone 12 Pro Max — the short answer is, not a whole lot.
The subject of this unboxing is the iPhone 12 Pro. On paper, it is the second most high-end iPhone that money can buy today. It starts at Rs 1,19,900 for the base model with 128GB storage. The 256GB and 512GB models of the iPhone 12 Pro cost Rs 1,29,900 and Rs 1,49,900 respectively. For some context, the iPhone 12 starts at Rs 79,900 for the base model with 64GB storage. The 128GB and 256GB models of the iPhone 12 costs Rs 84,900 and Rs 94,900 respectively. The iPhone 12 Pro Max starts at Rs 1,29,900 for the base model with 128GB storage. The 256GB and 512GB models of iPhone 12 Pro costs Rs 1,39,900 and Rs 1,59,900 respectively.
Clearly, the iPhone 12 Pro is one of the most complicated among all of Apple’s new iPhones. On the one end, there’s the more affordable iPhone 12, that’s practically the same phone with a few omissions. On the other, there’s the iPhone 12 Pro Max, that, as the name suggests, is an iPhone 12 Pro “Max.” Should you then save some money and buy the iPhone 12? Or, should you just go all out and get the iPhone 12 Pro Max? Confused, much? Well don’t be. That’s why I am here for, to help you make an informed decision.
Watch this space for our full review of the iPhone 12 Pro and all of Apple’s other new iPhones but just basis of early impressions, here’s what I think. You should get the iPhone 12 Pro only and only if you want more storage, which by extension means that you’re a “pro” user. For most users though, the iPhone 12 should suffice. The iPhone 12 Pro Max has the most powerful camera hardware among the new iPhones which means ideally it is meant for creators.
iPhone 12 Pro unboxed — hands on and first impressions
The unboxing experience is similar across the board. The box is so small it would surprise you in case you’ve bought an iPhone before. This is because, the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and iPhone 12 Mini, all ship without a charger and EarPods in the box. Why is Apple doing this? To reduce carbon emissions and avoid the mining and use of precious materials, which enables smaller and lighter packaging, and allows for 70 percent more boxes to be shipped on a pallet. Through such steps, Apple plans to have net zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles by 2030.
So, what’s in the box when you buy a new iPhone? There’s the iPhone of course and a USB-C to Lightning Cable, one Apple sticker and some customary documentation. “Please use your existing Apple power adapter and headphones or buy these accessories separately,” Apple mentions on a side note. There’s a high probability that you will have to buy a charger separately though because of the nature of the cable that Apple is bundling in the box — so, there goes all the reasoning out the window.
Regardless, now that Apple is doing it, others should likely follow suit despite them mocking the whole move right now — that’s right, I am looking at you Samsung.
Now that we’ve unboxed it, it’s first impressions time. The first thing you notice about the iPhone 12 Pro is its updated design. This is shared across all the new iPhones. All the new iPhones have an updated design scheme with squared-off edges reminiscent of the iPhone 4. The edges are sharp, mind you, but I have come to appreciate them after getting used to them eventually. The front and back remain largely the same, as last year, though Apple is using new materials. There are obviously new colours too.
The Pro models use matte frosted glass on the back which is smooth to the touch and feels very, very premium — it helps keep a check on smudge and fingerprints too. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini have a glossy glass panel on the back that feels premium too, but it’s more of a fingerprint magnet than the Pro iPhones. The outer frame is made of stainless steel in the Pro models. It’s very, very shiny and as a downside, picks up a lot of fingerprints the moment you unbox and start using it. It adds considerable heft to the Pro iPhones too. The 12 and iPhone 12 Mini conversely have a matte aluminum frame.
The screen in all the new iPhones is protected by what Apple is calling a ceramic shield that it has conjured in partnership with Corning. It is said to make the new iPhones 4x more resistant to drops. Drop protection and scratch resistance are usually inversely proportional to each other, so that’s something to keep in mind.
Speaking of which, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro have the same screen size, which is 6.1-inch. The iPhone 12 Mini is smaller at 5.4-inch while the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the biggest iPhone that Apple makes today — it is 6.7-inch. The biggest takeaway though is that Apple is using its signature high-quality Super Retina XDR OLED display across its entire iPhone 12 portfolio. All the new iPhones also support Dolby Vision and HDR 10 — there is no 120Hz high refresh rate though in case you’re wondering. The other big highlight is the screen resolution. It is 1080p+ in all the new iPhones. It may not sound much against competing Android counterparts, but Apple already makes one of the best 720p LCDs, if anything, a higher resolution and OLED are simply icing on the cake. Aside from the slightly higher brightness levels in the Pro iPhones, this is the first time that Apple is offering a consistent experience across the board.
Under the hood, all the new iPhones pack Apple’s latest and greatest 5nm A14 Bionic chip — also seen inside the recently launched iPad Air refresh. Software is iOS 14 which brings much-needed flexibility to iPhones in general adding widgets, allowing for setting custom email and browser defaults, and more. Needless to say, the iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max are fast phones with the new hardware giving them greater headroom for future since Apple usually supports its iPhones for upwards of four years at least, something that no other Android phone, including Google’s own Pixel, can guarantee. There’s also support for 5G, which adds another ounce of future-proofing to the package — for when 5G eventually arrives in India.
The real differences are coming in the camera department this year with the iPhone 12 Pro Max being a literal photography powerhouse. The iPhone 12 Pro has a slightly toned-down version of those cameras. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini tone down things ever so slightly further.
The iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max come with three cameras which is a combination of 12MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide and 12MP telephoto, and an iPad Pro-like LiDAR sensor. Apple is using a fast f/1.6 aperture lens to complement the main sensor alongside improved OIS. The LIDAR sensor should also help the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max ace low-light photography — Apple says it can boost autofocus by up to six times while also enabling Night Mode in portrait photography. Hallmark iPhone traits like Deep Fusion and Smart HDR are also being carried forward.
The iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 have two cameras on the back, a 12MP main and another 12MP ultra-wide-angle, essentially the same deal as the Pro iPhones but stripped off some of their unique features. The biggest difference comes by way of OIS. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini come with what you can call “regular” OIS. The iPhone 12 Pro has dual OIS. The iPhone 12 Pro Max has sensor-shift OIS, a technology I am eagerly waiting to try out in person once the phone starts shipping. Long story short, all the new iPhones should be equally competent in day light. The Pro iPhones should be better at low-light. The iPhone 12 Pro that I have been using, and basis of the photos that I have been taking, has the best camera on any new phone in the market today — including the Pixel 4a (the Pixel 4 is not available in India but it has the same core camera hardware with faster post-processing smarts). It is unsurprisingly best-in-class at videos too. I am expecting the iPhone 12 to be not very far behind. More on that in my full review(s).
All the new iPhones can also record Dolby Vision HDR videos at up to 60 fps (30 fps in iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini) — a first for any smartphone.
Rounding off the package is IP68 water and dust resistance, stereo speakers and support for MagSafe accessories and wireless chargers (sold separately).
The iPhone 12 series is not necessarily a revolutionary update to last year’s iPhone 11 and yet it marks the beginning of a new era for the iPhone. And no, 5G has got nothing to do with it. Nor do those tempting cameras. Not the design. Not that OLED display either. It’s in the way that Apple is looking at the future and the iPhone. The iPhone was once Apple’s best-selling product, but over time, that has changed. iPhone sales missed Wall Street estimates last quarter and even though it might have been due to potential buyers possibly holding back to invest in the new iPhone 12 series which came in later than usual this year (among other factors, including slump in sales in China) due to coronavirus, things weren’t particularly rosy with the last few iPhones too. The silver lining was the iPhone 11, and the iPhone XR before it — technically, the budget iPhones. One reason, why we got the iPhone SE earlier this year. Probably one reason why, there’s an iPhone 12 Mini now.
The bigger picture is having a diverse line-up of new iPhones and making them available across different price points. Making them available in markets like India at around the same time as global markets. Having a direct retail presence there. Apple in 2020 is different. It wants more people to buy an iPhone, it wants more people in India to buy an iPhone, but it is also aware that it can’t do that on the back of brand value and brand recall alone anymore. It must give them reasons, options, and make the whole process as effortless as possible. That’s all happening now as Apple looks at the next frontier — India and its bustling potential.
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