(gentle upbeat music)
- It is new iPhone time.
And this here is the new iPhone 12.
And there is a lot that is new this year.
New design, MagSafe, OLED screen, processor,
camera capabilities, and, of course, 5G.
It has been a long time
since Apple has made this aggressive of a pitch
to try to get you to upgrade.
But think of this as a new iPhone,
not just a few small updates over last year's phone.
But we need to see if all this new stuff really works.
And you know, this might be a more important question,
how much this new stuff really matters?
See the regular iPhone 12 costs a little bit more this year.
So this new stuff, it better be good.
It's $829 for the base 64 gig model.
But I think most people are probably gonna wanna spend
the extra 50 bucks for the 128 gig model.
On the other hand, there are discounts galore
from U.S. carriers from special installment plans
to $30 discounts right off the bat.
Like I said, everybody really seems
to wanna make this a big upgrade year.
So let's see if it should be.
(gentle electronic music)
The most obvious new thing is this new design.
It is smaller than an iPhone 11
and it has flat sides and a perfectly flat screen.
I think of it as kind of a modern throwback.
It looks much better than the rounded sides
that we've been living with since the iPhone six.
But despite those harder corners
it still feels really comfortable to use.
There's also new colors.
This is blue, obviously, but there's also white, black,
red, and a really nice light green.
The rails on the side are aluminum with a matte finish
and the back is still regular glass with a glossy finish.
The front is something Apple calls, Ceramic Shield.
Where they put a ceramic crystalline structure
in the material to make it more drop resistant.
Apple says that it's four times more drop-resistant
than the iPhone 11,
but I can't test that on the review unit, sorry.
As for scratch resistance,
there shouldn't be any change from before.
If you want to gripe about the design,
there's really only two things to complain about.
There are a bunch of antenna lines and cutouts on the rail
that make things a little bit asymmetrical
and there is still a big old notch for the Face ID camera.
Neither one of those things are a big deal to me.
Face ID still works great,
as long as you're not wearing a mask.
Which makes me wish that they had found some kind of way
to put a fingerprint sensor somewhere on here.
I am really happy that Apple found a way
to reduce the size of this phone compared to the iPhone 11.
I always felt like the 11 and even the XR
were just a little bit on the big side, so this helps.
Now, if you want an even smaller phone
you're gonna have to wait for the iPhone 12 Mini.
And if you want an even bigger phone
you're gonna have to spring for the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
But the regular iPhone has always been
the default phone for most people.
And from a design and size perspective,
this is a better default than we've had in years.
I really love the look and feel of this phone.
(gentle upbeat music)
Other new thing on the iPhone 12 is the screen.
Apple has switched it over to OLED,
and I'm really glad I think, OLED looks better.
Blacks are blacker.
And Apple's dedication to keeping colors accurate remains.
OLED is also what allowed Apple
to reduce the size of the bezels here
and make the phone smaller overall.
Other nice thing about the screen
is that there are more pixels.
It's a proper 1080P panel now.
Now I wasn't really that unhappy
with the panel on the iPhone 11 and the XR before it,
but more pixels are better, can't argue with that.
It also gets bright enough for me,
but I have to admit that the iPhone 12 Pro
can get slightly brighter in regular use.
However, in HDR the regular 12
can still hit 1,200 nits of peak brightness.
And I think that the combination of HDR
and OLEDs contrast ratio is the real upgrade here,
not the pixel count.
Okay. I do have one small complaint.
The screen has a refresh rate of 60 hertz,
and I know that that's like a spec nerd thing,
but listen, I've reviewed dozens of Android phones
and I've used the iPad Pro
which has a 120-hertz refresh rate,
and I can just tell you that scrolling looks better
when you have a high refresh rate.
I think the iPhone 12 can get away without having it
since it's the less expensive option,
and because iOS has really smooth animations
and great touch response,
but it is a little weird that it's not here.
Here is the new $39 MagSafe wireless charging puck.
And here's how it works.
(charger clicks)
Magnets. It works with magnets.
The design means
that you can use the phone while it's wirelessly charging
and the magnets are strong enough to hold the phone up,
but I'm sure a ton of bouncing would be enough
to knock it off.
Now, when you use a MagSafe Charger
instead of capping out at 7.5 watts
of wireless charging speed,
the iPhone 12 can charge at up to 15 watts,
but you're gonna need to have a strong
USB-C adaptor to do that,
and the MagSafe doesn't come with one in the box.
It's also not the fastest
wireless charging speed that we've seen,
and it is definitely slower than a cable,
but it's good enough to go
from having wireless charging times be kind of annoying
to being pretty okay.
I got a little less
than 40% of charge in an hour in my testing.
Apple's also taking these magnets
and using them to create an ecosystem
of attachable accessories.
It's got its own MagSafe cases
that are supposed to click on,
but they don't really click on.
In theory, though, it's possible somebody else
could make something like that.
There's also a shielded wallet that is designed to keep
your credit cards from demagnetizing,
but it only fits three cards
and they're hard to get out of there.
There's gonna be car mounts
and a bunch of other accessories coming.
Now, all of this works via an NFC chip
that's in the MagSafe ring
and that's used for identifying accessories,
but not much more.
So when you attach the blue case, you get a blue ring.
When you attach the MagSafe Charger
the NFC is what identifies it
and allows it to do fast charging.
But no, the NFC chip is not gonna be available
for other apps to use, it's just for MagSafe.
But there is good news, nobody needs Apple's permission
to make something that connects to the magnets.
The slightly less good news
is that anything that does more
than just attached to the magnets
needs to work with apples Made for iPhone Program.
One last thing, as long as we're talking about charging,
the iPhone uses a Lightning port
and it comes with a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box,
but no AC adapter.
And I know there are a lot of feelings
about both of those things, so here are mine real quick.
No AC adapter is good.
It might not be a huge benefit for the environment,
but every little bit helps.
Sticking with Lightning though, I think is bad.
I wish Apple would have just had the courage
to switch to USB-C, like every other gadget,
including many of Apple's own gadgets.
The fact that Apple didn't is a sign to me
that this little puck right here is probably the future
of how Apple wants us to charge the iPhone.
Now, look, I don't like Lightning,
but it's literally better than nothing
and that might be the plan someday.
(upbeat music)
5G is the new feature that Apple is hyping the most
and Verizon is hyping it
and everybody in the 5G hype industrial complex
is hyping it.
Hype.
But the truth is that in a lot of countries
5G is substantially better in terms of speed and latency.
In the U.S. though, well, it's going okay.
In my testing, in both Oakland and San Francisco,
on multiple carriers,
I got results that were all over the map.
I mean, literally all over the map.
I would have to travel to certain parts of each city
to get a good 5G signal.
On Verizon and T-Mobile standard sub-6 5G networks
I got 40 megabits down in good areas.
That's about twice what I could get on LTE in the same area.
But just as often I would be stuck on LTE.
Now Verizon has this millimeter-wave network
which is also referred to as ultra-wideband or UWB,
but you have to literally be
on the right street corner to get it.
When we were shooting this video
I suddenly saw that I had it and I got all excited
and I called Vjeran over to get the shot.
We pulled down 1,400 megabits.
That's 35 times faster than regular 5G.
So I did the thing that's in all the demos
where you download a whole Netflix season
right there in the short time it took to get this shot.
It's fast.
But that excitement only existed because it's also so rare.
Millimeter-wave isn't a real cellphone network.
It's the cell phone network equivalent of a concept car.
It's only on certain streets.
Anyway, the iPhone 12 itself handles 5G just fine,
as well, or better than any Android phone that I've tested.
5G also doesn't seem to have a big impact on battery life.
I'm getting through a day or more with normal use.
Now, I did manage to kill this phone by the evening
after a long day of riding my bike
with a screen brightness set to max and the GPS running.
But I think that would have happened
to pretty much any phone.
Now to keep battery life good,
Apple is doing some weird tricks with 5G on the iPhone.
It has a default mode called data saver,
which drops you down to LTE speeds
unless the phone decides you really need 5G
for something that you're doing.
How does the phone decide?
Well, lots of factors,
like what kind of data you're downloading,
is what Apple tells me.
It's a little bit unclear, but look, you can turn that off
and just lock it to 5G if it's available when you want to.
Speaking of unclear,
the status bar will show you 5G if you have 5G available,
even if the phone happens to be using
an LTE network instead.
You just won't know.
Now, when there is ultra-wideband
you will see a special icon for that.
And also, if you're on AT&T you're gonna see a 5GE icon,
which means LTE because AT&T is awful.
The iPhone is also going to be aware of your carrier plan.
So if you have unlimited
it'll be more willing to switch things over
to pulling down more data.
Like going into FaceTime HD
or even downloading full-on iOS updates automatically.
That's a lot of weird details, and there's more.
If you have both a physical and an eSIM active
in the phone at the same time, you can't use 5G
because of the limitations of dual-SIM,
dual-standby in that spec,
but you can turn one of them off and get 5G back.
Also, international iPhones
don't have the ultra-wideband stuff,
so you should pay attention to what bands are on your phone
if you travel a lot.
Basically, 5G is complicated,
and Apple can't abstract away
all of the details entirely like it likes to do.
Mostly, you can just ignore this stuff
and use whatever network
pops up on your phone when you see it.
And honestly, that is the bottom line with 5G.
If you see it and it's better,
you can do a little dance and be happy.
If you don't, don't sweat it.
Just don't buy a phone only because it has 5G.
Not right now.
(upbeat electronic music)
What's new in the camera this year is that Apple has updated
and improved its software for processing photos,
and the main camera now has a slightly faster aperture.
It's 1.6 instead of 1.8.
That lets more light in which helps with low light photos.
It's still the same wide-angle camera,
the same Ultra Wide camera, and the single selfie camera.
You don't get the telephoto lens
or the LIDAR that you get on the iPhone 12 Pro,
but they still take excellent photos in normal conditions.
The new A14 Bionic processor and the new software,
lets Apple extend Night Mode to every single camera lens.
Let's it do Portrait mode in low light.
And it also applies better semantic processing
to things that the phone can recognize,
like faces or the sky and so on.
In my testing, compared to the iPhone 11,
I'm seeing less noise
and sometimes better colors in photos.
In challenging spots,
the iPhone 12 beats out the 11 in every single shot.
Now, in extremely dark places
the Google Pixel 5 still has an edge,
but in good light, I think the iPhone 12
often does a better job with fine detail
than either the Pixel or the iPhone 11.
Apple's also putting more effort
into the quality of it's Ultra Wide camera,
but you can only do so much with the software.
It is a clear step down from the main camera.
Apple is trying to fix distortion
on the edges of the Ultra Wide
for faces and buildings and things it can recognize.
And there is a slight improvement
but it's also pretty easy to break.
Just look at the Golden Gate Bridge here.
Selfies on the iPhone 12
are about the same as they've always been.
Although you can try to take them
in lower light than before,
but it's not like a night and day difference.
It's night.
You could see that it's night
and the camera's having a hard time with that.
But, look, overall, the cameras on the iPhone 12 are great.
I'm talking about edge cases among flagship phones
and in some places the iPhone 12 might not win,
but in a lot of cases, it will.
And in almost every case
the iPhone is maintaining its lead in video quality.
Apple's also making some big claims about video this year
with HDR and saying that this is a Dolby Vision camera,
and I care way more about HDR
than I do 8K video or whatever.
But the truth is if we're talking about video standards,
we really should be talking to Nilay Patel
who reviewed the iPhone 12 Pro.
So let's give him a call.
Nilay Patel. FaceTime.
(phone beeping)
- Dieter. - How are you doing?
- I'm doing all right, man.
Do I look crystal clear in 5G, HD?
- Sure. (laughs) You look fine.
(Nilay laughs)
So we've come to the part of the video
where I need to talk about Dolby Vision.
And obviously, I have to ask you about it
'cause you know about all the lights.
- I know something about all the lights.
So here's the deal.
Dolby Vision works.
It looks great on the iPhone screen
and other Apple device screens,
but it's a new version of Dolby Vision,
which is the most Apple thing ever,
and other Adobe vision devices like my TV
and I checked, your TV, might not work with the files.
And the Apple TV is really weird
and you have to have it in a weird mode.
Look, it's just very complicated.
- So it looks amazing, but it's a Apple take
on a otherwise normal standard, which sounds very Apple.
Okay. What about just general video quality?
Have you tested that very much?
- So, I've tested a little bit, but Becca, right there.
- [Becca] Hey, Dieter!
- Has been testing it way more than me. It looks very good.
Becca keeps saying something about dots,
which sounds like you gotta see it to understand it.
So check out our video. We'll go into all this detail.
- All right. We will definitely watch your video.
But don't click out of my video yet,
go watch Nilay after that.
Bye.
- Bye.
Sure. Did I work?
- Was that too long or was that okay?
(gentle upbeat music)
There is a new processor in the iPhone 12, and guess what?
Just like every iPhone processor
for the past however many years,
the new A14 Bionic processor is a very fast
and it beats the pants off
anything Qualcomm can make for an Android phone.
But it's also true that the iPhone 11 is very fast.
So mainly what you get out of this new processor
are those photo improvements.
The real reason to care
isn't that the iPhone 12 is fast now,
it's that it will still be fast in three or even five years.
That's the kind of longevity
that no Android phone can really match.
As to the rest of iOS 14?
What can I say? It's an iPhone.
I like using it.
I love having widgets on the main home screen
but I do wish were more of them from my favorite apps.
Really, my biggest gripe with iOS continues to be Siri.
Which does nail the basics pretty well
but still lags behind the Google Assistant.
I mean, let's be real,
you still can't set multiple timers with Siri.
How hard is that?
But at the end of the day,
if you compare overall app quality
on an iPhone to the equivalent app on Android,
the iPhone apps just tend to be nicer to use.
The iPhone 12 is the first iPhone in several years
that really does feel like something new,
but I can't point to any specific single feature
that makes it feel that way.
The 5G is fine.
MagSafe is convenient, but we'll have to wait to see
if there's a real ecosystem there.
The OLED screen is lovely
but it's also kind of table stakes at this point.
The new design is modern and elegant
but it's hard to tell you to buy a new phone
just because it's pretty.
Which makes this iPhone the new default.
I think most people should get this
instead of the iPhone 12 Pro.
But I also think that if you have an iPhone
that's working for you just fine,
there's not a must-have, gotta get it feature here
to compel you to upgrade.
That's how default phones work, when you need one, get one,
and it will be way better than the one that you were using
when you don't need one, don't.
But, when the time comes for you to get a new phone,
and if you end up with this iPhone 12,
I think you're gonna love it.
Here is how the new $39,
MagSafe wireless charging puck works.
(charger clicks)
(Dieter laughs)
Hey everybody, thanks so much for watching
my review of the iPhone 12.
If you wanna see a review of the iPhone 12 Pro
Nilay Patel has made one for you and you should click it,
or tap it, whatever your device does.