- [Narrator] Of all the iPhones
that Apple announced at its fall event,
the baseline iPhone 12 is probably
the most regular of the four.
But as you'll see, it's still packs quite the punch.
It makes for a compelling upgrade
for older iPhone users.
Watch our hands-on video,
as we review a dozen iPhone 12 top changes and features,
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With its squared off edges,
the iPhone 12 sports a design that hearkens back
to the days of the iPhone 4.
(audience laughing)
- You've got to see this thing in person.
It is one of the most beautiful designs you've ever seen.
- [Narrator] And the iPhone 12 is sort of a remix
of this design with the latest tech.
From a pure aesthetic perspective,
the iPhone 6 era style
with the rounded edges never really resonated with me.
This style of phone was quite functional,
but it lacked an identity,
especially when the display was off.
With the iPhone 12, a quick glance
at the hardware is all you need to do
to see that it's an iPhone.
It's a modern take on a classic design
that's instantly recognizable.
Compared to the iPhone 11, you'll also notice smaller bezels
and a slightly smaller form-factor,
both in width and height.
The iPhone 12 is 15% smaller,
16% lighter,
and 11% thinner than the iPhone 11.
The only negative thing I can say
about the iPhone 12 design is
that the flat edges are a little less comfortable
to hold in the hand
than the rounded edges of its predecessor.
The release of the iPhone 12
sees Apple reviving the MagSafe name,
which now represents a group of accessories
for its flagship device.
These specially designed accessories interface
with the iPhone 12,
with some of them connecting magnetically.
The most obvious example of MagSafe
and the one most closely related
to the legacy MagSafe for MacBooks
is Apple's $39 MagSafe charger.
Using magnets inside the charger to perfectly align
with the rear case of the iPhone 12,
the MagSafe charger provides faster wireless charging
than a standard Qi charger, up to 15 Watts in total.
That being said 15 is the theoretical max,
and wireless induction charging has inherent inefficiencies
that will see users getting the less than 15 Watts.
And you'll also need a pair it
with Apple's new 20W power adapter
to realize full speed charging with MagSafe.
When used with the iPhone 12, MagSafe is faster
than a typical Qi charger,
but it's not what I would call a game changer by any means.
It was slightly faster than the Qi charger we tested,
but it wasn't a huge difference at all.
The biggest improvement the MagSafe charger offers
is its magnetic connection
which auto-aligns with the iPhone
for a sure charge every time.
I can't tell you how many times I've woken up
to a dead iPhone using a standard Qi charger
because I wasn't careful enough
to place the iPhone down just right
on the embedded charging coils.
Since the MagSafe charger magnetically attaches
to your iPhone 12,
you can use your iPhone like normal while it's charging.
I find that the MagSafe provides a better experience
when holding your iPhone in landscape mode
because you can orient the power cable
out of the way, unlike a lightning cable connection.
And although the MagSafe was designed
with the iPhone 12 in mind,
it also features backward compatibility with Qi charging,
which will allow you to charge older iPhones
or even a pair of AirPods.
Just don't expect the auto-aligning magnet functionality
to be present on older devices.
Another cool thing about MagSafe accessories is
that they're able to communicate
with the host iPhone 12 in interesting new ways.
For instance, when connecting the MagSafe charger
to the iPhone 12,
you're greeted with a special charging animation
and corresponding sound effect when connecting
to a MagSafe-enabled iPhone 12 silicone case.
You're again, presented with this sound effect
along with a special animation that represents the color
of the case that you're using.
That's pretty slick.
MagSafe accessories can also be grouped together.
For example, you can place a MagSafe wallet
on top of a MagSafe silicone case.
And third parties can also license MagSafe
to create their own unique accessories as well.
On a high level, 5G offers a much larger range
of frequencies, high bandwidth and lower latency.
It does provides faster speeds
along with increased network capacity and availability.
5G is available
in what are essentially three different tiers.
You have low band 5G, mid band 5G, and high band 5G.
The fastest millimeter wave high band 5G
is still relatively rare.
Although Verizon has by far,
the most widespread implementation
of this fastest type of 5G.
Now, if you don't live in the US,
millimeter wave capability with the iPhone 12 is unavailable
because Apple isn't shipping the iPhone 12 outside
of the US with the necessary millimeter wave hardware,
to be sure 5G has the potential
to yield insanely fast speeds.
But millimeter wave will generally be limited
to popular outdoor areas in big cities.
That's because millimeter wave signals are only capable
of traveling very short distances
and are easily impeded by obstacles.
The most ideal situation is to live in an area
with a carrier that has deployed
mid band sub-6 gigahertz 5G,
as this has longer range of the millimeter wave
and can provide significantly faster speeds
than low band sub-1 gigahertz connections.
In other words, check with your carrier to see what type
of 5G is available in your area.
Finally, Apple's low-end iPhone moves on
from the Liquid Retina HD display to a much more desirable
Super Retina XDR display from the Pro lineup.
Silly marketing terms aside,
that's another way of saying that the regular iPhone,
now has an OLED display, instead of an LCD panel.
The biggest and most immediate difference
that this makes has to do with contrast ratio,
which is now an amazing 2 million to one,
versus 1,400 to one on the iPhone 11.
An OLED display can display true blacks
because unlike an LCD it's pixels can turn completely off
when displaying black content.
As a result, colors are much more vibrant
and blacks are truer,
resulting in a pleasing image that has the visual pop
that the iPhone 11 lacked.
The OLED display also contributes to the overall design
of the iPhone 12 because the technology allows
for a thinner device with thinner bezels.
And the thinner bezels when pushed up
against the flat edges of the iPhone 12,
not only make it look as if you're holding all screen,
but also improves screen durability.
Combined with the higher resolution 2532 by 1170
versus 1792 by 828,
a much greater pixel density, 460 versus 326,
and 1200 nits, max brightness for HDR content,
the iPhone 12 Super Retina XDR display
is an outstanding upgrade
that will make viewing and editing photos and videos
much more engaging.
In an effort to increase iPhone screen durability,
a new composition was developed
that introduces super hard nano-ceramic crystals
in the glass.
Apple claims that this so-called ceramic shield composition
along with the flush edge-to-edge design
of the glass yields four times better drop protection.
And while I've never been one to drop my iPhone
on purpose for the sake
of testing glass performance,
others have done so already,
and they seem to vouch for the improvements in durability.
Apple also says that it employed the same dual ion-exchange
that it performs on the rear glass
to improve scratch resistance on the front glass.
Although from some of the testing we've seen thus far,
it'll likely still be susceptible to scratches
via normal wear and tear.
Like the iPhone 11,
the iPhone 12 is IP68 rated,
which means that it can stay submerged
in water for up to 30 minutes.
But this year Apple has doubled the depth of submersion
from an already deep three meters to a six meter depth,
that's beyond that of a typical Olympic diving pool.
Like the A13, the A14 Bionic features
two high performance scores and four efficiency scores
for a good balance of power and battery conservation.
Geekbench 5 results showcase the A14 Bionic's
modest improvements over its predecessor
in terms of CPU and compute benchmarks.
Following the pattern of its forebears, A14 Bionic,
which is built on an industry first 5 nm process.
It's the same shift found in Apple's high-end iPhone 12 Pro
outside of an additional two gigabytes of RAM found
on the Pro performance should yield similar results
between both the Pro and the baseline iPhone 12 models.
Power hungry games like "GRID Autosport" and "Hot Lava"
had no problem running high settings
with mostly rock-solid frame rates.
And professional video editing apps
like LumaFusion were able to handle multiple streams
of 4K video without so much as a hiccup.
But the biggest standout feature
from this year's upgrade is the new 16-core neural engine
with 80% faster performance in tow.
This makes machine learning operations that are heavily used
by the iPhone 12's camera system
work faster and more efficiently.
It isn't often that Apple is able
to improve aperture performance
on the iPhone's main wide-angle camera.
The last time there was a similar speed improvement.
You'd have to go back to 2016's upgrade
from the iPhone 6s, which had an F 2.2 aperture
to the iPhone 7, which had an F 1.8 aperture.
The primary camera in Apple's iPhone now goes
from F 1.8 to F 1.6 on the iPhone 12.
This larger F 1.6 aperture affords 27% better
low light performance and shallower depth of field
for improved background bokeh,
and that's before any effects like portrait mode are used.
And the iPhone 12 gains another camera upgrade
that hasn't been seen since the iPhone 6s,
in increase in the number of lens elements used
for the primary wide angle lens.
More lens elements can help control optical defects,
when comparing the same lens design.
And the iPhone 12 camera system
also gains a new software-based lens correction feature
to help correct lens distortion,
but as good as the iPhone 12 camera is,
if photography and videography are
at the top of your list,
then definitely check out the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Apple's high-end iPhone differentiates itself
from the baseline model
by incorporating a wide-angle 12-megapixel sensor,
that's an incredibly 47% larger
with larger 1.7 micrometer pixels
for much better, low light performance.
Although the speed of the iPhone 12 front-facing
true depth camera hasn't changed.
It's gained a bevy of new features
including lens correction, night mode,
night mode time-lapse, Deep Fusion, Smart HDR 3,
and even Dolby Vision recording.
In other words, the front facing camera,
although not near the quality level
of the rear-facing unit
receives big machine learning and software upgrades.
With last year's release of the iPhone 11,
Apple believed that it had improved Smart HDR so much
that it no longer gave users the option
to retain the original copy.
Building on the same 10-bit pipeline,
Smart HDR 3 allows for even more natural looking skin tones,
highlight and shadow roll-off, et cetera.
Smart HDR makes possible higher dynamic-range in photos,
which let you shoot a photo containing
both bright highlights and dark shadows without areas
of the photos being blown out or being underexposed.
In a new scene detection component,
which can be toggled on and off independently,
will automatically adjust white balance sharpness
and color of various scenes using machine learning.
Night mode, one of the flagship features
of last year's iPhone 11 gain significant enhancements
on iPhone 12.
For the first time night mode is available
on all three cameras, including the-front facing shooter.
For the wide-angle camera in particular,
which comes with a faster F 1.6 aperture,
night mode is better at capturing extremely low light shots.
And users who enjoy taking time-lapse videos
will notice that night mode
is automatically enabled when shooting in dark areas.
iPhone 12 is the first camera that's capable
of recording in Dolby Vision,
and it looks absolutely stunning.
To make this possible, the iPhone 12 now shoots
10-bit video giving it a vastly larger range
of colors that it can capture.
Apple worked directly with Dolby
to implement a real-time frame-by-frame
Dolby Vision workflow,
a process that usually needs to be applied
in post on high-end video productions.
With iPhone 12, you can capture, edit and share
Dolby Vision-enabled video all in one
symbiotic end-to-end workflow.
Own device editing tools, like the Photos app
or iMovie can be used to edit these videos,
which you can then play back
on a Dolby Vision compatible iOS device
or simply AirPlay directly to your HDR TV.
But talking about 4K HDR,
with Dolby Vision, doesn't really do it justice.
You have to see it to really understand
why it's such a big deal.
Using special metadata Dolby Vision makes it possible
to turn up the brightness level
of a particular portion of a video
without affecting the rest of the scenes' brightness.
In other words, it allows for brighter elements
to appear like they do in real life.
In this hands-on video, I recorded a scene of a bright lamp,
and you can see how much more vibrant the lamp's bulb is,
compared to the scene video shot without Dolby Vision.
Truly having such a feature
in a video camera that's as easy to use
as the iPhone is a huge win for on-the-go videography.
The iPhone 12 has lots of exciting new features
like it's iPhone 4 inspired design,
Super Retina XDR display and MagSafe,
but it's the cameras.
Most notably the wide angle with its F 1.6 aperture
meshed with machine learning capabilities
that stands out the most for me.
That new 16-core neural engine found on the A14 Bionic
makes the iPhone 12 a photographer's
and videographer's powerhouse.
And this isn't even the Pro Max version of the iPhone 12,
which is on a whole other level with its 46% larger sensor.
The revamp design and display
will get the accolades and deservedly so,
but the metal under the hood,
although it won't garner this same year-over-year speed
headlines of upgrades past is just as impressive.
Remember, this is just our initial look
at the iPhone 12 top features.
Stay tuned for a full review,
as I dissect not only the good parts of the iPhone 12,
but also the aspects of the phone that I disliked as well.
Thumbs up if you want to see that,
and thumbs up, if you appreciate this video.
It helps others find it as well.
In the full iPhone 12 review,
I'll also discuss whether or not I recommend upgrading
if you're coming from last year's iPhone 11.
Let me know what your thoughts are on the iPhone 12
down below in the comment section.
And thank you for watching.
This is Jeff with "9to5Mac",
special thanks to Tenorshare for sponsoring "9to5Mac",
download iCareFone for free today,
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