- [Michael] A portion of this video
is sponsored by sellcell.com.
The middle of the road is where most folks
find their mobile phone ideal but me,
I tend to track toward the extremes.
Last time I waded into the waters of Apple's iOS,
it was to test the iPhone 12 Pro cameras
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
And today, I'm taking its cousins,
the Mini and the Max to experience
the very Mr. Mobile mood of Mystic Connecticut.
I'm Michael Fisher,
and I'm happy to have you along
for Mr. Mobile's latest road trip review.
(upbeat music)
Realize I kind of started this series
without properly announcing it.
So, why a road trip review?
Well, as you may have noticed,
I've been spending a lot of time with theUnlockr,
David Cogan, and his real world test format
has been frankly, inspiring.
After so much time spent at home this year,
it's so refreshing to use mobile phones
in their intended context on the go.
It's more fun for me to shoot, I hope it's more fun
for you to watch, Salty Crew.
And I think there's a lot of value
in just presenting you with the unedited footage
from these phone cameras
and letting you to an extent draw your own conclusions.
I know you're thinking it,
at least I hope you're thinking it.
So I'll just put it out there now.
Yeah, this is probably
gonna be my last long distance road trip review
for a little while,
at least until we get our COVID numbers
back under control here in the States.
Just so you know how we handled this one
we've stuck to our pod, with David Cogan,
Andrew Markonik and myself,
we only dined outdoors,
we wore masks when we were around other folks,
we were as safe as possible.
And still, I think my next few road trip reviews
will likely stay local around New York City.
We'll see.
Before we get to the trip itself,
I wanna talk about some of my early impressions
from using the iPhone 12 Mini and 12 Pro Max
for six days or so.
As with the 12 Pro,
I'm so glad Apple resurrected
the slab-sided design cues from the old iPhone 4.
And I have no regrets about my color choices either.
Sure, the gleaming trim on the big guy is ostentatious.
But folks, this ain't called the Max for nothing.
Just like with last year's 11 Pro Max
in exchange for its ponderous pocket print,
you get a lot more screen space
and a lot more endurance.
And there's an added bonus for the Max this year,
a camera with substantially better specs.
But if we're honest,
it's the blue that's closer to my personal vibe.
And you know, same goes for this phone.
As a mostly Android user,
it's been a long time since an iPhone
prompted genuine affection.
And it turns out all it took was hitting an iPhone 12
with a shrink ray to melt my cold robot heart.
You know, small phones have become so rare,
and this one doesn't make nearly as many compromises
as the 2020 iPhone SE.
The screen is large enough to keep typing comfortable,
while at the same time,
the shrunken frame makes it easy to reach those buttons
and browser boxes up where iOS
continues to insist on placing them at the top.
And when I pocket the 135 gram Mini,
I'm not exaggerating,
when I say I usually forget it's there.
It's remarkably satisfying to have this much power
in such a small package.
Now, that's not to say I don't have my problems
with these models,
some of which I ran into weirdly soon
after our mystic adventure began.
But this is a road trip review after all,
so let's say we finally hit that road.
I was going to use the extra time
that I didn't know that I had. - Mmhm.
- When I was in there when you were coming here
to write up an outline for this,
so I would know what I was saying on camera
when doing a lot more sequential stuff,
- But? - I didn't do that.
- Yeah (laughs).
- So we'll see how it goes.
- Here for it. - Yeah.
(upbeat music)
(laughs)
(upbeat music)
- Four and a half hours of sleep.
Let's go find some - (mumbles)
(upbeat music)
- [Mark] It's literally him cheating on his wife.
- No, and his wife cheating on him.
- [Mark] And then cheating on his wife.
- At the same time.
- [Mark] And then his wife is cheating on him.
- Then they find each other again and then it's great.
- [Mark] Okay we're gonna have to wind that up.
- Very well, how are you? - [Mark] (laughs) (mumbles)
(upbeat music)
- Okay, I'll get to my critiques in a minute
but first a few camera thoughts
based on the footage you just saw.
As always, the iPhones are just fantastic for video,
with 4k shooting at 60 frames a second,
no overheating problems, quick autofocus
and forgiving auto exposure.
All of it added on top of excellent stabilization.
You probably noticed I spent most of my time
using the Max and one of the reasons
is because its camera is the best in the iPhone 12 lineup.
Unlike the Mini in 12 basic,
it uses a dedicated telephoto camera
and the zoom action when you toggle
that crop is smooth enough
that you don't need to do anything to finesse it
in editing which is great.
Even the selfie shooter does well in its intended role.
Even though as always I would prefer a wider angle lens.
I can't wait until I ding this on a telephone pole,
bink (laughs).
It's the selfie camera by the way,
the selfie camera maximum style.
- With a stick.
- Basically shooting this into the sun,
- Yeah - still got faces.
But some of my criticisms from my cheesesteak odyssey
with the iPhone 12 Pro persist here.
By maxing out or just two and a half times zoom
the telephoto camera on the max barely justifies
its existence when compared with
the truly useful 5x and even 10x optical zoom cameras
we're starting to see on competing phones.
And the iPhone seems particularly vulnerable
to what I gather our internal reflections on its lenses,
resulting in some lens flare and artifacts in low light.
And I'm sorry, I know people still apparently
like this pseudo portrait mode stuff.
But six years after we first saw this kind of fakery
on the One M8 from HTC, RIP,
half these portraits still look like
one of those late '90s video games
with an animated character kind of pasted onto a backdrop.
The lounge is closed at the moment,
and Titanic adventure at a time look it up,
great game, pushing up roses has a great video on it.
Now, to be fair,
Google's Pixel 5 didn't do much better in portrait mode,
witness my eyeball bleeding onto the backdrop here.
But when it came to standard photo side by sides,
just like in Philly, the two phones went shot for shot.
Even after sunset,
which has long been a Pixel's strong point,
Apple has really caught up here
and it deserves credit for that.
Broadly speaking,
the iPhone will still generate less digital noise or grain,
while the pixel will often preserve more dynamic range.
But ultimately, the differences in still shots
are sometimes just a fluke.
You won't get shanked for saying one is better
than the other,
that is what I'm saying.
I mean, you could be forgiven
for shackling yourself to either one.
All right, enough with the anchor puns before I get shocked.
(air whooshing)
More of my moans about the iPhone 12 Max
and many in a moment.
But if you're already sold on one,
well, today's sponsor will make sure
you get either for the best price.
If you're thinking of trading in your old phone
to help finance the iPhone Mini,
it's a good strategy.
But don't make the mistake of thinking Apple
or your carrier are the only places you can go.
This video is sponsored by sellcell.com
which isn't just another used phone marketplace.
See when you're punching your old devices details
at sellcell.com it compares buyback prices
from over 40 mobile tech trading companies.
That means two things.
One, you save a lot of time,
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In fact, they're so serious about that promise
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Don't settle for less than your old devices are truly worth,
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and get the most for your trading today.
Thanks to sellcell.com for sponsoring this video.
Now here's where the phones
become a little less mystical, a little more maddening.
It wasn't just the camera that caused me to favor
the Max, the Mini's battery is so small
that usually I ended up having to charge it
before the day was out.
And when you do it's small footprint does it few favors.
As my friend Lori Gill points out at iMore,
the phone won't work with stand up
Chi chargers designed for bigger phones.
At least it won't consistently.
And even on the live flat ones,
the coil target seems to be small enough
that two nights in a row now,
I've placed it, gotten the charging confirmation,
and yet still woke up to a dead battery.
There's also the matter of face Id still being a royal pain
in the rear in an age of face masks.
Thanks to Google once again for bringing back
the fingerprint scanner for the Pixel 5.
And as awesome as Apple's Cloud based restore tool
can be when you're in a hurry to set up
a new iPhone from a backup,
you better remember to disable iCloud Photo sync
if you don't want your phone to run out of storage
on day one as both of mine did.
I have more to share on the iPhone 12 family as a whole,
iOS 14 and the accessories that support them.
So subscribe to the Mr. Mobile on YouTube
so you don't miss one more iPhone 12 series video
wrapping up those loose ends.
Check out that cheesesteak
heavy iPhone 12 Pro road trip review if you haven't already,
and let me know in the comments
if there's something specific
you'd like me to address in my final iPhone 12 video.
A couple big thanks have to go around here.
This video was produced
with the assistance of Andrew Martonik,
who reviewed the iPhone 12 Pro Max for Digital Trends.
And also David Cogen,
whose real world test series inspired the road trip review.
Check him out @theUnlockr
to see our mystic adventure from another perspective.
And one last shout out,
Steve Litchfield has been comparing new phone cameras
to those of a five year old Windows Phone
and his findings this time around might surprise you.
I'll link his article down below.
Apple didn't provide compensation for this review folks.
The devices you see in this video
are retail units purchased by my parent company.
And as always,
the manufacturer was not granted copy approval
or an early look at this video.
They're seeing it for the first time right alongside you.
Until next time, thanks for watching
and if you can't stay home then stay safe
as you stay mobile my friends.