Can the subtle changes make it a better iPhone?
The iPhone 12 series was launched a bit late and has a great start this year as, like the iPhone 11 series, you are getting all the three models that include the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and another more affordable iPhone 12 Mini recently giving the market a large variety to choose depending on requirements.
The iPhone 12 is a very good deal as it is one of the most balanced offerings of these. It brings some very good upgrades over its predecessor, the iPhone 11 that includes a newer design, faster chipset, OLED display instead of LCD, and brings in the compatibility for MagSafe accessories. The cameras are slight of an upgrade also over the iPhone 11.
The iPhone 12 covers almost all the aspects of a flagship smartphone and only lacks a telephoto camera which is present on the iPhone 12 Pro. With the newer look and some more features, is the iPhone 12 worth considering?
iPhone 12 Design:
The iPhone 12 sports almost the same design as the iPhone 11 but feels chunkier and solid to hold. On the front, you get a similar wide notch like on the iPhone 11 and the bezels are the bare minimum to the sides. Similarly, on the back, you get two cameras that include a main camera and an ultrawide camera.
The front of the iPhone 12 is protected with Ceramic Shield which is four times tougher than Gorilla Glass and is shatterproof. The display is scratch-resistant and has an oleophobic coating to protect from scratches.
Like all iPhones, the back is made up of aluminum, and the flat panel on the front as well as on the back looks good. The back has a slightly matte finish and comes in five colors - black, blue, green, and white. On the top, there is nothing and coming to the bottom, there is a loudspeaker vent and a USB Type-C port.
The left of the iPhone 12 has the alert slider, power button, and a nano-SIM card slot and to the right, you only have a power button. The back of the iPhone 12 has access to all the MagSafe accessories that include support for wireless charging, and the back works like a magnet, for example, if you take a set of pins and keep on the back of the iPhone 12, they will attract.
The back is no more glossy like on the iPhone 11. The iPhone 12 also gets an IP68 rating which means it is dust and water-resistant. The iPhone 12 feels like a solid upgrade over the iPhone 11, as it feels light but the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack is a miss.
See here: iPhone 11 Pro Review
iPhone 12 Display:
On the front, the iPhone 12 moves a step above the iPhone 11 in terms of display. The move from OLED from LCD is clearly noticeable when it comes to color reproduction and viewing angles. The iPhone 12 packs in a 6.1 inches Super Retina XDR OLED display with a resolution of 2532x1170 which is a good step over the 1792x898 on the iPhone 11.
The front is protected by Ceramic coating which is much tougher than Gorilla Glass and also catches fewer smudges. Compared to the iPhone 11, the viewing angles are slightly better and it supports HDR10 and also a new feature called Dolby Vision HDR. Widevine L1 is present, so streaming HD videos over Netflix, Prime, etc.
However, you do miss on a high 90Hz or 120Hz refresh rate display like many of the Android smartphones, but the display panel feels smoother to use and all the controls feel easy to use. The brightness is good under direct sunlight and under low-light, the display does not affect the eyes as the Retina display can go very dim.
There is also support for the standard support of DCI-P3. The standard 60Hz display feels good and is a step above the iPhone 11's LCD panel, but the lack of a higher refresh rate feels missing.
iPhone 12 Performance:
The iPhone 12 packs in an Apple A14 Bionic chipset which is made on a 5nm process and it is the first chipset to be built on the 5nm process. This is a slight upgrade over the Apple A13 Bionic chipset on the iPhone 11 and still is more powerful than the Snapdragon 865+ chipset on the Asus ROG Phone 3.
Like the A13 Bionic, the A14 Bionic is a hexacore chipset that includes a 2x Firestorm clocked at 3.1 GHz and another 4x IceStorm cores clocked at 1.8 GHz which provides 50 percent better performance over the A13 Bionic. It has a four-core Apple GPU and a new 16 core NPU for enhanced machine learning and better AI performance.
Finally, like the Snapdragon 865 that has the X55 Modem for 5G connectivity, the iPhone 12 series brings in support for 5G. All day-to-day tasks, scrolling through webpages, and even watching videos, it flew through everything thrown at it.
This is the most powerful chipset found on a smartphone to date which we can clearly see in the benchmarks, like Geekbench 5.1, where the iPhone 12 scores 1605 and 4067 in single and multi-core tests simultaneously.
In Antutu v8, the iPhone 12 scores 568674 which is the top level. In terms of gaming, all the heavy games like Asphalt 9 Extreme, Call of Duty ran effortlessly with the graphics set to the highest settings. The heat dissipation is also well maintained on the iPhone 12 which does not feel warmer though having an aluminum back.
With the newer ISP, better GPU, and the newer iOS 14.1, the iPhone 12 is a master of all smartphones when it comes to performance and gaming, but the lack of a higher refresh rate display does feel short.
iPhone 12 Software:
The iPhone 12 runs on iOS 14.1 out of the box which is a slight iteration of iOS 14. It brings out some very good features like a new look to the Siri that acts as a voice assistant, where once you activate it, a small rounded animation will come at the bottom of the display and it will let you know the answer in a small pop-up window.
Like the iPhone 11, there are the navigation gestures, a system-wide dark mode and with the iOS 14, you get a tone of new features like App Clips that enables to use some part of a particular application without downloading it from the App Store, the Music has got a newer look, Apple Pay has got much better as it is much well integrated with FaceID and is much more secured with two-factor authentication also.
The biggest change with the iOS 14 is the use of widgets which can now be placed on the home screen, the applications are well organized in an App Library where all the applications are organized automatically and you do not have to make a separate folder and keep it.
The animations are slightly newer and the control center provides more details compared to iOS 13 with all the controls when swiping up from the bottom. The great software combined with great hardware is a treat to use.
iPhone 12 Camera:
Like the iPhone 11, the iPhone 12 also gets a dual-camera setup at the rear and Apple seems to have not changed much on the cameras. It does miss out on a telephoto camera with a lidar sensor present on the iPhone 12 Pro. Still, the cameras are quite competent enough.
The cameras are:
- 12MP f/1.6 main camera with OIS
- 12MP f/2.4 ultrawide camera
- 12MP f/2.2 front camera
With the Apple A14 Bionic chipset under the hood, the image processing has been much improved also. Moving to the main camera which is a 12MP one, the aperture has been decreased from f/1.8 to f/1.6 to gather in more light and the presence of OIS makes it much more vibrant with no noise in the background.
The images have a good amount of detail with excellent dynamic range and the colors look natural to the eyes. There is no over-processing of colors as it stays natural and pleasing. It may not have as much as details as a 48MP or a 64MP camera, but has much better details and good color reproduction.
The Night Mode works perfectly well on the main camera as it triggers automatically when taken in low-light and the newer chip brings out an improved Night Mode compared to the iPhone 11. The Night Mode helps to take in long exposure shots and with the OIS on-board, the noise is much lower and the highlights in shadows are much better.
Without the Night Mode, the iPhone 12 shoots images with good details but the dynamic range is average, and there plenty of noise in the background. The color saturation is well maintained though. The iPhone 12 lacks a telephoto camera, so you are restricted only to 2x zoom which may sound a bit awkward compared to the 100x space zoom on the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
Comparatively, it is still good as the images at the 2x zoom level have excellent colors and dynamic range. The main camera is quite fast in focussing as well. For those optical zoom images, you need to stretch towards the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
The secondary camera is an ultrawide camera which is a 12MP one and takes very detailed and crisp images with a wider field of view. The dynamic range is excellent and the colors look spot on. The new Smart HDR 3 works well thus bringing out many detailed images with colors that look true to life.
At night, the images from the ultrawide camera come out really good and with the Night Mode, the images come out with excellent detail but still, there is some noise out there. The long exposure in the images does improve and the highlights in shadows are much better.
On the front, there is a 12MP selfie camera that works really good images with a natural-looking skin tone, and the dynamic range works really good. The portrait selfies work well with proper edge detection and good background blur. It may not provide the background blur like that of the 32MP or 16MP front camera that has a larger field of view.
In terms of video, the iPhone 12 is the first smartphone to get Dolby Vision HDR 3 support and there is support up to 4K at 60fps. There is no 8K video which is present on Android smartphones having the Snapdragon 865/865+ chipset. The videos at 4K resolution at 30 or 60fps remain at the top as always.
The 4K video footage has better details with excellent dynamic range, good color reproduction, and stabilization. The noise is very lower and the lens flaring is well taken care of. The ultrawide camera also does a good job in videos with sharper details and accurate color reproduction. The noise is slightly present on the ultrawide camera compared to the main camera.
On the front, the selfie camera can also go up to 4K with more natural-looking skin tones and a good dynamic range. The stabilization is good and you get a wider field of view in videos with good color reproduction. The image and video processing has been slightly improved over the iPhone 11, thanks to the newer 5nm Apple A14 Bionic chipset.
Overall, the cameras feel great on the iPhone 12 and small additions like Smart HDR 3, improved Deep Fusion, and that slightly narrower f/1.6 aperture for the main camera makes it a good option in terms of optics.
iPhone 12 Battery Life:
The iPhone 12 comes with a smaller 2815mAh battery which is 10 percent less in capacity lower than the iPhone 11. The efficient 5nm process has some slight improvements in terms of battery life and iOS 14 comes with certain battery improvements.
The iPhone 12 easily lasted for one single day with heavy usage which is good considering the small size of the smartphone and also there is no fancy refresh rate option here. The standard screen on time is 5-6 hours which is good considering the efficient Apple A14 Bionic chipset.
With the iPhone 12, you get slightly faster charger support at 20W from 18W. However, the disappointment is that the charger is not present inside the box and you have to buy it separately. This charger can charge your iPhone 12 from 0 to 50 percent in 30 minutes which is pretty fast and from 0 to 100 percent completely under 1 hour.
Another interesting change with the iPhone 12 you get is the support for all MagSafe accessories out of which the MagSafe wireless charging pad is quite easy to use as you just have to attach the MagSafe charger on the back of the iPhone 12, so it takes smaller area but leaves a ring mark on the smartphone since the back is a magnet.
The iPhone 12 supports fast 15W wireless charging and with the MagSafe charger, the iPhone 12 can reach 0 to 30 percent in 30 minutes. This is a quite slower solution compared to 30W Warp Wireless charging seen on the OnePlus 8 Pro. This does heat up the smartphone slightly, but would not affect charging speeds either.
Some tests showed that when the battery was about to reach 80 percent, the MagSafe charger was charging at 15W completely, but after that, it switched to 5W to maintain the thermals of the smartphone which is worked quite intelligently.
iPhone 12 Audio Quality:
The iPhone 12 gets support dual stereo speakers which sound really good and the levels of loudness are really good and much better compared to many Android smartphones. There is Dolby Atmos so watching movies or playing games would feel much better with good sound levels.
However, there is no 3.5mm headphone jack, so you need to pair with wireless earphones or Apple Airpods giving a much better sound quality.
Verdict:
The iPhone 12 is an excellent smartphone on an overall basis with certain improvements. It gets a better OLED panel from IPS LCD, an efficient Apple A14 Bionic that provides better performance and gaming, and then with the slight tweak in cameras, there are some minor improvements.
With the iOS 14 onboard and support for MagSafe accessories, in terms of software experience, it is quite good. Though you do miss out on the charger inside the box and there is no 3.5mm headphone jack present either. If you skip on these two things, the iPhone 12 is worth considering and one can buy if you want the best compact iPhone.
Compared to the iPhone 11, it is priced slightly more as it does many things better and the biggest of all is the support for 5G which is finally present on all iPhone 12 series of smartphones. And if you are not after a higher refresh rate display, it is still a good deal.
The iPhone 12 combines the best of hardware and software which is a very good deal.
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