Apple iPhone 12 Pro: The Ultimate Review By Not Really Rocket Science

This is the last picture I ever took with my OG Motorola razor at the end of June in 2007. This is the second to last picture, which is me and my fellow nerds, in line at the singular store, not yet a t that dude there had just come from having a vasectomy. I remember telling him his nerd cred was higher than mine. The last time I stood in line for an iPhone was iPhone 4. I never camped out or anything. Just a few hours in the morning always worked out for me.

I remember being fun, surrounded by like-minded people. A lot of excited, enthusiastic energy, but Apple's online process got better and better every year and I kind of outgrew my launch day need to have illness. I haven't thought of or wanted to stand in line for phone for a long time I might have stood in line for this one. My name is Chris bailiff, and these are transmissions from not really rocket science, where we study the technology, techniques, learning and lifestyle of the modern marketing engine like with Apple Watch, iPhone packaging and it's unboxing is pretty much unremarkable. Still a sturdy paper stock, still high quality printing just less stuff inside to my memory.

This is the first time the plastic covering of the screen has had usability instructions. Anybody else remembers the old fingertips, pamphlet that was once packaged with iPhone teaching us how to use it by now. You know there are no headphones and no charging brick which suits me just fine, but I already have what I need to charge and listen to my phone. I expect some grumbling as regular people buy their phone only to realize they now need to go, get a cable or brick just to charge it. This is the iPhone 12 Pro in pacific blue, which should please not be confused with Baltic, blue or Atlantic blue.

It's definitely not Cape Cod, blue or surf blue or deep sea, blue or diver blue, and it's not midnight blue not to be confused with midnight green, and it's not linen blue apple's marketing team might want to come up with a unifying theory on blue and midnight. The phone is beautiful, it's a certain kind of person, and I am one who finds beauty in well-made tech, but this thing is almost sculptural. If you remove the cameras and the logo, I think it could legitimately be some kind of minimalist art piece if iPhones, 6 and on have felt, smooth and round and 10 and 11, especially felt like drops of glass smoothed by the rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean. iPhone 12 feels like it was carved out of glass and steel forged in the fires of Cupertino. It feels in every way, intentional.

The edges are tighter and sharper than I expected Steve Jobs introducing iPhone 4 said it was made with a precision unheard of in consumer electronics, and that springs to mind. Here too, it's incredibly precise, if you're new to my channel hi, my name is Chris and I unapologetically am not ambivalent about technology. There are some things I didn't expect about the material and industrial design. I was worried. It would be too light that it would look substantial but lack significance in the hand or pocket.

I can't report on how the aluminum iPhone 12 feels, but the 12 pro has a nice heft without feeling heavy, it's slightly thinner than my iPhone 11 Pro, but the flat edges make it feel somehow thicker the corner radius. The continuous corner radius appears to be identical to the iPad Pro it's slightly taller and wider, but not in ways that matter in the real world had apple made it slightly thicker to make the camera bump flush. I wouldn't be mad. When I hold my phone with one hand, I tend to use a bent pinky as a bottom surface, with three fingers behind the phone and my thumb scrolling. This is one reason the 11 in previous felt so slippery to me.

The bottom edge just lacked surface area and so stability. The 12 feels great in hand with a solid surface to stabilize. I mentioned the hard, precise edges to the sides, which I love, but I wonder if they'll easily collect, nicks and dings over time. The stainless edges are fingerprint magnets. I don't tend to mind the accumulation of evidence of wear, but in a perfect universe.

The matte finish of the aluminum would be capable on the stainless, which I understand is closer to how the gold 12 pro looks. The pacific blue glass is beautiful, like I thought the midnight green was beautiful. It reminds me of sea glass, except in dark or shadow. It looks pretty legitimately blue. The midnight green of the 11 pro could always pass for a charcoal or gray to me, except in the right kind of light.

The pacific blue is well blue, I'm glad the pro has colored glass rather than a glass veneer over paint like the iPhone 12, where the back of the device is a glossy paint. The blue stainless is bluer and glossier than I expected, which I'm happy about. We all have some cornerstone use cases for iPhone the reasons we carry it around all day every day. Well, here are some of mine, videography and photography, which is my compelling reason for the pro, or at least that's what I tell myself. This is important for work and away from work as a marketer whose job it is to tell stories it's surprising.

How often I pull my camera out to shoot something unexpected that eventually makes it way into some marketing materials. In this way, the pro moniker is literal I'd hate to ever have to apologize for anything other than results. I'm proud of to deliver away from work, I'm an opinionated enthusiast. If it's true that the best camera is the one you have with you, then I'd like to have the best camera possible with me. Even a few years ago, I was hauling camera bags with me on a hike or to the beach indoors outdoors low light, capturing subjects or just capturing memories.

This stuff matters to me a couple of things: I'm excited about flat edges on the phone mean I can conceivably set the phone down on a surface and get better long exposure or night capture and the LIDAR on the pro should improve low light autofocus. This is stuff that matters when you're being really nerdy about taking a great photograph, but also just trying to capture your kid opening Christmas presents, or whatever I've spent so little time with the device. But a few quick shots in low light show some pretty significant improvements on the 12. Most of the camera. Advancements with the 12 pro are software driven, while the 12 pro max has some new hardware that might be fascinating.

I haven't had time to get a deep sense of performance of Dolby Vision or differences between this and the 11 pro but friendly reminder. The 11 pro isn't suddenly not an amazing camera. Just because the 12 came out. I use my iPhone for consumption creation and validation, mostly of design me and my team are working on for not really rocket science. We design a lot of websites and having a high performance device makes sense.

For me beyond that. I use some apps for quick and easy special effects. This one is called mixtures, just a cool app, not a sponsor or anything, and I'm in the midst of recalibrating, the Instagram for not really rocket science to be more reflective of what I'm doing on this channel stay tuned for that, but all of that is about using the right tool for the job, rather than adopting inefficient workflows that fly assets unnecessarily from a bigger computer to a smaller computer, when the smaller computer is often just as powerful. I'm used to an OLED display with the iPhone 11 Pro, but this is where that tech is useful. To me too iPhone for me is, if not the brains to my smart universe.

Then generally it's interface Jarvis to my Tony Stark. I've talked in some videos about Apple Watch. How important it and other devices are as satellites to the iPhone proper. I take that seriously. For instance, here's a shortcut I created that starts work every day.

Siri tells me the day's forecast, what's first on my day's calendar updates me on my YouTube. Subscriber count then asks if I want music from a productivity playlist I have and if I'd like do not disturb turned on for a few hours and I injected a little of nerd humor, because that's what I do. How are you this morning good morning Chris, it's great to have you back on excellent. Last night we overthrew patron, the weather looks like 73.4 degrees, Fahrenheit and cloudy. Looking at your day, first up today is iPhone 12 Pro video upload.

You have 3160 YouTube subscribers. How about some music to help? You focus yes or no, yes got it. Do you want me to shut down comms this morning? Yes or no? Yes, that's five things. Weather calendar YouTube music and do not disturb that. I would have once done exclusively on my phone.

Taking far more time now I use my iPhone or iPad to build shortcuts and other automations then use my voice or a single tap to get things done same then, with messages reminders phone calls some emails. I do a lot with HomePod, my watch or CarPlay there's another sound productivity app. I like called brain. FM again, not a sponsor. It's just cool, but unfortunately it has no Siri capabilities, no watch app and no widgets, so I have to fire it up using my phone, which honestly considering the rest of my workflows, feels downright archaic, I'll, usually control playback with my watch or headphones.

It's not unusual at all for my phone to sit on the edge of my desk or in this drawer on a charger for all or most of the day, untouched, but quietly thinking and doing what I need it to do. Of course, then there's the usual consumption reading, watching scrolling passing or wasting time shopping whatever this is for me when behaviors can start becoming mindless and, as a general rule, I don't like to behave mindlessly. I talked in my Apple Watch Series 6 video about how iPhone can be a thief stealing my time and attention. I have to be intentional about sitting quietly while having lunch or taking a break, rather than filling that space up with scrolling or watching or reading. Furthermore, I have a few practices.

Furthermore, I've developed over the years to help me be better in control of my experience with iPhone. One is a totally clean home screen. I long ago moved all apps to a second tier screen. The new widgets are cool, and I like that people are enjoying all the customizations, but for me, anything on the home screen seems to be telling me what it thinks I should be doing now, rather than awaiting my input. I know I'm a little weird.

I've long been in the habit of swiping down to bring up, search to either launch series suggested apps what I use most frequently or just find what I need with a few quick taps. Furthermore, I have almost all notifications turned off and except for a few key apps, where the notification badge really feels necessary. Furthermore, I turn off all badges. Furthermore, I just don't want or need so much information from my iphone.12 has a few things that I think will be fascinating someday, but not quite yet embedded magnets that do more with accessories. Could I think, be a huge deal to a lot of people more on that in a second, I tend to only use a case when I travel, or I'm in situations that are less predictable than being around my home or home office? I picked up a navy, not bearing straight blue silicone MagSafe case.

I found cases to sometimes feel so tight-fitting that putting them on or taking them off has felt nearly dangerous. Furthermore, I thought maybe the magnet cases would be a little less snug, relying on the magnets, but nope still pretty snug when you put the phone in the case, some tech inside the case's magnets tell iPhone what you're putting on a case and what color blue and displays a little representative animation. So a different colored case would have different colored animation or applying the MagSafe charger instead of the case would have a different animation. It's a delightful little detail and, while I don't think cases spawning animations is very useful, I think there will be some cool use cases for this in time. The case by the way is what you'd expect from a silicone case, made from apple, looks good.

Does its job pick up little flecks of life wherever you set it down, because that's what cases are for? Also, new? You might have missed this in apple's presentation. If you weren't, really paying close attention, is 5g connectivity. I happen to live in a part of the country that has pretty broad 5g access, which was a consideration for picking up the new phone. For me, I did a quick speed test with 5g and then turning off 5g and using LTE faster, download, slower upload. But the thing is, I use LTE a lot when I'm on the road and use it often as a hotspot for my MacBook, and I've rarely found speed with LTE to be an issue.

So it's cool that we're moving to 5g, but it's maybe a year or more from real world nationwide availability and the really screaming fast ultra-wide band 5g is so limited in availability. It feels a little silly to talk about just yet, which brings me to some thoughts. I have on iPhone 12 marketing, the more mature, a product or product category gets the more difficult it is to make its value proposition obvious, go back to the first iPhone. For instance, you could look at it and understand it was unique and different, no other explanation necessary when apple got rid of the home button. That was a big deal.

Look at it, and you know there's something interesting happening, but as the entire smartphone industry, matures its harder and harder to talk about what's new in a way that anybody who isn't really excited and nerdy about this stuff cares. This is why folding phones are interesting, if not terribly great, yet you can look at it with no other information and have your curiosity peaked. There's a very, very small population of us. If you're watching this video, you might be one of them. That knows, or even cares what PPI means or that iPhone 12 Pro has a ridiculous 458 of them.

The 12 pro max has the kill ingest cameras and optics, but a lot of people interested in that huge phone are aunts and uncles and moms, and dads and grandparents who don't know or care about those optics. My point is Apple's iPhone marketing feels increasingly for the niche and nerdy, which makes sense for the pro to an extent, but even just looking at the website for the base model, the iPhone 12. Start with 5g, which is something that, for a lot of people, is not going to be relevant out of the box. A14 bionic fastest chip in a smartphone, honestly. That just won't mean anything to a huge, huge segment of the audience for this phone, even if they enjoy its benefits.

All of this edge to edge OLED display your average T-Mobile customer doesn't know what that means, and not because they're stupid, but because they don't need to know what that means. Better drop performance. Okay, now, there's something we can all relate to night mode. What's night mode, usually, I think apple does a great job knowing who it's talking to, like with Apple Watch Series 3 marketing to people for whom this might be their first smartwatch. But some of this feels like it's marketing written by engineers for engineers.

In fact, I think the most accessible and interesting thing most people will find about iPhone 12 is that ring of magnets that'll make things like pop sockets or wallets, or cases or car mounts more interesting? This is the stuff, the other 98 of people really care about for better or worse. Here apple, I'm fixing your marketing, for you see what I did there, but I digress, because here I am needing out about marketing, which an even smaller percentage of you, the small percentage who cares about the details, will care about. The fact is, from my perspective, even the criticisms are a sign of the maturity of iPhone, but I wouldn't want the criticisms to indicate a lack of appreciation for what is truly science fiction. There's a common joke around my house when somebody asks for a fact or to remember which actor was in a movie or who sang some song. One of us will say if only you had a super computer in your pocket that could instantly tell you, I'm the beneficiary every day of incredible genius.

On the other end of iPhone showing up to my house in a box, I have the privilege of lightly complaining about, like apollo astronauts, wondering if the helmets could come in a brighter shade of white. That iPhone is as much a concept as a device any more indistinguishable for many from the cloud services it interfaces with expanding and evolving in such rapid ways. Only 13 years after version, one HomePod, AirPods Apple Watch, iPad Apple TV, not to mention apple, music, apple, TV, iCloud and all the other services here and still to come. A whole arsenal of conveniences all built around and starting with iPhone. There's no question iPhone has disrupted everything, including our collective trajectory as a society.

Sometimes this is difficult. Sometimes it's a tool in the wrong hands or the wrong tool for what we need, but as a whole, it's amazing, increasingly amazing. Can you even imagine where we'll be in another 13 years, play anything from prince now playing? So this is the iPhone 12 Pro in pacific blue gigabytes. If you're one of us who want the details, it's a pretty compelling mix of familiar with design reminiscent of iPhone four and five and the sure will be exciting of magnets 5g. Even apple's u1 chip there's likely no other object.

That will be so omnipresent in my life for the next year or two always on my desk, my nightstand in my pocket on the table in the car in a bag, in my hand, so consistently in my line of sight that I think things like the way it reflects light or casts shadow. The way the blue looks the way the angles are: they're significant, it's as much a part of the experience of iPhone to me as putting pointer finger to pixel, but even that the marriage of iPhone's, analog and digital paradigms present an incomplete picture of iPhone, at least for me, at its best iPhone, is not a focal point in my life. So much as a lens through which points come into focus, see in all the time spent with iPhone pretty soon it becomes part of the fabric, the background I'll, be using Apple Watch to ping its location because I'll carelessly leave it on some random surface and forget about it. Someday we'll be talking about iPhone, 16 or 18 or 21, or something new and shiny and exciting or boring or controversial to us, but on some random future Thursday. The photos app or its next gen kin will show me a memory captured with the iPhone 12 Pro pacific blue, maybe a screenshot or photo of a client project, maybe a moment in time of my quickly growing puppy or even more quickly growing daughter, maybe a memory of when we get to go to a concert again Disneyland our first return to family vacations.

iPhone 12 pro will not be top of mind for me in capturing these moments, I won't be marveling at its shiny blue edges, appreciating its corner radius, we're considering the countless hours spent by design and engineering teams while scrambling to get it out of my pocket before a moment is gone and years from now, when I'm unexpectedly interrupted with whatever that photo was that I took with this phone, I probably won't even remember it was iPhone 12 I had in hand, I won't be thinking of iPhone at all, which is somehow part of its magic and which is why I think of it now with invaded, wonder and delight that's what I think. What do you think I'll see you next time? Thank you. So much for watching, subscribe and comment on transmissions from not really rocket. Science learn more at not reallyrocketscience. com.

Source : Not Really Rocket Science