iPhone 12 mini Hands-on Review: Feels So Good! By Andru Edwards

I'm Andru Edwards. You're watching Gear Live and this is my review of Apple's iPhone 12 mini, let's do it. This video is brought to you by Setapp, a cross-platform, suite of apps that keep you productive and help you find your flow. Stay tuned to find out more. What's going on tech squad, Andru Edwards here, and as I mentioned, today I'm bringing you my review of this guy right here. This is the new iPhone 12 mini, I've been using this phone for just over a week and they hit stores on November 13th.

Now, if you wanna pick one up for yourself, I will have links down in the description below. I do also have a review of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. I will leave a link to that one in the description below as well. Let's get started by talking about the differences between the $729 iPhone 12 mini and the $829 iPhone 12. Now, one of the main questions I've gotten is in regards to what you're losing by going with a smaller phone.

And the answer is really, not much at all. I'll be going into more detail on some of these in a moment, but right up front, here they are. The iPhone 12 mini has a 5.4 inch display while the iPhone 12 has a 6.1 inch display. The iPhone 12 mini's display is more dense at 476 pixels per inch compared to the 460 pixels per inch on the iPhone 12. The iPhone 12 mini has a smaller battery than the iPhone 12 which Apple says will result in one hour less battery life when streaming video and two hours less when playing back a local video file.

And lastly, when using MagSafe wireless charging the iPhone 12 mini charges at 12 watts, while the larger iPhone 12 charges at 15 watts. And that's it, similar to the iPhone 10S and 10S Max, or 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 are almost identical with the exception of display size and battery life. When looking at other important specs like camera capabilities, display brightness, storage configurations, and casing materials, the iPhone 12 mini matches up spec for spec with the iPhone 12. So the choice here really does come down to size. And since that's the main point of the mini and I mean, heck it's in the name of the product itself, we've got to kick this off by talking about the design.

The iPhone 12 mini was a phone that I was very curious about prior to getting my hands on it. I've carried the largest iPhone size available since Apple started releasing the Plus model with the iPhone 6. I always wanted the biggest battery and biggest display, and didn't want to miss out on any extra features, #FOMO. Opening the iPhone 12 mini and lifting it out of the box instantly made me think, wow, this feels so good. The size and weight are just perfect for one hand and iPhone use with zero struggle.

There's something to be said for the feeling of absolute confidence when holding a device and you can do whatever you wanna do without having to do any awkward hand stretching. And also the thought of potentially dropping it is nowhere to be found, the iPhone 12 mini uses an aluminum band around the edges which is nice and light, and is basically fingerprint proof, at least here on the blue model, Apple sent over for review. As far as colors go, aside from this blue one, the iPhone 12 mini is also available in black, which is the color I have for the standard iPhone 12. White, green and product red. Apple also made these phones durable with IP68 water and dust resistance.

Water resistance this year is up to six meters of depth submersion for up to 30 minutes, which is three times more depth for the iPhone 12 mini when compared to the iPhone 11. There is also the new ceramic shield on the front glass which Apple says makes it four times less prone to shattering when dropped. And just for the sake of clarity, for this review, I did not test water resistance or do any drop testing. Up next, I've got to address what seemed to be the main focus of Apple's iPhone 12 event, 5G. Apple made a big deal of 5G coming towards iPhone 12s lineup even having Verizon take the stage to talk millimeter wave and the launch of it's nationwide 5G service.

Lots of claims were made about how fast it is and now 5G is faster and can support the more people within the same coverage area but right now it's still hit or miss and highly dependent on where you are. Now, as I showed in my iPhone 12 videos and my tests, at least here in Seattle, when testing both the nationwide offerings from T-Mobile and Verizon, there isn't much benefit over 4G LTE speeds. I can connect to both here in my home as well as when I'm in the downtown area but finding a real, tangible benefit is difficult. That said, I have friends who are in just the right areas of Los Angeles and Chicago, who are able to get 5G speeds of over one gigabit. The iPhone 12 mini has the same support for 5G as the rest of the iPhone 12 lineup so whether you have the 12 mini, 12, 12 Pro or 12 Pro Max, you get access to all the same 5G bands which includes millimeter wave here in the US.

I tested the nationwide sub-6 gigahertz flavors of 5G to see just how fast they were. And what you're seeing in these speed tests is T-Mobile 5G on the iPhone 12 Pro and Verizon 5G on the iPhone 12. And I first tried the speed test here in my home and as you'll see in these results there isn't much improvement over 4G LTE, as I mentioned. And again, this is highly dependent on where you are. My main point is, if you pick up one of these phones expecting way faster speeds on cellular, right out of the box, you might get it or you might not get it, and it all depends on where you're physically located.

Obviously it's gonna get better over time and that doesn't mean that some people aren't going to see better connection speeds, especially in areas where 4G was spotty.5G may not mean a huge boost in speed right away but it can absolutely provide service in areas where people struggled to get it. The nice thing about the iPhone is that they last a long time and they maintain software support by Apple for about five years. So the iPhone 12 that you buy today will be equipped to handle 5G speeds as the rollout accelerates. It should also be noted that the iPhone 12 mini is the smallest and lightest phone that supports 5G sub-6 gigahertz, and millimeter wave. You just won't find another phone in this size range that offers the same level of 5G support.

One other quick thing about 5G that stuck out for me, I typically use two SIMs in my iPhone, a T-Mobile eSIM for calls and texts, and a Verizon physical SIM for data. It worked great on the iPhone 10S Max and iPhone 11 Pro Max with no negative hit to 4G LTE performance. However, on the iPhone 12 series of devices, you can't access 5G at all if you use the dual SIM feature, instead you have to use 4G LTE at all times. One way around this, it's a turnoff one SIM or the other in settings, which will allow you to then access 5G on the one active SIM but I don't know that many people are gonna wanna mess with settings to swap between services to get 5G connectivity. I'm not sure if this is an iPhone limitation or if it's a carrier limitation, or if it's a Qualcomm modem limitation but I did want to point it out in case anyone out there is in the same boat as me.

You may have seen reports that Apple is working on a software update to make dual SIM 5G work but none of them included official word from Apple, so it's all rumor at this point. Okay, up next, now that 5G has been addressed, let's talk about the display. The iPhone 12 mini has a typical display brightness of 625 nits which gets bumped up to a max of 1200 nits of brightness in the highlights of high dynamic range content. The bigger story here though is that Apple has brought the super retina HDR display to the iPhone 12 mini, in previous years it was just the higher end Pro models that got Apple's OLED displays, while the entry-level models got the Liquid Retina LCD displays. With the iPhone 12 mini, you're getting a 5.4 inch, 2340 by 1080 Super Retina XDR display at 476 pixels per inch, and the same 2 million to one contrast ratio, True Tone and P3 wide color support that you'd find on the rest of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro lineup. So again, you aren't compromising on display quality at all, if you decide to pick up the mini.

The main change obviously is the size of the display, if you love devices like the 4.7 inch iPhone 6, 7, 8 and the 2020 iPhone SE. The iPhone 12 mini is actually smaller than those but gives you a larger 5.4 inch display. When you look at the older iPhone 5, 5S and original SE, the iPhone 12 mini is just a little bit bigger than those. Now, if you're someone who loves the home button interface then obviously the iPhone SE is still there for you. But if you're someone who's only been eyeing the 2020 iPhone SE due to the smaller size, because that's the main draw for you, maybe you don't want to carry around a 6.1 inch phone, but you do want an OLED display, face ID, and the more modern design, if that's you, then you absolutely can't go wrong with the iPhone 12 mini. There's really not negative you can say about Apples displays, they use some of the best displays in the business with highly accurate color, super bright HDR.

And in my opinion, the fact that the displays are now flushed with the metal bands along the side of the phone rather than curving into them, feels so much better. Apple was also able to reduce the thickness of the bezel around the display this year on the iPhone 12, but did it even more so on the mini. Next up, let's talk about sound. The iPhone 12 mini speakers are surprisingly really loud for the size of the phone. Last year, Apple added spatial audio to it's phones, which Apple says is a virtual surround decoder that mostly supports Dolby formats, although games seem to use it without Dolby encoding as well.

Spatial audio supports 5.1 and 7.1 surround, and it also supports Dolby Atmos in movies from the iTunes store and content on Apple TV Plus. That might sound silly for stereo smartphone speakers but Apple has done amazing work with compensational audio. As we've seen recently when they added spacial audio to the AirPods Pro. Now, before we get into speed and performance, I wanna give a big shout out to this video sponsor, Setapp. Now, I've been using Setapp for a couple of years now on my Mac and it's a fantastic service that when it started gave you access to about 60 apps for a monthly fee.

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The first thing I have to say, right off the bat, is the iPhone 12 mini is fast. You've got Apple's latest, A14 Bionic system on a chip. It's got a 64 bit, six-core CPU, a quad-core GPU and a 16-core neural engine. It's the first five-nanometer chip to ever appear in any smartphone, well, except for the iPhone 12 and iPhone Pro. And that not only increases power, but also efficiency which your battery will definitely appreciate.

The A14 also has a new image signal processor with improved computational photography capabilities. And if everything that I just said seems like a bunch of buzzwords, it all just equates to this year's iPhones feeling incredibly fast and as a bonus that speed just adds to the longevity of the device. But next, one of the most important specs on any mobile device and especially one this small. Let's talk about battery life. This is the area that I've gotten the most questions and concerned comments about.

Obviously the iPhone 12 mini is the smallest phone in the iPhone lineup, including the 2020 iPhone SE. I've been using the 12 mini for just over a week and I found it to perform as expected. Now, what I mean by that is, I reasonably expected that it wouldn't have the same battery life as the iPhone 12 or iPhone 12 Pro and definitely not the 12 Pro Max. So right off the bat, if battery life is a main concern of yours, you'll either want to look to one of the other iPhone 12 models or keep a charger cable or MagSafe charger nearby. However, I suspect that a lot of people looking at the iPhone 12 mini are coming from phones like the iPhone 8 or maybe the iPhone SE.

When compared to Apple's other phones in that 4.7 inch size, the iPhone 12 mini has a two hour battery life improvement for video playback and a 10 hour improvement for audio playback. You'll see about the same battery life as you saw in the iPhone 10S. Now, we all use our phones so differently these days that Apple settled on a video playback test on a loop. But what I found is that the iPhone 12 mini can easily last for roughly 10 to 12 hours that I use it in a typical day before I needed to find a charger to plug into. But when you do need to charge there is the USB-C to lightening cable in the box but you'll need to supply your own wall adapter if you wanna go that route.

Or you can use one of the adapters and cables you already have, or charge wirelessly, which brings me to MagSafe. MagSafe is built into the back of the iPhone giving it a circular array and alignment magnet which guarantees that the iPhone properly lines up with supported MagSafe accessories. So first there's MagSafe wireless charging which charges at a rate of 15 watts, versus 7.5 watts when using a standard cheap charger. It's easy to use since the charger snaps into place and the magnets work well enough that you can pick up and use your phone with the MagSafe charger still connected to it. You can pick up the MagSafe wireless charger for $39, but that does not include a USB-C to AC adapter so if you don't have one, you'll need to buy that too, if you wanna plug into a wall.

Now, Apple also has MagSafe cases as do some third parties so you can protect your iPhone 12 while maintaining MagSafe charging capabilities. If you don't have a MagSafe case specifically, there's a good chance that you'd need to remove it to use MagSafe charging. Apple's MagSafe cases are $49 for silicon and clear cases, and then $69 for leather cases. And there's also the $129 leather sleeve, which has cutouts on the front that let you see the time in the little window and the ability to take a call with the exposed earpiece. Then there are the MagSafe wallets, and this is where you start to see how MagSafe is gonna grow and explode.

These are leather wallets that you can slap on the back of your iPhone 12 and they'll stay there magnetically, they cost $59 and are made from European leather. It's shielded to keep any credit cards safe from the magnets and they'll hold three to four cards depending on thickness. Even if you just have one card in there though, it's not gonna fall out. And in fact, I found you need to remove the wallet from your phone and use a little window area on the back to slide your cards out, which makes the wallet even more secure. Now, I personally can't wait for all the MagSafe accessories to drop, just MagSafe, all the things.

For example, Moment, just announced last week, MagSafe tripod mounts, which are gonna come in clutch for camera usage. And speaking of that, let's switch gears and talk about these cameras. The iPhone 12 mini has a wide angle and an ultra wide angle camera. What's changed is that the wide angle is now a seven-element lens which makes images sharper with a faster F1.6 aperture, which brings in 27% more light. I was definitely impressed with the images I was able to capture on the iPhone 12 mini.

And again, just due to the size of this device, portrait selfies were definitely improved as well, they're clean, the roll off of the background blur is great in standard portrait mode shots. Night mode brings less grain and keeps even more detail. And Smart HDR 3 automatically refines highlights, shadow detail, and natural contours, whether you're outside or indoors while also taking care of white balance and tapping into scene recognition to make photos look great. One complaint last year, was that the wide angle camera couldn't do night mode and here on the iPhone 12 mini you can. There's also a Brighter True Tone flash which means you'll also have a brighter flashlight when you need to see in the dark.

And when it comes to video, the iPhone 12 lineup is in a league of it's own. If you buy any iPhone 12, Pro or non-Pro, you now have a Dolby Vision HDR video camera in your pocket and that includes the iPhone 12 mini. Now, I did release a separate video that shows the power of Dolby Vision HDR recording on the iPhone, so I'll leave a link to that one in case you want to check it out, because that goes way more in depth on these video capabilities. But it must be said, this camera is absolutely impressive. Now, let's get to price.

The iPhone 12 mini starts at $729 in the US but some carriers are offering a $30 discount that brings it down to 699. That's equal to the launch price of the iPhone 11, but now you get additional features like the OLED display and 5G, albeit in a smaller package. So the question is, should you buy one? If you're on an iPhone 10S or earlier, I think there's a lot to like about the iPhone 12 mini. This is a phone aimed squarely at users who want a smaller device with all the same features as a standard iPhone 12. What Apple has done here, in my opinion, is built a smartphone with a feature set that's very difficult to match, let alone beat, at this size.

And it's an upgrade that you will instantly feel when coming from an iPhone 8, 10S or even SE. The main compromise come in battery life, which is to be expected in a device this small, but that's about it. You get the same great cameras, the same 5G connectivity, the same high resolution display and the fastest mobile processor in the world, in the A14 Bionic. That said, if battery life is paramount to you, then you might want to consider one of the larger iPhone 12 models. And I'll leave a link to my iPhone 12 Pro Max review, if you wanna know about Apple's battery King.

So that's the iPhone 12 mini, will you be picking one of these up? Let me know in the comments below and I'll meet you there for further discussion. Of course, we will have even more on the new iPhones on, "Geared Up". "Geared Up", is a show I do each week with Jon Rettinger, where we cover the latest in tech, gadgets and games. Just search for, "Geared Up" in your favorite podcast player if you wanna listen. Thank you so much for watching.

As always guys, I appreciate your support. I'm Andru Edwards, and I will catch you in the next video. (upbeat music).

Source : Andru Edwards