iPhone 12 Pro Review - Skip it IF... By Jonathan Morrison

- Yo, Jonathan here. This is the iPhone 12 pro. I think you should skip it, if you have an 11 pro or pro max, or if you have any interest in the compact size of the 12 mini or the camera system on the big boy, 12 pro max. If none of those things apply to you, though, this is a great phone. It's not perfect, but there is a lot to like. ♪ Hm hm hey, hey ♪ ♪ Put the car in the park ♪ ♪ Spilling out your heart ♪ ♪ I would never lie ♪ ♪ I've been real from the start ♪ So that is "Hoops" by Wolf.

I'll drop a link to where you can stream that across Apple music, Spotify or Tidal for my deck people out there. We also recorded some videos in Dolby Vision HDR and made a song out of the mag safe sound. (phone chimes) (electronic buzzing) Now, as far as the review I wanna kick this video off with a little bit of a chat, because as far as the tech world goes right now there is way too much of this going on. I think way too many people out there are suffering from LGS, last generation syndrome. It is way too easy to look at things through the lens of a generation to generation upgrade, especially when you have access to pretty much every piece of tech out there.

And with that I think you not only lose some of the magic and excitement but perspective as well, because the reality is most people aren't upgrading every single year. - So I used to work at a Best Buy Mobile and I would always want the newest phone. And so up until the iPhone 10, when I quit Best Buy is when I kind of just stuck with that phone for the longest time. I never really found an interest of the 10S, the 11, 11 pro. I think it's kind of a, kind of a dumb excuse but the reason why I really wanted to get the iPhone 12 or 12 pro to be specific is the fact that it was different physically.

It went back to like the whole iPhone 4, 4S, 5. I mean I really enjoy the foreign factor where I literally could just like have the phone up and not fall. And it just feels a lot easier to hold. I don't know why. Maybe that's just my preference.

Another thing that I really enjoy about this phone is the camera quality. Here in Vancouver, Canada it gets pretty dark around like 4:30, 5:00 PM. And so for me to be able to take some videos, or even some photos rather, of my dog it's just super fantastic. And I love the quality - I've seen way too many hot takes of well, the 12 pro isn't that big of an upgrade over the 11 pro so therefore it sucks. But it's like if you recommended and praised the 11 pro last year with the exception of maybe battery life and the fact that you don't get a USBC brick in the box this year the 12 pro is better in every possible way.

I opened this video by saying, if you have an 11 pro or pro max that you should not upgrade to the 12 pro. And I fully believe that. The way we should look at things is say a month ago you were considering buying the 11 pro. You don't own one but fast forward today, you have both options in front of you. Aside from maybe getting a really good deal on a refurbished or used phone, why wouldn't you pick the 12 pro? For me, one huge difference right off the bat with the 12 pro compared to the 11 pro is night mode on the ultra wide angle lens.

This was taken on the 12 pro and this was taken on the 11 pro. Kind of a big difference. Taking a look at one more example, this is the 12 pro and this is the 11 pro, which looks like straight up mush. You also get night mode on the front facing camera and a LIDAR sensor which is a bigger deal than most people are giving it credit for. I personally really liked the squared-off look and I've seen so many people who pre-release were like "Ooh, I hate the six body.

" which is what we've really seen for the last handful of years. And finally we get it and everyone complains I don't think 5G is the biggest deal in the world right now. But again, if you upgrade your phone every few years at least, you know this is more future-proof and something you did not have on the 11 pro. You also get double the base storage, better water resistance, better drop protection with ceramic shell glass. And it is worth noting, that is for drop protection, not for scratches on the screen.

So unfortunately, if you're someone who is prone to scratching your screen it is still just as bad on the iPhone 12 pro. You also get 10 bit HDR Dolby Vision video recording up to 60 frames per second across every single camera, which is kind of a big deal. Before we dive deeper into Dolby vision, though, we first kind of got to dissect and break down HDR, which stands for high dynamic range. So this shape of color is what the human eye can interpret as far as what we can see in real life. You then have the smaller triangle which is clearly condensed and nowhere near as broad.

That is SDR or Rec 709. You then have the P3 color space which really just kind of broadens things in terms of colors. And it isn't until Rec 2020, where it really opens that door. Not only for overall colors, but brightness as well. So things look more like they do in real life.

Even if you're not a creative. Even if you don't make things. You're going to notice the benefit of seeing things in a broader color space. For me, since I've jumped in super deep with all this HDR stuff, the best way I could describe it is it almost looks and feels more like you're there looking through a little tiny window at that moment in time. - I'm walking the dog the other day and had the phone for a couple of days, and we get behind the arena by our house.

And my dog loves to clown around on the Zamboni snow because Canada. So he's on top of the pile doing his thing. And I thought "Well, I got to try out this new feature. " Snapped a quick ten second video without even thinking anything about it. And I showed my wife right away and I said, "You know, there's our pup.

" And her reaction. I wasn't saying, "Look at the new camera. " Her reaction was, "That looks like real life. " And I thought that was pretty cool because that's sort of the whole point of all these new technologies and whatnot. I'm a nerd for all of it, but my wife just looked and thought that looks like real life.

- Last year I got a chance to hang out with Roman De Giuli, who is one of the most talented people I've come across. He makes these insane, beautiful but almost surreal high resolution HDR videos that are done practically. There's no CGI. There's no renders. There's no animation.

And I think his take on HDR is perfect. - HDR is, it's hard to explain. You know, besides the tech specs, we all know like it's, it's way brighter. It has a high dynamic range. It has an extended color space and all that.

I think it's just, it's way more in line with the capabilities of the human eye. That's the thing. We have really like a drastic increase in resolution. I mean, we're coming from SD720, 1080, 4k and then even higher resolutions today. But we are still remaining on quite an old TV standard like Rec 709.

Peak brightness around a hundred nits, dynamic range, maybe six, seven stops, something like this. And we just need to catch up, you know, with all that resolution and higher frame rates and the options we have and the human eye, to put it in simple words is more HDR than SDR I would say. And the viewing experience is different. It's not only brighter. It has way more punch, contrast colors.

I can sharpen my footage way more than an SDR, but without overdoing it, and same with saturation, for example. So it looks very punchy. It might be a bit unusual at the beginning because you think it looks like too real maybe, but you get used with it within minutes. And I hope that it really will come and will stay. And I think it's about time.

- So if that's the case, how do you see that magic or specialness with HDR or Dolby vision? And what I want you to do right now is stop the video. Down below I have links to some true HDR video that I've been working on. Everything from high-end cinema cameras to things shot on the iPhone 12 and 12 pro. What I want you to do is to download those links locally. Do not view them in the viewer.

And the cool thing is if you're on iOS 14.1 on an iPhone eight or later, you should see that little HDR badge pop up. In its simplest form, yes, Dolby vision is HDR video but the key difference between it and say HDR 10 is that it processes that HDR metadata on a scene by scene frame by frame basis, as opposed to one constant with HDR 10. The end result is a more dynamic image. So you get the brights when you need them. These are things like reflections and sparkles and tonibles.

But on the flip side you get those deep blacks on those dark scenes which is beautiful if you're watching on OLED, right? So that's the power that we have on these phones. And it's not that the footage or the video camera on the iPhone is going to replace a cinema camera. It's the fact that we can shoot and process this footage on a device that fits in our pockets. The reality beyond that is that it's a win for everybody right? Because so many Android devices, they also capture HDR video but if it becomes more mainstream and more and more devices can not only capture it but view it, that's more of a chance that we'll have to have YouTube step their game up because how amazing it be to watch a video here on YouTube, like you just did locally. Now, you will be able to watch that Dolby Vision footage in its full potential on both the 12 pro and the 12.

Both are rocking OLED displays this year. Both have a peak HDR brightness of 1200 nits. But it is worth mentioning the pro has a slightly brighter non HDR display at 800 nits versus 625. And honestly, I think that's why the battery life on the pro is slightly worse than the 12, which a lot of people seem to be missing. The other thing that really impressed me with the 10 bit footage is the latitude that it retains and holds onto.

I'm sure we've all seen way too many of these clips going around right now. I promise I'll go in depth on the best way to work with HDR footage shortly. But even if you were to drop that 2020 footage into a 709 timeline in final cut, for example, simply by using the scopes and pulling the highlights down, you can retain pretty much everything, which is crazy because most smartphone footage would fall apart. Again, I want to repeat and make it clear. I don't think the 12 pro camera is going to replace higher end DSLRs or cinema cameras, but it's the pipeline and the doors that it opens that makes things so exciting.

Because there is now a 10 bit support, I can edit 10 bit Sony A703 footage on a phone without a fan that plays things back smoother than most modern computers. If you've noticed, I haven't mentioned the A14 bionic once and as a nerd, it's super impressive right? Five nanometers. There's now a 16 core neural engine which is huge for photography, but honestly, man I just feel like we're so far past gigahertz and Ram and benchmarks and launching 600 apps at the same time. Talking to my good friend, Renee Richie I think he put it best. "Time to completed work is the only benchmark "that really matters.

" And that's what I really want to drive home. It's what can you do with the tech? Not how many cores does it have. As far as the cameras go on the 12 pro max, I think Tyler Stallman, Peter McKinnon and Sam Elkins all have three videos you should absolutely check out. They are phenomenal. I will mention with the pro versus the 12, you get that third camera.

So what it really means is you get three different perspectives without ever moving from that spot. You also get ProRAW on the 12 pro compared to the regular 12, which obviously isn't out yet. But as a camera nerd, that is everything that we dream of and want. Apple's computational photography with the flexibility of RAW. Like I mentioned, I think a lot of people are also sleeping on the LIDAR sensor because it gives you things like night mode, portrait shots, better auto focus in low light, and better cutouts with portrait mode which I will hand off to my buddy Farooq.

- Let's talk about the portrait mode on iPhone 12 pro and iPhone 12. The pro has LIDAR sensor. LIDAR sensor helps when the scene is complicated. I think the LIDAR sensor is always on but it becomes more helpful when the scene is more challenging. Also with the pro you get two lenses to perform portrait mode on.

I'm gonna hold this here, maybe. And let's take a photo with this and then I'm gonna find the same spot and take a photo with this one. Perfect, now let's go and take a look at our photos. Edge is nice. Edge is not that nice.

Wow, can zoom in more. So that's the main difference. And on top of that, of course, LIDAR sensor is gonna help with AR. But I feel like on top of AR is gonna help with apps like TikTok and Instagram. When people use those filters when they use those effects, it's gonna come in handy.

So Apple is playing that game really good. Why am I wearing a hat in the house? Watch my video when it comes out. That's when I'm going to reveal that I haven't- nevermind. See you later. (laughs) - The other thing that I want to touch on with this review is the whole 12 pro versus 12 take.

I think so many people are looking at the 12, like it costs 699. And in reality, it's 799. The mini has that slot now. If we stack these two side-by-side and even out the storage it's actually only a price difference of 150 bucks. Now I'm not saying you need to upgrade to the pro because the 12 is phenomenal for what it is.

But as far as what you're getting with the 12 pro for 150 bucks, it's not that crazy. You get that extra lens you get the LIDAR sensor, you get ProRaw. So really there is a handful of things that might entice you to make that jump. But again, the 12 is still very solid. Aside from that, thank you guys so much for watching.

Hopefully you enjoyed the video, If you did, and you are feeling like being honest make sure you guys drop a like down below. And lastly, get out there and vote. Want to give a quick shout out to Casey Neistat. One of the more refreshing videos I've watched lately on the state of the world. It's actually pretty beautiful.

So if you have a minute, check it out. Thank you guys for watching and I will catch you guys later. (electronic music) (woman singing).

Source : Jonathan Morrison