iPhone 12 Pro: Still Worth It? By Jon Rettinger

When apple released the iPhone 11 Pro the meaning of the word pro was questionable, but now it's its round two, a second chance to prove that the pro iPhone really is professional. So now that it's out, and I've been using it in my pocket for the better part of a month, the question of worth is this phone worth it. I think it's harder to answer this year than ever before, so it was high time for apple to update the design of the iPhone. We talked about the design, a lot in our iPhone 12 review, and I'll link it in all the usual places. If you want to go back and watch that similar design language to the iPhone 4, the iPhone 5. , it's squared off you've got the stainless steel on the bands on the side, the frosting on the back and the new ceramic coating on the screen.

It looks and feels really nice, and while the stainless steel makes the phone feel really nice, I was shocked at how nasty it looked as soon as I picked it up, but I don't have like gross. I don't think I have gross hands at least, but it just looked like a smudgy fingerprint mess. That aside, I absolutely love how the iPhone 12 Pro feels in the hands it has weight to it. So the screen it is a 6.1 inch display here, so it's gotten bigger than last year's, so I still maintain that these phones should have had 120 hertz or at least a 90 hertz, something better than 60, and it's a month later, it's still a tough pill to swallow, but I've kind of numbed to it a little uh and gotten used to it and the display for what you get even for 60hz display is still amongst the best out there, blacks, look super black colors are bright and vibrant blah blah blah all that stuff. You expect, but I do think for the price point that it probably was a miss from apple, something I can think you can count on being in the iPhone 13.

So once you get past the new design and start to look to the cameras, you can see just the confusion with the iPhone 12 series. So, on the lower end, you've got the iPhone 12, which shares the same cameras from the iPhone 12 Pro, but the 12 pro as a telephoto camera. However, that's the same from last year, but then you've got the iPhone 12 Pro max, which has a completely new camera system, so the iPhone 12 Pro isn't the same pro as the max and in a lot of ways it's the same as the regular 12. It's its just confusing so now all that stuff kind of done. The cameras that you are getting in the 12 pro, though, are still very good and do a lot of stuff that is new for this year.

There are three cameras on the back: the ultra-wide and the telephoto are the same as last year's 11 pro, but the main shooter that wide one has changed. So it now has an f 1.6 aperture. It's going to let in around 30 more light, which is going to help you with low light, and that's always nice to have and there's also a LIDAR scanner. That's built in so all three cameras, while most of them remain the same hardware wise. They do get new software features, so they all of them now shoot smart, hdr3 and also support for apple's, deep fusion, which is nice to have, and also there's night mode support built into every single camera on there as well.

In practice, and as you can see, the differences from last year are, let's say: subtle. Smart HDR still does, and I think, an awesome job of balancing the highlights and the shadows and then deep fusion makes a big difference in those lower light scenarios, and I think night mode is still one of the better implementations in all mobile. But I think this area is probably where you'll see the biggest difference from past years, especially on the ultrawide. So you can see the differences. They are subtle compared to last gen's 11 pro, but anything older than that you're, going to start to see huge differences in what these cameras can do and pretty much every shot that you take with the iPhone 12 Pro looks some version of good or awesome.

It takes effort to screw up a shot and I tried, but still as ones I tried to mess up ended still looking really decent, but from what I've seen the photos out of the iPhone 12 Pro are really similar to the big brother, the 12 pro max, which I think makes it 12 pro the perfect middle ground, as you kind of expect, between what you get with the iPhone 12 line, and we get with the giant one. The 12 pro max LIDAR is here. We saw it make its debut on the iPad Pro, and this is an interesting one. I kind of look at the LIDAR like oil in an engine. You don't always think about it, but when it's not there, I think you're going to notice it, and you can see the benefit of LIDAR when it comes to focus and also when it comes to night mode.

It kind of emits its own light, and it bounces back. Things tend to generally look better in night mode with LIDAR, whether that's a reason or not, for you to buy the phone. Only you friend uh can answer that. There are other questionable utility features here as well things for AR and fun party tricks of nudging people's heights. If you're not doing a lot of night mode shooting, I don't think it necessarily makes a ton of sense right now, but the potential is there for what LIDAR could eventually build into the video is an another really important component and Apple has done an amazing job with video and their iPhones pretty much since they started recording video.

But there are a lot of pro level features that you get now with the iPhone 12 Pro the highlight, I think, is Dolby Vision, HDR and the fact that that's happening on a phone, I think, shows how powerful the a14 chip is and how much processing can actually be done on device and what you're going to get with doubly vision HDR is the stuff that I guess that you would expect right. You're going to get really dark, blacks, you'll get nice highlights to get poppy colors. You can noticeably see a difference. Even if you can't tangibly say what they are. They just look better on your phone, and it's not really that useful.

It looks great on your phone, but if you're going to share video really anywhere, it's gonna look like it's a messed up sort of overexposed mess, sometimes on Twitter. Sometimes on Instagram. You don't really know how those platforms are going to take that format in most TVs. If you watch your content back, there can't show it even the Apple TV itself. You have to do weird settings to get it to show.

Well, it looks awesome on your phone and I want to reiterate, if you're going, to share any of this stuff you're going to have to turn it off. Now. That's the fault of the apps and third parties, not apple, but it still makes you question the utility of it right now that Dolby Vision things was like the marquee feature, but what I am I'm giving apple a slow cap for uh is 10-bit color. It has gone crazy under the radar, so we obviously shoot a lot of video here and oftentimes. We sort of interlace video.

We shoot with our smartphones with our studio cameras, because it's easier to sort of be mobile with a phone and most phones shoot what's called 8-bit, and that gives you like about 16 million different colors that you can play with and tweak and for the most part, it's pretty good, but for comparison 10 bit again, which is in the iPhone 12 Pro gives you billions of colors so where that matters are in the editing process, where you have more control over tweaking the colors, especially trying to get them to match the studio cameras. It's not something that everybody's going to care about, but as a creator who's making a lot of videos. It is a very welcome change and why I think a lot of people who really don't care about OS at all would probably gravitate to the iPhone, because it's now become a really capable video camera in your pocket. I almost feel like performance sections on iPhone. Reviews are relatively unnecessary, so I'm going to make it extra short.

Surprise: everybody, it's the fastest, iPhone apple's ever made uh. Obviously uh. It's a 14 chip in here it is extremely capable uh. You also now have six gigs of rams opposed to four from last year. I don't think most people are gonna notice, any difference at all, at least initially between the a13 and four gigs of ram versus the 14 and six.

But if you keep your phone for three or four years, you will notice that difference. The headroom you get with the newest iPhone is significant. It'll last you probably a year longer than last gens. This is still the best performing phone that I've ever tested. I mean apple.

Silicon is so far ahead of the competition, it's not even close and if the end user experience is what matters you're going to get the fastest sort of phone with the iPhone 12 Pro and if benchmarked, with what you care about, it's still going to benchmark faster than anything else from the competition.5G is like a big thing. That's happening, I think, for most flagship phones coming out in 2020 and 21. It's important feature to have I'm still kind of shocked, though that apple didn't again, usually they're, not that early when it comes to technology and while the iPhone is ready for 5g, I'm not really sure that 5g is ready for the iPhone or any phone out there. Now I can't speak to your carrier where you live and your experience with 5g it's going to vary widely across the board, but it does support both flavors of 5g. One is ultra-wideband, which has like the stupid, fast speeds that you see you're getting two or three thousand down um, but you've got to be standing particular area and nothing can block it.

It's fun to have it's. I think less useful. What most people are going to experience 5g with is it's called sub six, it's what gets through walls and is more useful and that's where you start to see the potential future of 5g. In my experience it's been sometimes fashion. LTE, sometimes not, and I think your experience with 5g is going to be somewhere in between there.

Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's not it'll get better over the years. Apple's doing some stuff, though, on the back end to improve that they've got it's a smart, switching type technology where they decide. If you really need the 5g speeds, and then they'll turn it on for you and turn it off to save battery life, which in one aspect is good on the other side, I personally would like to know if your phone shows 5g and apple decides, you don't need it and is using LTE. Instead, your phone is going to still show 5g.

You can turn it off and always use 5g. I did have a bit of a battery. It was about 2-3 hours, less battery life that I got overall. I've been surprisingly impressed with battery life, and I was not coming in expecting great things with a smaller a million powers than last year. It's 28.15 now plus 5g did not seem like a recipe for awesomeness, but software tweaks, and I'm guessing processor efficiencies. It's getting about five is hours of screen on time, and I still had 25 of my battery left.

That's pretty good for me! Now, it's not the best out there. It's not industry, leading by any type of imagination. I imagine the 12 pro max will be much better, but it's a dare and I don't have to worry about battery life to get through a day. I can charge it at night, but if you're concerned about how it's going to work with efficiency, you should be okay. You decide to switch that auto 5g off and have 5g on all the time, though, you should get about a 10 to 13 percent uh hit in battery life, at least in my experience.

So the iPhone 12 Pro is a solid update from the iPhone 11 Pro and especially over anything that came before that. But the main issue with 12 pro like, isn't the iPhone 12 Pro it's its giant, brother, the 12 pro max, it's a phone that I am much more excited about, and I think take the pro name to what it should be. And maybe that's the phone. That's right for you, but I don't think a lot of people are that jazzed to carry a 6.7 inch device in their pocket to get the bigger sensor and to get the more zoom. And when you look at the iPhone 12 Pro next to the iPhone 12.

The only difference is aside from ram is the telephoto and the materials, and it's hard to recommend the pro over the 12. And in a vacuum just evaluating the 12 per on its own. It is an awesome phone and probably the perfect choice for most people, but like in a real world test where the 12 exists and the max is a phone that's either out or coming depending on when you're watching this. It almost seems like the 12 pro, is kind of forgotten. Furthermore, it's the metal version of the iPhone 12 for that extra camera and some tweaks, whether that's worth the extra 200 bucks for you, I don't know, but it makes me think more and more that the iPhone 12 and not the 12 pro is a perfect iPhone for almost everybody.

You.

Source : Jon Rettinger