iPhone 12 vs 11: Don't Make a Mistake By Jon Rettinger

This video is sponsored by subcase. It's been the better part of a decade since apple unveiled, the iPhone 5 with its squared off design, and it's widely been regarded as one of the best looking iPhones and since then, we've had rounded corners and notches and design languages have come and gone, but Apple's returned to what worked with the iPhone 5 with the iPhone 12. But the story about that phone is more than just a new design language and some fancy colors, there's new power under the hood and new features we've never seen before on any previous iPhone. But it begs the question: how much better is it than the iPhone 11. ? The phone apple is still happy to sell you for two hundred dollars less than the iPhone 12. That phone in its own right is a beast and a powerhouse.

So I want to answer the two questions which one should you buy and if you already have an iPhone 11, is it worth upgrading to the iPhone 12. ? So I love doing this in versus it's blind camera test time. Obviously one of these was taken with the iPhone 12 one with the iPhone 11. Now granted. You got a 50 chance of getting it right, but can you tell which photos were taken with the iPhone 12.

? So look at things like the sky. Look at color reproduction look at the both, how it's cutting things out! Look at the night mode shots. Can you see a difference so take a look at all that stuff and just for fun, I'm not going to hold anybody to it, but either say it out loud or put in the comments which one, you think is the iPhone 12, and I think this is where it really starts to matter with these two phones? Can you visibly see a difference with the two cameras? If camera is a big selling point that apple's pushing with the iPhone 12? Is there that big a difference from what came before it? If you guessed right, congratulations to you, even though I knew which photos were taken uh when I mixed them up. I had a really hard time telling which one was the 11 and which one was 12. I don't want that to be construed as like.

The iPhone 12 isn't good, because we're going to get to the reasons and the things that it does better than the 11, but it's more a testament to how good the camera system still is on the 11. So all these two phones like look physically different, obviously there's a lot about them. That's the same, so both have optical image. Stabilization both have two times optical zoom outs, both have five times digital zoom, the same portrait lighting with six effects and deep fusion on both of their rear cameras. So that's the wide and the ultrawide.

So that's fine, that's on paper, but the story of cameras is never what you can read it's. Obviously what you can see and Apple does a lot with the processing of the pictures to make them look. I guess apply and generally perfect in any settings. So that aside, we've seen the photo samples, the iPhone 12 does some things that the iPhone 11 just can't do. One of the coolest things I thought about the iPhone 11 line was night mode.

It came on its own. It brought sort of night to life. Furthermore, it wasn't something that I like used all the time, but it was certainly nice to have, but it was limited to just the wide angle on the iPhone 11. So it's different now with the iPhone 12 uh, it's a night mode, like all the things so wide angle, ultra-wide angle, even the front facing got night mode. But if you decide to use that same wide angle on the iPhone 12, the apertures change.

Now let in 27 more light, so you can probably do the math while night mode shots looked good on the iPhone 11 check them out on the iPhone 12. This. I think you can see a drastic difference between the two, so I don't know how much photography you're doing like at night. But if that's your jam, that alone is a big reason to look for the iPhone 12. That same stuff.

That makes photos. Looks good on the 11 to 12. Definitely translate over to video and Apple's got some new tricks with the 12. So the big one is Dolby Vision, HDR, let's do shoot up to 30 frames per second and the fact that that's on a phone is like mind-blowing, crazy. The processing power that needs to actually happen in real time is next level, and that kind of goes to the chip inside the a14, which we will talk about uh on a novelty factor.

That is insane that it is on a phone uh in real world use. I don't know how useful that's going to be if you are the type of person that watches all your smartphone footage back on your smartphone, then you'll notice, and you'll see that sort of Dolby Vision, HDR and be like that looks dope. It looks great, but if you're that person that watches that footage back on a TV, it's going to either look weird or your TV is not going to show the effect at all, even with apple's Apple TV, you got to do some weird settings to get dolly vision to even show, so it's more of like a future play. Maybe the next TV that you get will support it uh. It's more of, I think, a flex from apple to show look what we can do we're serious about video and when you watch back on your phone it does look pretty good if you've been like looking like longingly and lovely making puppy ROG eyes at the pixel line for their macrophotography mode, uh apple scratches your back here.

You do have sort of time-lapse at night. That'll give you that same effect, so here's an example of what it looks like it looks awesome. It's probably one of those features that you will use once or twice and then perhaps never use again, but when you want it, it's there. So on cameras like comparing the two, both do a perfect job, and you're going to have to have a keen eye, I think, to see the difference, but the biggest difference. What I saw was that I got to do my cool guy pose in the ultrawide.

It looked noticeably sharper now you do have to sort of look to see it, but you can see there's a better job with the highlights you can see. The colors, I think were reproduced generally better. It is a perfect crisp shot, but again, unless you're holding these two side by side, I'm not so sure, you'd see the difference or even notice that the iPhone 11 was missing those things but that that's a small part every photo with every camera tends to look a little better. On video things tend to look a little better and those like little bits. Each of each thing you do tend to add up.

I take a ton of pictures with my phone and maybe there's one or two that I really want to use for something special throughout the year, but having the best camera available and the best camera in my pocket matters to me. So if you have an iPhone 11, it's probably not worth the upgrade to the iPhone 12, but if you want to have the best camera going, and you're the type of person, that's going to notice that sharpness difference, you want the wider aperture! You take a lot of pictures at night. You will certainly not be disappointed with the camera setup on the iPhone 12. Alright. So you just picked up your brand new shiny, iPhone, 12 or iPhone 12 Pro like to remind you of a quote from my friend Zach from jerryrigeverything.

Glass is glass and glass breaks, no matter how much ceramic crystals are inside it. If you're going to take your phone versus concrete, concrete will eventually win. These phones are not cheap. You want to protect your investment with the best level of drop protection and sort of comfort and look and feel as you can. So.

This is the unicorn beetle pro from sup case it's available for 20 on Amazon, and this thing will legit protect your phone. In fact, it actually won CNET's annual drop test, the most degree of feet, so the UV pro offers really next level protection in a really slimmer profile than I think what you'd be used to. It also has a built-in screen protector, a kickstand, a ring holder and a free belt holster. All of this is for 20 bucks on Amazon. If the up pro is not the style of case that you like, they have a bunch of other options from huge, thick protective cases to smaller low profile, see-through cases and everything in between.

So, if you guys want to protect your brand new iPhone 12s and again, you definitely should, we'll provide all the links down below to Amazon, where you can go and pick up one of the subcase cases for yourself. So there was one area to knock the iPhone 11, and I definitely did it was. The display apple calls it liquid retina HD, and it's its an LCD panel. In all fairness, it was a very good and still is a very good LCD panel, but it's LCD OLED is just for most things, a better technology and that making its way to the entire iPhone 12 lineup uh was an awesome welcome edition, and this is an area that I really noticed again not saying. The display on the 11 was bad so that apple's version of OLED is so good.

Now the obvious things are: are there right? The black levels are stupid black because the pixels are off. It's brighter the max brightness is up to 1200 nits. Everything about it. Just looks perfect, and they're, also able to slim down the bezels. Now like the iPhone 11 didn't have liked you know: pixel style chunk, uh on the top and bottom, but it definitely had a forehead and a chin that has been shrunk down drastically with the 12.

And the bezels. I can don't really care that much about, but the display is huge improvements over the 11. It is still to me a head scratcher why we don't have 120 hertz in here on any of the iPhone 12. It's now almost a standard feature across android, whether it's 90 or 120. These phones are still 16.

I know the argument that to produce the amount of panels apple would need the fail rate wasn't high enough. It was too expensive. I know those arguments but getting used to seeing 120 hertz and then not seeing on the iPhone.12 is a disappointment, but you don't miss what you don't know. If you're coming from an iPhone you've, never used 120 hertz, you won't notice it here at all. It is a perfect display in the iPhone 12.

It is a welcome change from the iPhone 11 and that's a display that I think I'd be very happy using despite it not having 120 hertz, but there's obviously more to display than just the OLED and that's a lot. I don't know if you drop your phone, I definitely drop mine more than I should apple's got something new here, they're calling it a ceramic shield, they're saying they like injected ceramic crystals and crystallized, make the display stronger, allegedly it'll, make your display up to four times as strong. I still maintain that glass is going to crack, no matter what, when it meets concrete at least now you're giving yourself a better chance. So, if you're, the type of person that drops your phone you're, always bringing your iPhone 11 in for repairs because it keeps falling off the table, your kids keep throwing it across the room potentially well. You should just get a case, obviously uh, but if you don't, this could be a nice reason or at least something better that you get with the iPhone 12.

It's like powering. This is the a14, and it can benchmark like crazy we've seen if it's in the new iPad Air. What makes me excited about the a14 is some version of this chip is going to be in the Apple Silicon max coming soon. So app obviously has a lot of confidence in what the a14 can do and apple's processors have always been just like insane performers and it always kind of bothers me. Every year when Tim Cook says this is our fastest iPhone ever because you'm like, of course it is you've got a year to make it faster um.

I am excited for what the a14 can do not only for performance but for battery consumption, because we now have a smaller battery in the iPhone 12 than we have in the iPhone 11. And not by like a little either. The iPhone 11 has a 3 110 William hour battery, whereas the iPhone 12 is 2815, that's a big difference and that's a lot of faith in the efficiency of the a14 processor, not to mention 5g, which will generally be some sort of drain, especially if you're on the ultra-wide band, the millimeter wave version of it. So I want to hold off on giving battery conclusions. I never like people who do reviews, and they haven't sort of had the phones for that long.

I don't know how battery is going to perform over a longer period of time. Obviously, I'm using the phone like crazy the first couple days, so it's not representative of real-world battery tests, but I am keeping a very keen eye on it and how it's going to perform now apple's doing some stuff behind the scenes with 5g, smart, switching it'll be on 5g, and then it'll switch down to LTE whenever it thinks you need it or don't need it, but it'll always show you, the 5g logo, so you're kind of hard to know what network you're actually on and using. You can turn that feature off, but turning it off, presumably you'll take a hit on battery. I think, out of anything the iPhone 12 brings to the table. The display that moved to OLED is perhaps one of the biggest reasons to upgrade.

So, if you're like me- and you want a better screen, that alone should be the reason why you pick up an iPhone 12 over an iPhone 11. So like we talked about in the beginning, it hardens back to, like, I think, the like the golden age of iPhones, the iPhone 5. I love that thing, and this feels like a bigger iPhone.5. The squared off design, makes the phone, I think, feel more comfortable cases feel perfect on it, and somebody who films you can prop the phone up now without having to put something behind it. That is nice and welcome.

What was surprising about picking up the iPhone 12 was how light it felt like it almost felt like there wasn't a battery in there. It's weird and strange, and I got used to it quickly, but it's not a big heavy like bulky phone, but it does feel absolutely awesome in the hand, there's also some new things that it does. I think the biggest one is MagSafe, and I've ever been like a harbinger of apple, removing all ports uh, it's its MagSafe. It's a circular, magnet right on the back. That's got NFC and some software in it that lets you serve wirelessly charge.

Your phone first fall and it'll charge it faster than regular QI charging at 15 watts, but also it plays nice with a bunch of other accessories. The cases, for example, you can slap that on the back, and it'll show you, with a little cool animation, ring what color case you're using the use cases for mac safe aside from charging aren't like here now, but like it's very clear that eventually this is going to be used for data transfer, and you don't need the lightning port anymore, and we're probably one to two generations of iPhones away from never having any more ports, which means my vision of an USB iPhone is probably going to be crashed, but MagSafe is a very cool addition. You can also use it as a regular QI charger at seven watts and charge anything uh that you want it's nice to have it's not a big enough reason to get an iPhone 12, but if you've got an iPhone 12, it is nice, although it does cost 40 bucks that one's not so nice, I mean so like that's the big three right. It's camera. It's design, it's display, but the two questions like.

Is it worth it, and should you upgrade, so I'll start with? Is it worth it? Should you get an iPhone 12 if you're coming from an iPhone 10 10r an 8 whatever came before that, I would jump as fast as you can to the iPhone 12. Uh. The only knock I have on it right now is lack of a 120 hertz display and if again, if you've never had it, you won't miss it. But the OLED screen the addition of 5g, the a14, a new body, a new design language, which we don't get that often from Apple make this a phone that I think, is worth the money, and this is a lot of money to get the entry level even at 800 bucks. But if you're going to spend that for a phone, I think very few people will be disappointed.

Spend it on an iPhone 12. , but kind of the bigger question is: should you upgrade from last gen if you've got an iPhone 11? Is it worth it and for most people the answer is still no, but I could recommend an upgrade from the 11 to the 12. I think more than I ever could in recent years, but for the same reasons, you're getting a better display, you're getting 5g you're, getting a new design. You can things physically, look and feel different, and you don't get that often from apple now. Is it worth the extra 200 it was me I would spend it and I would pick up an iPhone 12 and pick it up happily um.

But if you're happy with your iPhone 11, if it's working well battery life is still strong for you and you don't have to have the better display in 5g stick with what you've got, but if it's tempting you, and you're thinking that you want to jump to what's new, I guarantee you. You will not be disappointed.

Source : Jon Rettinger