What I REALLY Think of the iPhone! By Marques Brownlee

So every year, like clockwork, a new iPhone comes out. That's a little better, a little faster, a little stronger than the last one and, as we know, Apple is the master of messaging. So they give an incredible onstage presentation with unreal video production. They paint the simplest prettiest picture of how this is the greatest iPhone they've ever made the most powerful fastest iPhone we've ever made, but they also do something else very important standard practice, but they give the phone to reviewers, and they don't have to do this, but they do, and everyone involved will have essentially some date that they are first allowed to talk about their experience with this new phone. Now I've been a reviewer for years, we're professionals our job is to take that week and do all of our testing and take all of our findings and find all the things we like and all the things we don't like and all the new features and test all the new claims and distill them all down into one piece. And that is a review and if you time it all right, you can publish that review right when the contract we signed says we're allowed to.

You might have heard of this. It's called an embargo. So that's what you're, seeing when you see all this first wave of reviews and impressions, videos about a product drop at the same time, the thing is every single one of these reviews is fundamentally a balancing act, because there's limited time there is no possible way to meaningfully test every single new thing about every incredible new phone that comes out and even if you do how much time does that leave for writing down all these tests and then analyzing the results of these tests and that doesn't even leave time for the production of shooting the video of editing the video, the color correction, the music, all the creative choices you want to make there's just too much being a video reviewer on YouTube today is like nine different jobs in one. So how do you decide what gets included in that review, and how much has to hit the cutting room floor? So every review has its own style. Some reviews, you'll see, are 5 minutes long super dense, some might be 10 minutes long.

Even my own videos reviews over the years have gotten somewhere in the 15 to 20 minute range, but that's in an effort to give you as much information as possible in as short as time as possible, I'm not trying to waste anybody's time and don't forget on YouTube. We also have audience metrics and retention to think about it's a balancing act. So a review is basically the art of compressing and distilling as much useful information as possible into one piece, but because it's an art everyone's going to cut different things from different places and make different pieces. But not this video in this video there is no time limit. This is everything you could possibly want to know about my last five months with the iPhone 12 Pro and what I really think all right.

So now that the limits are off, I'm definitely going to be getting into the weeds, a pretty good amount and multiple pieces of this video. You know when it's happening, but I still think it'll be pretty fun when we do it now, if you're the madman or mad woman who's just going to watch this whole video straight through to the end. Well, you can see how long this video is. It's a good one buckle up grab a snack, but if your attention span isn't quite that long well, you can see there are chapters below for all these different topics. So if you want to get into the weeds on a certain topic, you're curious about you can do that to feel free to click around.

Also, this video is mainly based on the iPhone 12 Pro that I've spent most of my last five months with but anytime. I reference other pieces of the iPhone lineup, the 12 mini or the 12 or the 12 pro max I'll mention that too, let's get into it. So the iPhone 12 series has a refreshed design this year, which is always a big deal in the phone world and the iPhone design just doesn't change as much as it used to, and I think that's pretty important design is really what most people look forward to and what seems to identify the iPhone forever. I mean think about it most of the time when you see new, iPhone leaks or headlines or rumors, it's mostly design stuff, right, you're, looking at new case designs or new dimensions, or what is the camera bump on the back of this year's rectangle, going to look like mostly because we already know the next year's iPhone is going to be pretty similar to this year's iPhone, but we just want to know what it's going to look like the look and feel in the hand, is always the last most exciting unknown. I happen to love the new modern super flat design of the iPhone 12 series.

It's still a rectangle with rounded corners in a few different colors, but the sides are flat straight up.90 degrees stand up on the edges flat, so the flatness has become this identifying characteristic of the phone just like it was for the iPhone 4, 4s, 5 and 5s, but it's actually even flatter than most other flat phones, because instead of 2.5 d glass, that's flat for most of the surface and then curves over at the very edges. This is just straight flat, glass on the front and the back and the flat stainless steel band around the edges. So this has a couple of effects. First, it gave apple slightly more internal volume in the same shape. Second, it made the edges a bit sharper, so I happen to like the flatter edges, just because I feel like it gives me something to hold when I'm picking up the phone gripping it.

Some people, though, dislike it for the same reason, because it can feel a little sharp like it's sort of bumping into the corners of your hand. I haven't felt that with this phone, the thing I like and dislike the most about this design, though, is the finishes. So all the new iPhone 12 pros have this sort of matte finish on the back, which is nice, it's actually a satin that doesn't show many fingerprints in any light, which is awesome. It doesn't change much as it wears over time, but then you've got a glassy finish on the Apple logo, the camera bump and the stainless steel band around the outside. So the logo, that's fine, I get it, but we know they could have made the camera bump matte because that's what they did on the regular iPhone 12.

Yet they went with a glossy finish just on this piece and then combined with the raised sharp camera rings. This has the tendency to collect a lot of dust. Every iPhone, 12 pro you see, that's been outside a case for more than a few minutes or put into a pocket, is going to have dust around the camera modules. This doesn't actually change the performance of the camera, so it's actually not a big deal, but the dust is pretty much always going to be there because of the rings, the most annoying part of the finish on these phones. For me, though, is the fingerprints on the stainless steel rails.

They are constant so much so that it's not even worth cleaning at the moment when you notice there are fingerprints on it, like they've nailed everything else about this rail. The power button is slightly bigger and still very click. Love that the mute switch is a staple that still works exactly as you'd expect it to I'll talk more about the rest of the button behavior later, but basically, my ideal iPhone 12 would actually be a hybrid between the matte back of the pro and the matte camera bump and aluminum rails of the regular 12. , but guess what most people put their phone in case, and so none of that stuff about the finishes about the grittiness about the corners will really actually matter to you that much. If you cover up all of this engineering in a plastic shell of your choice, the size of the iPhone has always been pretty reasonable.

Although it's slowly crept up over the years- and this is my favorite size iPhone ever because it feels just about as big as it can get before. I start to have to do hand gymnastics to reach the notification shade and the stuff in the top corner of the screen, for whatever reason apple just refuses to adjust the software on the gigantic iPhone 12 Pro max to really take advantage of that bigger screen in a meaningful way. So I found the trade-off in cameras and battery for how annoying it is to use just isn't worth it. So the iPhone 12 Pro is a great size. The iPhone 12 is an identical size and the 12 mini.

If you can deal with the battery shortcomings, is the best compact flagship phone out there right now I'll link my entire video about that below a couple. Other things about the design, though this is a thousand dollar phone. Let's not forget that it's a thousand dollars, and so there's a lot of these premium design, industrial design features- and this would be the perfect video to shout out a lot of those things that we typically skip and take for granted. So the whole body is sealed and ip68 certified. I'm not the type to put it underwater and test that, but it is able to withstand dust and dirt and is resistant to liquid submersion up to a max depth of six meters underwater for up to 30 minutes.

So it's always nice to see premium phones that would survive a quick drop in the pool or a toilet, or something like that, and actually I also used to do a lot more tests. If you go back far enough in videos where I would literally try to bend the phone and see if you could hear any flexing or creaking or anything like that phones these days. Just don't do that anymore, and this is no exception. So, overall, just in terms of raw industrial design, the iPhone is exactly what we'd expected it's great. It works great, it looks great, and it still has the widest most vibrant ecosystem of accessories.

The worst part about it is technically that lightning port in a world of USB type-c, but to most iPhone users, that's just a default, and we already know apple's trying to get rid of that anyway. I'll link a video below the like button or right up here in the corner, to an entire video. I made just about that topic. The best part, though I still think, is actually the most underrated the haptics. So I'm putting this in the design section, because this is a consideration from the very beginning when apple's laying out the internals of the iPhone there is a massive space set aside inside for a very large tactic engine as apple calls it, and it's perfect.

So, instead of the previously typical rotational vibration motor that tactic engine is a linear, oscillating vibrator, and it can deliver incredibly precise, convincing vibrations. That literally feel like taps almost like you're pressing a real button or your phone is tapping you in your pocket, and it's better than any other phone's haptics. I've felt right now this one in the iPhone 12 Pro isn't necessarily better than last year. But it's just one of those things that we skip because we take it for granted, but it's perfect apple's gotten so good at haptics that they're comfortable, replacing typical buttons like a trackpad on a MacBook with just a flat piece of glass and a tactic engine. Underneath it's just it's that good also.

Do I think that this triple camera array looks kind of like a stove top? Yes, do I think apple knew that when they were making this phone yes, but do I think they just went ahead with it anyway, because the memes are inevitable, and it's kind of also extra press? Yes, so go ahead, put a case on it. Ah, the screen of the iPhone always an area of great debate, just because how much do people actually care about the display? This has always been one of the most controversial areas of the iPhone. You remember the iPhone 10r. This is a phone that launched at 749 dollars and had a notably low resolution slightly above 720p LCD screen, right and part of the internet went nuts at this, like how could apple of all companies be shipping? Such a garbage screen on paper in a 750 phone when pretty much every other android phone at that price, even some cheaper ones, were 1080p at least, and even I was one of them just holding that phone watching a video on YouTube that I knew was 4k max out at 720p. Just felt borderline unacceptable, but it turned out.

It was fine. It was fine. People bought the phone they enjoyed it. There were blind tests it passed, so it felt like all those articles and headlines about this screen were for nothing because apple knew that people didn't really care about this sort of thing as much as we thought they should. But this is the same apple that turns around and ships the iPhone 12 Pro with an incredible screen on paper with Dolby Vision, a slightly higher 1200 nit max brightness and a world-class color accuracy that I guarantee those same people don't notice.

So the question might not be how good this iPhone 12 Pro screen is as much as it's. How much do people really care about its most controversial traits and to me that's a more fun angle. So, on paper, the iPhone 12 Pro rocks a flat 6.1 inch diagonal display, like I said it's not too huge. It's a 2532 by 1170 resolution, which puts you at an awesome, 460 pixels per inch. It's an OLED display that maxes out at 1200 nits max brightness, which gives it HDR certification and a 2 million to 1 contrast ratio.

Furthermore, it supports the wide p3 color gamut, true tone, automatic white balance, adjustments, and it's coated in a fingerprint resistant, oleo phobic coating. So here's where it gets interesting, there's a huge notch at the top, so this gigantic cutout stolen from the top of the screen by the biggest notch in any new phone out right now, do you care like functionally? We all know why the notch is there it's for face ID which hasn't really improved over the years as much as I was hoping, but it uses an infrared dot, projector a receiver and there's an ambient light sensor along with a seven megapixel, selfie camera and an earpiece speaker and a mic. It feels like this huge notch has sort of faded into our peripheral vision, like other phones added notches around the same time as the iPhone 10 and then over the years. They've all shrunk in their notches, doing everything they can to minimize the interruption to a smaller notch than to an even smaller notch and then to a hole, punch and then even to developing tech to put the selfie camera behind the display itself. So the iPhone's notch is still exactly the same.

It's massive! This is one of those things that personally I hate it every time I'm looking at it, but I've gotten used to it and Apple's done the calculus clearly that most people have gotten used to it and don't mind it, and it's just part of the way the iPhone is and rumors point to it getting slightly smaller next year, but it's not going away anytime soon, even if we do get touch ID behind the glass in the next iPhone. We're going to continue to have face ID. So my take is fine. I get it, but I would really like face ID to start working better, specifically at more angles so like when my phone is in front of me on a table or on a desk. I wish you could recognize me from that angle and unlock without me, moving it or leaning over it, because other phones with the fingerprint reader on the front.

Let me do that alright. So then there is the refresh rate: it's 60 hertz. This is, as far as I know, the most expensive new phone that doesn't have a high refresh rate display. Yet do you care so my take, and you might have seen this coming? Am I love me? Some 120 hertz, absolutely it's the best thing about a lot of the newest phones coming out makes everything feel smoother and more responsive, and once you go 120 hertz, it is really hard to go back to 60. , except for the iPhone.

The iPhone is the smoothest, 60 hertz phone, so I can kind of feel like the best of the worst or the worst of the best, depending on how you look at it. So a lot of this has to do with the overall performance of the phone, which is great, but I'll get into that later. But most of this has to do with the 120 hertz touch sample rate, meaning the layer beneath the display that tracks the touch input from your finger and tells the display to respond is refreshing twice as many times per second as a normal 60hz display. So it feels very responsive and really tight to the way your finger moves on the screen, and this is what iPhone users are used to. So that being said, the iPhone can still benefit massively from 120hz display, and I know this because the iPad Pro has had 120hz display since 2017, and it's incredible, so I'm bummed that the iPhone 12 Pro doesn't have a higher frustrated screen and I would be even more bummed if next year, it also doesn't.

But something to note is that iPad Pro is an lcd and one of the main reasons cited by iPhone defenders for why this phone doesn't have 120hz display is because they wanted to goo led too, and Apple couldn't find a supplier that could make as many high quality 120 hertz sleds as they'd need to satisfy their high quality control requirements and millions and millions of units for the iPhone. So maybe next year I'm really hoping, but you know what else they made some pretty big claims about for this iPhone screen. This new thing called ceramic shield, so the front of this new iPhone has a layer on top apple's calling ceramic shield which isn't ceramic, but it is kinda shield, it's actually still glass, but with a sort of crystallized, reinforcement and apple's big on stage claim, for this was four times better drop performance. So, like I said in my original review, video, I'm not the one who's going to go out and drop the phone over and over to try to see if it somehow hits that 4x number. But what we did find out is it still scratches out of level six with deeper grooves at a level seven, and it will still shatter when dropped.

It's, not some magical. Next level. Solution, glass is glass, and you know the rest thanks Zack, but if there is any observable improvement in drop performance of the iPhone 12, it's most likely result of the new flat design. Since these phones are so flat, the rails are much more likely to take some of that impact damage when you drop it unless the phone lands completely flat on the face, which is unlikely so with that stainless steel, rail, it's going to absorb a lot of the impact, or it could just be whatever screen protector or case. You have on your phone, not the magic of some ceramic shield.

So while I do appreciate the effort to trying to make better more resilient glass on the front of the iPhone, it's not magic, oh and speaking, of screen protectors. This is officially unofficially, but officially the easiest new phone to apply a screen protector to because of how perfectly flat it is in case you're into that fun fact. So the iPhone's display incredible on paper, great color accuracy, flat plenty, bright and sharp, but also still has a huge notch at the top, still stuck at 60 hertz and still scratches as easily as ever, it's glass par for the court. There is a lot that goes into the testing of a set of new smartphone cameras, and it usually ends up being the longest section of the review just because so many phones have gotten so good that it feels like the camera is one of the last things that really differentiates them. But here we are with the iPhone 12 Pro and its triple camera system.

So these are all top of the line cameras, but you probably already knew that and honestly, I could probably have just ended it there, like. You, know, you're, getting good, consistent point and shoot photos, high quality videos and a good mic you're set. But that's not what you came here for. Is it so there's a lot more to say about these cameras. So, first, the iPhone's cameras haven't really changed all that much since they started getting perfect a few years ago.

If it ain't broke, they definitely don't fix it here, which is funny because the headphone jacks also weren't broken, but I guess they didn't feel the same way about that. But the point is: there's not going to be some huge year-over-year difference with the iPhone cameras, because they don't have much to change the sensor size is going to stay about the same. It's a 12, megapixel optically, stabilized sensor. This one has an f 1.6, aperture, letting in plenty of light, and it's flanked by a 120 degree, 12 megapixel ultra-wide at f 2.4 and a 2.5 x, optical telephoto at f, 2.0, a LIDAR scanner, a mic and a flash to finish off that stove top. The thing about the iPhone camera, though, that we sometimes forget when we get super into the technical weeds, is it's designed to be as simple as possible as easy as possible to use, while still achieving results that are very difficult to get any other way.

So when Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone back in 2007 stay with me, this was one of the slides he showed on stage it's a graph of ease of use versus how smart something is, and, of course, he absolutely trashes all the competition talking about how they're not very smart, or they're, not very easy to use and the iPhone is going to be way up in the corner, just a classic extremely scientific apple chart on stage. So while the rest of the competition is definitely caught up on those axes, when you just look at the camera, just the camera, the iPhone still squeezes further up into that corner than any other phone out there right now. This camera app is dead, simple, and it has been forever. Everyone knows how to point and shoot tap to focus if you really need to, and if you need any extra controls, they're, typically hidden away, maybe one swipe and a tap away, and when you point and shoot the software does a lot of heavy lifting thanks to smart HDR thanks to multiple exposures, thanks to computational photography and thanks to a great image signal processor, that makes it all happen very quickly. It would be really hard to get the results that the iPhone gets from any other camera system with just plain point and shoot, and that is what the iPhone is so good at.

So I give it all the credit in the world for point and shoot, but what about the few times when you actually do want to get a little more custom? What about the times when you do want a little more manual control? That is when the apple way can sort of bite you, because there isn't a lot of that in the stock iPhone camera app. There actually isn't a pro mode in the iPhone 12 Pro's camera. Now, fortunately, they have gone ahead and added pro raw, which can give you a lot more flexibility in the editing process and there are some apps in the app store that can help the shooting process for you. But I guess what I'm trying to say is: there's a lot of perfect smartphone cameras, and I think, if you were to do some sort of blind smartphone camera test with a bunch of different phones all in manual mode to dial in the exact perfect photo. You might be surprised which one comes out on top they'd all be perfect, but where the iPhone separates itself is delivering consistent, great results with minimal effort.

So every year I describe iPhone photos in the review and every year it's pretty similar. They've got this crunchy processed. Look but not too over sharpened or over processed plenty of dynamic range and detail for such a small file and the iPhone is notorious for flattening out pictures with faces, making sure it always brightens up any faces that might be in the shadows or not exposed too well. It will always sacrifice the rest of the image if it has to in favor of the subject or the face, which most would argue, is the smart thing to do in full auto. But when you spend a thousand plus dollars on a smartphone, there's going to be a lot of people who want to do more than just point and shoot, and so that's, where there's some edge cases where the iPhone camera does get beat out by the competition zoom is a big one.

The iPhone 12 Pro maxes out at 12 times, digital zoom. There's a few phones out right now with 10 times optical zoom lenses that max out in the triple digits for digital zoom. So you know, then there are other winners with even wider ultra wide or winners with laser autofocus. But again as far as point and shoot goes, which is what most people want out of most of their photos. Most of the time, the iPhone nails that now videos.

This is where to me. The iPhone separates itself as the best overall camera system in a smartphone, because there's another layer to this, which is app support. So you've, probably seen by now some memes about how a video from an android phone will look like a blurry pixelated mess on Instagram, while the one from the iPhone looks great and there's a hint of truth behind that and there's a reason for that. The truth is a video shot on a high-end android phone and the iPhone 12 Pro would be very similar, comparable either one could win, but a video shot inside the Instagram app on high-end android phone versus the iPhone 12 Pro will have a massive difference, and that's because for years many of the most popular apps with camera functions were simply screen. Shooting the viewfinder in android phones, instead of actually plugging directly into the camera feed like they do with iPhones.

There was an android police article, just the other day about how the galaxy s21 is the only android phone that doesn't suck at Snapchat because they actually plug straight into the camera feed on this phone, and that may seem like a step forward for android and maybe that's a new future direction. But fundamentally it still comes down to development. If I am a new app making something camera related, and I can develop one version of my app for as many users as possible, I'm going to make an iPhone version because that's one version of the app for many millions of people and trying to make a bunch of different optimized new versions for a bunch of different android phones will just be a process of diminishing returns. So it's cool to see a version once in a while for, like the s21 ultra or back when the pixel had the visual core. That would be cool once in a while, but the iPhone seems like it'll always have this development advantage, at least for the near future, which is actually the main reason why I carry an iPhone.

So that being said, if you want all the in-depth info on the new cameras plus the differences I found between the 12 pro and the 12 pro max with the larger sensor, better stabilization and improved zoom. Yes, I did make a video about all those things but bottom line here. Is it isn't much of a difference in most shots until you get to the edge cases, which is where that stuff can produce less noisy photos on the max? Also, you remember Dolby Vision, but how there is this huge deal made about the fact that the iPhone 12 series is the first set of Dolby Vision, certified cameras, and suddenly it was about to become a huge deal and everyone would start shooting HDR all the time. Well, that hasn't really played out yet uh. Don't get me wrong.

The video files look great Dolby Vision, HDR video from an iPhone, looks amazing on an iPhone and, if you send it to other iPhones, it'll look phenomenal on those displays, but the second you have to export it and send it somewhere else. That's where the experience starts to fall apart, iPhone's Dolby Vision, video is using hog, which stands for hybrid log gamma and without getting super into the weeds on file formats and nits. It's just not compatible everywhere. So if I shoot adobe vision, HDR video on my iPhone- and I want to share it somewhere- like Twitter, Instagram or even an Apple TV, where it's not supported. Well, then the video gets converted and mapped to a SDR image, fitting all of that HDR information back into a standard, dynamic range screen and to me that SDR image doesn't look great, so Dolby Vision, HDR video looks perfect when it works, and I've seen some awesome examples even on YouTube of iPhone 12 Pro HDR videos, and if you have the right, monitor or the right phone, then these videos look awesome, but I'm still waiting for the best most reliable HDR pipeline for getting a video shot here to hit your eyeballs compatibly beautifully every time.

But in summary, overall the iPhone cameras pretty good 24 7. I think it would be foolish to overlook magsafe is one of the most interesting new features on the iPhone 12 series, not because of anything amazing. Physically, I mean it's just a wireless charging puck with some magnets in it that align with the back of the iPhone simple, but the extra layer on top is there's rumors apple's, eventually going to be getting rid of the charging port as early as this year. So that means we could be looking at the future of charging on all iPhones and then the fun part is also brings the potential of a whole ecosystem of magnetic iPhone accessories enabled through MagSafe. So, first on the name, I get why they called it MagSafe it's beloved branding, but it doesn't quite serve the same utility as the original MagSafe.

So if you rely on this MagSafe puck to charge your phone, and you accidentally bump the wire, the phone is absolutely coming with it. It's hardly any more safe than a normal wire, but that being said, it works slaps on the back. Just like that, charges at 15 watts and that's fine uh. There are a number of pretty decent, MagSafe accessories kind of like this. That are just cases that are compatible with MagSafe, meaning uh.

If you slap the charger on the back, it will also magnetize and work through it. This happens to be one of nomad's leather cases for the iPhone 12 Pro max here, um, but other than that I was kind of hoping. There would also be a separate ecosystem of just magnetic accessories that slap onto the back of the iPhone. So I got this car mount from welkin, which has a somewhat tacky rubber on top of metal. That's supposed to hold the iPhone in place without any clamps, which would be super cool just with the MagSafe magnet inside, and this to me was going to open up this whole new world of things, sticking to the back of the iPhone with magnets, and it's barely good.

Sometimes it might depend on your car's suspension at this point, but for me, it slowly sinks down, while I'm driving until it eventually falls off the magnets. So it feels like this magnetic charging. Puck is the best MagSafe accessory out still five months later, although there is some stuff in the pipeline by moment that I'm hoping to get my hands on that looks pretty cool. They make some big claims about also having a proprietary magnet array. That's a little stronger I'll, believe it.

When I see it, but long story short, I'm calling it an accessory now, but it may be a necessity in the very near future, because if the next iPhone truly doesn't have any ports, then you will have to wirelessly charge your phone every single time. So I guess this MagSafe puck would be the best way to do that. The biggest bummer for me would really just be the charging speed, so wireless charging is already pretty inefficient, but there's a lot of innovation going on with companies pushing superfast wireless charging speeds, 40, 50, 60 watt wireless charging apple not doing that at all. MagSafe is 15 watts period. Actually, it's 12 watts on the iPhone 12 mini and even if you plug into a faster brick, it's going to limit that charge to that 15 watts long term.

It is true that this is better for your battery health than if you want your phone to last a number of years, then that's what you're getting here, but sometimes you just want to charge it fast. You know, I guess that's why they're calling it MagSafe, because for your battery it is safe. The iPhone 12 Pro has a 3 687 William hour battery on paper. That's actually pretty small, we're very used to flagship smartphones nowadays, having anywhere from four thousand to five thousand William hours, sometimes more rarely less, but thanks to the iPhone's efficiency, their vertical integration, their optimization all the classic stuff we've talked about for years. That number doesn't really mean nearly as much as the actual day-to-day performance, which is great on the iPhone 12 Pro.

I can consistently get six to seven hours of screen on time, which is perfect for a phone of this size on heavier days, though, with a lot more navigation or just more taxing use, maybe I'm pulling a lot of data or playing games or using the camera. A lot then it'll drop faster. The a14 bionic chip inside is very powerful, so it can move through battery quickly enough to kill it in a day with less than five hours of screen on time. But for me anyway, that's a pretty uncommon day. So the only thing you really start to think about more and more after the phone comes out is longer term battery health and, to be honest, five months later, still is a pretty short amount of time in the relative grand scheme of things as far as batteries go.

But you want this thing to last three: four, maybe even five plus years and iPhones have a good history here, and this iPhone 12 Pro that I've been using still shows 100 battery health and that's just kind of it for battery apple's kind of bit boring in the battery department. I was just talking about in the MagSafe section, but Apple has never led the industry in charging speed. They have never led the industry in battery size and there are android phones, left and right doing. Split battery cells across foldable form factors even doing split battery cells to do faster charging in parallel. There are phones, doing 50, 60, even 100 or 120 watts, which is absolutely unreal and can get you from dead to full.

Sometimes in half an hour, the iPhone has never done any of that. It's just a simple modest sized cell that lasts a reasonable amount of time. The iPhone isn't just a piece of hardware, it's the software that runs on it, and it's the ecosystem that surrounds it. Now there isn't really a lot of extra stuff to say about iOS on the iPhone 12 Pro. Specifically, that's new here.

In fact, that's actually one of the things people like the most about it is. It is incredibly consistent. They don't change too much year over year. They never have, and older iPhones will have literally the exact same software experience as the new iPhone as soon as the new iPhones come out. So all I really have to say about iOS this time around is the stuff that was supposed to be new widgets, so widgets finally came to iOS after having them on android for the past 12 years or so, when apple comes late to the party on something usually there's some reason, they're gonna, do it the apple way, or they're going to do it better, even though they weren't first and now that I've had them for about five months on the iPhone 12 Pro they're, actually kind of better and worse.

At the same time, so iOS 14's widgets are perfect. I actually think their implementation in iOS, while it's a little less custom, does feel a little more polished and controlled as you'd expect from iOS. But when I first went over all of iOS 14's new features in that video, we saw a few widgets' apple built in that demonstrated huge potential, there's widgets smart stacks and some really informative. Widgets. To give you live updating information, they were all fairly clean and consistent visually.

You still can't quite put it exactly where you want on every home screen, but this felt like the iOS way, and so now it was up to all our favorite apps and developers to update their apps to make great widgets like they did on android, so where they ended up worse is there's actually not as many, and they're still not quite as customizable as they are on android now. Maybe it's a bit unfair to expect all my favorite apps to have updated with widget support like they've had a decade to do on android, but just in the apps I use five months later, there's a Waze widget on android, but not on iOS. There's a SoundCloud widget on android, really useful playback controls not on iOS there's an Asana widget on android, but not on iOS, so there are fewer widgets and overall, less customization within the widgets themselves, but overall the quality of the widgets feels a bit better. So sounds about right for apple. That being said, I was really curious how many people really use widgets, and so I did a poll on Twitter asking you guys.

You know how many of you guys use widgets on your home screen, how many don't- and it turns out about 75 percent of you- do whether you're on android or on iOS, which I found very interesting. So then we've got the new app library all the way to the right. Now. This isn't quite the app drawer that so many of us love on android, but it's getting there, and it's definitely useful for finding everything in one place and not needing to have every single app on a home screen or in some folders. So the iPhone's home screen situation will continue developing over time and speaking of developing over time.

So will the ecosystem. You can't talk about the iPhone without at least touching, on the surrounding ecosystem. So Apple's ecosystem gets a little more complete surrounding the iPhone every year. Just this year they added the HomePod mini they added AirPods max and the long rumored air tags are probably coming soon and in the walled garden analogy that can either be the inside of that garden, getting even more lush and beautiful, or it can be the walls of the garden. Getting a little higher either way, I think they're kind of both true the point is it's making it harder to leave.

I really don't have any fundamental problem with the way iOS works. It's mature enough now that at this point any change they make is a small little added feature or a little experiment. You know widgets were easily the biggest new thing, but they've pretty much locked in stuff like their swipe up gesture and the timing and responsiveness of animations, even if it is a little jarring coming from a square edge instead of a rounded edge, and they've locked up the camera UI fundamentals for so long pretty much everyone on earth knows how they work. By now. I don't like the power button, for example, how it doesn't just turn off the phone.

It also triggers Siri with a long press. Remember when power buttons, just turned phones on and off, but the most consistently frustrating thing in iOS to me that I wish they would evolve is not notifications, although that could also use some work too, but settings just the fact that there are so many settings separated from the app and moved into the settings app. It's just been annoying for a long time, but guess what the iPhone is still a ridiculously popular phone for a reason it doesn't change too much year over year. There's nothing too dramatic happening versus the last one. People understand it.

They're used to it. Both my parents use an iPhone at this point, and it would be really hard to recommend they switch to another phone, even if that phone is technically better, the cost of switching is high and that's on purpose. Okay, so the arrival of 5g on the iPhone. Finally, 5g has been a topic. We've hyped up and talked about for a long time, and there were a lot of big promises made when 5g finally arrived at the iPhone.

They opened their whole keynote with Verizon CEO on stage talking about 5g for a while, so it had a lot of promise to it most, notably 5g just got real. Well, we have the benefit of hindsight now were they right did 5g just get real by adding it to the 12 series. No I mean mostly no 5g rolling out to the world is an infrastructure thing. It is going to be a slow literal building process for that to happen, so that won't suddenly happen quickly because of any one individual phone. That being said, yes, there are now many millions more 5g customers out in the world because of this new iPhone.

But here's a more interesting question: do you even want or need 5g in the first place, because here's the thing we've seen tons of promises of this wild awesome, 5g enabled future with robot axis and remote robot surgeries and insanely fast internet speeds everywhere you go, but, as you saw in my 5g explained video we're not there. Yet I mean realistically, 5g speeds are not actually that much dramatically better than 4g speeds, sometimes they're a little better, sometimes they're. Actually, worse, the rare exception to that is when you're in a stone's throw range of a millimeter wave tower, in which case you might get incredible speeds until you walk away. I actually demonstrated pretty clearly in my video that, if you're within eyesight of that millimeter wave tower, you get fantastic speeds, but as soon as there's an obstacle between you and the tower, or if you literally even go behind a window or turn your back to the tower, then you're going to lose. Some of that signal.

So 5g is cool.5G has a lot of promise for the future, but it is not going to suddenly get real because of one phone or anyone technology. The one thing you can say about the iPhone, which is why they're using these terms is, there are now millions of people out there who are walking around with their first 5g phone. Some of these people will live in an area with 5g coverage and will benefit right away. Some of these people will live in an area that doesn't have it, but that's about to get 5g coverage in the next few years, and they'll see that benefits soon, and some of these people will live in an area with no 5g, and they won't benefit at all. Those people can just turn 5g off and use the iPhone just like their last one.

Also, one of the fun facts is, if you didn't upgrade to a 5g phone, the millions of people who just left the 4g network, with their 5g iPhones may actually make your 4g speeds a little better to apple's credit, they've managed to minimize 5g's effect on battery life pretty well. Some early 5g phones- and this happened with 4g 2, had worse battery life because of how inefficient it is to constantly hunt for a 5g signal, and you might have even seen that now deleted tweet of Verizon account asking people to turn off 5g to improve their battery life, but I actually found that the iPhone does a perfect job with power management. It's well known now that it doesn't actually connect to 5g all the time. It really just switches it on when you're downloading something or using a lot of data when you really need it. If you're not, it might show you the 5g logo, but it won't actually be connected to 5g, and it'll.

Save you some battery, and honestly you'll, probably never notice. So the effect on battery life has been minimal, and a step has been taken forward towards getting the world's internet users onto 5g, but it definitely didn't suddenly get real okay, so you know how every year, as soon as a new iPhone comes out, there is a rapid and dramatic search for literally anything that could be possibly wrong with this new phone and if there is anything, then that becomes a headline, and we're all just trying to find the latest. The newest gate signal strength drops when I hold the phone in a vice grip antenna gate, some iPhones have charging problems charge gate. Maybe the iPhone can be bent in half that's bend gate. I did an entire video called iPhone gates explained.

You can watch that, but this year it's been pretty quiet right. There's not that much controversial stuff about this iPhone, but I don't know it just doesn't feel right. I feel like there's always got to be something: there's got to be something for the YouTube channels to feast on for views. There's got to be some sort of gate that we can talk about right. What is the gate? Oh, maybe it's the display again right.

There's always some sort of element of controversy with the screen and this screen is nice, but it is a thousand dollar phone with a comically big notch, and it's somehow still 60 hertz and apple's getting away with it. So surely that's worth the gate. Maybe there's also been some occasional bubbling up of uh OLED tint issues, so I've seen a couple forums and YouTube videos. Talk about green tint on the iPhone's display hasn't really been enough of that happening for apple to respond to it yet, but it's kind of out there or oh actually, maybe it's just the fact that it still uses lightning, actually, no, what's the iPhone it uses lightning. Every year I mean we knew they were never going to go to USB for the iPhone.

That's not really a gate. Actually, you know what I think I know what it is. I think the bar for a gate is something that gets a response from apple. It's got. It's got to crush that threshold, like you have to find something.

That's so major that apple's engineers didn't find, and their testers didn't find. But it's such a big admission that apple has to go then respond to you. That would be a gate and maybe the only thing that qualifies for that would be. So there is no charger in the box of the iPhone 12 series, and so this it was pretty significant. Of course, it didn't get a reaction from apple, but it was so big that it needed a sort of pre-reaction, which was an explanation by apple in their keynote about why they were doing it.

So we saw them take the environmental angle. You know. Fewer charges in the box means less e-waste when people would throw them away less wasted space with packaging and more iPhones shipped per truck per train plane per pallet efficiency saving the world. Now, when you actually break this down, yes, you are saving some e-waste by not shipping charging bricks that people could potentially throw away if they don't need them, but on the other hand, the cable that ships with the iPhone is an USB to lightning cable and most people who own iPhones don't have an USB charger. So they have to buy that USB charging brick anyway, which is more packaging and more money, and now they're throwing away their old bricks, and it's kind of not really making any difference.

So as much as we all hate this, and we can kind of see through the environmental angle, we can also sort of see how this is already starting to become normal. So since this iPhone shipped in a small box with no charger, the Xiaomi mi 11 has also shipped in a small charger-less box. But they'll still give you a charger. If you ask for it and then the galaxy s21 series did the same, but they're not trying to give you a free charger at all when Apple does something the rest of the industry, takes notice, they're all watching, and they often react, and so just like, we saw with the headphone jack, where there felt like there's about a one-year buffer time when you could make fun of what apple was doing with the headphone jack before you delete all your ads, making fun of them and copied them in your next phone. I feel, like the buffer time is even shorter with this one, but the difference in the danger with this trend is all the innovation we've been seeing over the past few years in battery tech and charging tech, and this like race to the fastest charging phone.

Does that just end? I really hope not. So that's what really makes this a gate to me at least. Is it's not just the okay apple's, not shipping, a charger with the phone anymore and oh, look how greedy this seems like they're being, but the ripple effect that this inevitably has on the rest of the industry and at the end of the day, I think that's what makes the iPhone such a fascinating product to begin with? Is it you know it started off by changing the world in 2007, but every time they update it. After that it has these second and third order effects on the rest of the smartphone world around it. That's what's so crazy about the iPhone.

There are companies that make entire phones based on rumors of what apple might do in a future iPhone just so they can beat apple to the punch. That is wild. All right! That's, I think, that's it. I think. That's everything that I've wanted to say about the iPhone that I haven't in some way in some video somewhere.

I'm glad we did this. This is uh if you made it straight through to the end of this video watch, the whole thing. Well, we've been through a lot together. So I appreciate you also, you might notice it's a different shirt this time. That's what happens when it's a long video it takes more than one day to shoot, but if you skipped directly to the end, this conclusion here well, you missed the most exciting part, but either way yeah.

I'm super curious. What you guys think to me: it's its not just about making a longer video just to make a long video it's about being able to cover all of a topic instead of just a narrow slice of it like we normally are compelled to, but hey. If you guys watch the video, and you enjoyed it, we can do more of this type of stuff. So let me know in the comment section below also down below right, like button are all the references and all the links of all the stuff I talked about during this video, as promised cool. That's it, thanks for watching now a word from the only sponsor brave enough to tack.

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Source : Marques Brownlee