The new iPhone 12’s have been out for a while now, and while we’ve had our hands on them for a few weeks, Apple’s news bombardment of the new Apple Silicon announcement and release of new Apple M1 Mac devices has meant the iPhones have had to be put on the back burner for a little while.

Having already covered Apple’s new A14 architecture in-depth in our coverage of the M1, it’s time to fill in the missing pieces for the actual new generation of iPhones.

The new iPhone 12 generation of devices mark a new design restart for Apple, moving away from the design that had been started with the iPhone X in late 2017. Re-gaining the flat side-frame look that was originally found in past iPhone generations of the 4, 4S, 5 & 5S series, Apple is making the old new again.

The new iPhone 12 series is also Apple’s widest range release ever, with a total of four new iPhones: the iPhone 12 mini, a new compact form-factor at the lower range, the iPhone 12, the “standard” iPhone part, and continuing to offer the Pro models in the form of the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max. We’ll be focusing on the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro for today’s review.

Apple iPhone 12 Series Specifications
		iPhone 12 mini	iPhone 12	iPhone 12 Pro	iPhone 12 Pro Max
SoC		Apple A14 Bionic 2 × Firestorm 4 × Icestorm
DRAM		4GB		6GB
Display		5.42" OLED 2340 x 1080 625nits peak	6.06" OLED 2532 x 1170 625nits peak	6.06" OLED 2532 x 1170 800nits peak	6.68" OLED 2778 x 1284 800nits peak
Size	Height	131.5 mm	146.7 mm		160.8 mm
	Width	64.2 mm	71.5 mm		78.1 mm
	Depth	7.4 mm	7.4 mm		7.4 mm
Weight		135g	164g	189g	228g
Battery Life		2227 mAh -12% video vs 11	2815 mAh +-0% vs 11	2815 mAh -5.6% video vs 11 Pro	3687 mAh +-0% vs 11 Pro Max
Wireless Charging		MagSafe Wireless Charging up to 15W Qi Compatible (7.5W)
Rear Cameras	Main	12MP 1.4µm 26mm eq. f/1.6 Optics OIS			12MP 1.7µm 26mm eq. f/1.6 Sensor-shift OIS
	Tele- Photo	-		12MP 52mm eq. f/2.0 OIS	12MP 65mm eq. f/2.2 OIS
	Ultra- Wide	12MP 13mm eq. f/2.4
Front Camera		12MP f/2.2
Storage		64GB 128GB 256GB		128GB 256GB 512GB
I/O		Apple Lightning
Wireless (local)		802.11ax Wi-Fi with MIMO + Bluetooth 5.0 + NFC
Cellular		5G (sub‑6 GHz and mmWave**) Gigabit LTE with 4x4 MIMO and LAA **US models only
Splash, Water, Dust Resistance		IP68 up to 6m, up to 30 minutes
Dual-SIM		nano-SIM + eSIM
Launch Price		64 GB: $699 £699 €809 128 GB: $749 £749 €859 256 GB: $849 £849 €979	64 GB: $799 £799 €909 128 GB: $849 £849 €959 256 GB: $949 £949 €1079	128 GB: $999 £999 €1159 256 GB: $1099 £1099 €1279 512 GB: $1299 £1299 €1509	128 GB: $1099 £1099 €1259 256 GB: $1199 £1199 €1379 512 GB: $1399 £1399 €1609

Starting with the innards, the new iPhone 12 series are powered by Apple’s new A14 SoC. The new chip is powered by two high performance cores and four power efficiency cores, as well as a 4-core GPU. We’ll be going into a bit more details on the SoC in a later page, but by now based on our coverage of the Apple Silicon M1, we should also be familiar with the capabilities of the smaller A14 sibling.

In terms of DRAM, Apple fits the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 with 4GB of LPDDR4X, whilst the Pro models are getting a larger 6GB pool. NAND storage this generation hasn’t changed all that much for the lower-tier models which are sticking to 64GB base, with configuration upgrades 128 or 256GB, however the Pro models do now start out with a 128GB base model, with larger configurations at 256 and 512GB.

The big new feature of this year’s new iPhones is the 5G connectivity. Thanks to the usage of a Qualcomm sourced modem, Apple is now enabling 5G connectivity across its whole new range. It’s to be noted that for users in most countries, this still only means sub-6GHz 5G NR as mmWave antennas are only deployed in the US models. What’s also interesting is that it seems that these mmWave modules are designed by Apple themselves and not sourced from Qualcomm – which makes the new iPhones the first devices on the market to have such a non-Qualcomm antenna solution.

In terms of design, the new iPhone 12 are a mix of the old and the new. What’s new on all new devices is their screens, with the “standard” sized models we’re reviewing here having 6.06” 2532 x 1170 OLED displays. What’s particularly interesting here is of course the fact that the iPhone 12 shared almost the same display specifications as the iPhone 12 Pro, something which couldn’t be said of last year’s iPhone 11 which still came with a lower resolution LCD display and a generally different form-factor as the iPhone 11 Pro.

The new iPhone 12’s only difference to the 12 Pro in terms of screen specifications is that it doesn’t get as bright as the Pro model, being listed at 625 vs 800 nits peak brightness.

On the back of the phones, although hard to notice on these white models, one thing of note besides the different camera setup is that the Pro model again comes with a frosted glass back cover whereas the regular iPhone 12 still uses a glossy glass finish.

The new design is quite a bit of departure from the past 3 years of iPhones. Apple had noted that they’ve reduced the bezel of the screen while still maintaining a symmetric look on all the sides (besides the notch of course). This gives the visual impression that the new iPhone 12/12Pro is narrower than the iPhone 11 Pro, even though that’s not actually true – though it is a few millimeters taller.

I’m still not too sure what to make of Apple’s decision to go back to a flat-edged frame as on older generation iPhones. To be honest the very first impression upon unboxing the new devices I had was that this was just a horrible design and a massive step backwards in terms of ergonomics. Although as I noted the new phone’s width isn’t wider than that of the iPhone 11 Pro, because it has right angle edges, it actually has a larger circumference compared to the rounded-off iPhones, and it translates into a larger-feeling device even though they’re the exact same form-factors.

That first bad impression isn’t quite as prevalent after a few weeks of usage as you can still somehow get used to it, but as soon as I go back to the 11 Pro or another rounded frame phone it’s immediately striking how much better it feels in the hand.

In terms of button layout, we’re seeing the same setup as previous generation iPhones, two volume buttons on the left side beneath a silent mode switch, with the power button on the right side – so nothing inherently new there. It’s interesting that even now several years after the first under-screen fingerprint sensors and quite mature and accurate implementations out be competing vendors that Apple still hasn’t attempted it on the iPhone line-up – I think many would like to see the return of TouchID in such a manner, at least as an option alongside FaceID.

The iPhone 12 Pro comes with a steel frame with a special mirror finish, while the iPhone 12 comes in a matte aluminium frame build. Apple has been using steel frames for quite some time now with the iPhone X designs, but it hasn’t been quite as striking as the design here on the new 12 Pro series. It’s a highly subjective matter and many may feel that the steel frame is more premium, but I do vastly prefer the aluminium variant due to the fact that it’s nowhere near the fingerprint magnet – just looking at the 12 Pro I have here on the desk looks quite disgusting and messy while the 12 at least appears to be clean.

Another big difference between the two phones is the fact that the steel frame (alongside the added camera) of the 12 Pro adds in another 25g to the weight of the phone to 189g vs 164g, a difference that is very much immediately noticeable.

While I prefer the matte frame of the 12, the frosted glass on the 12 Pro is just simply much better and feels much more premium to the regular glossy finish on the 12 – again, because of fingerprints and dirt.

For the new iPhone 12 mini, 12 and 12 Pro, the main camera doesn’t appear to change in terms of sensor versus the iPhone 11 series, although that’s still perfectly fine. It’s a 12MP sensor with 1.4µm pixels and full sensor dual-pixel coverage, however the new camera modules employ a larger f/1.6 aperture lens which allows for 27% more light.

For the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12, the second camera module is the ultra-wide, which again appears to be the same as on the 11 series, featuring a 12MP sensor with an f/2.4 aperture and a large 13mm equivalent or 120° angle FOV. The novelties for this module this year lie on the software side of things with Apple now enabling various new features such as computational night mode on this camera as well.

For the iPhone 12 Pro, the third camera module is a telephoto unit with again an apparently similar module to last year, a 12MP sensor on an 52mm equivalent (2x optical magnification) optics with f/2.0 and OIS.

The Pro models also receive what Apple calls the LIDAR module, which is essentially a ToF sensor coupled with a structured IR light emitter, allowing for 3D depth sensing.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a more interesting camera setup, however we’ll be reviewing this at a later date.

In general, my impression and design of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are two-fold, depending on the model.

Starting off with the 12 Pro, I generally don’t like the new design as the right-angle frame edges and mirror finish are both not very ergonomic and also quite messy. It’s a highly subjective opinion but it just doesn’t do it for me at all, and I vastly prefer the 11 Pro over this, even with the larger screen bezels.

Whilst I still don’t like the edges on the iPhone 12, because it’s a lighter phone and the general better feel of the matte aluminium, it’s actually the phone I prefer this generation. I would have liked the matte frosted glass on the back as well, but I guess you can’t have everything. What’s important for the iPhone 12 is that this year it’s major upgrade in terms of display compared to the iPhone 11, sporting a much higher resolution and also switching over from an LCD to an OLED. This was a major gripe of mine with the 11 and now the 12 essentially almost matches the display quality of the 11 Pro and 12 Pro devices, which is something that can’t be understated.

The Apple A14 SoC: Firestorm & Icestorm

The new Apple A14 is the company’s newest mobile SoC and sits at the heart of the new iPhone 12 series. The new chip is the industry’s first commercial 5nm manufactured chip from TSMC, alongside the now no longer manufactured Kirin 9000.

Inside the A14 we find two big performance cores dubbed “Firestorm” and four efficiency cores called “Icestorm”, making this a 2+4 heterogeneous CPU SoC. Alongside the CPUs, we also find a 4-core GPU. Unfortunately this year it seems like we haven’t seen a public die shot of the A14, though Apple themselves published a shot of the M1 during their announcement event.

Maximum Frequency vs Loaded Threads Per-Core Maximum MHz
Apple A13	1	2	3	4	5	6
Performance 1	2666	2590	2590	2590	2590	2590
Performance 2		2590	2590	2590	2590	2590
Efficiency 1			1728	1728	1728	1728
Efficiency 2				1728	1728	1728
Efficiency 3					1728	1728
Efficiency 4						1728
Apple A14	1	2	3	4	5	6
Performance 1	2998	2890	2890	2890	2890	2890
Performance 2		2890	2890	2890	2890	2890
Efficiency 1			1823	1823	1823	1823
Efficiency 2				1823	1823	1823
Efficiency 3					1823	1823
Efficiency 4						1823

The new A14 raises the clock speeds of the CPU by a good amount, now essentially reaching 3GHz on the large performance cores in single-threaded scenarios. Once a second big cores come on this reduces to 2.89GHz and stays there even in heavier multi-threaded workloads. The efficiency cores land in at 1823MHz now, roughly a 100MHz boost over the A13, but we do know that in power unconstrained scenarios they can reach quite higher, such as 2064MHz employed on the M1.

The summary is that in this generation, Apple progresses the design further and making it wider than before, increasing the ROB size from 560 to 630, having significantly larger L1 DTLB which has now doubled in size from 128 pages to 256 pages, and increasing the L2 TLB from 2048 pages to 3072 pages. It’s particularly on the part of the floating point and vector execution units where the new Firestorm cores saw most of the design changes this year through the introduction of a 4^th pipeline unit, essentially increasing the execution capabilities of this part of the design by 33%. On the integer side of the CPU, things have remained relatively the same with only minor changes, and the Firestorm cores continue on with the sale 192KB L1 I-cache and 128 L1 D-cache and 8MB of shared L2 amongst the two cores.

What we didn’t cover in more detail in the M1 piece was the new small efficiency cores. The Icestorm design is actually a quite major leap for Apple as it sees the introduction of a third integer ALU pipeline, and a full second FP/SIMD pipeline, vastly increasing the execution capabilities of this core. At this point it would be wrong to call it a “small” core anymore as it now essentially matches the big core designs from Arm from a few years ago, being similar in complexity as an A75.

Looking at the generational improvements of the efficiency cores we can see that Apple is indeed showcasing performance increases beyond that of just the increased 100MHz of the cores, with substantial upgrades across the workload spectrum.

Especially the floating-point workloads of the SPEC suite see very large improvements, exactly in the tests which are more execution heavy such as 453.povray or 482.sphinx3.

Apple still continues to limit the absolute performance of the efficiency cores when they are the only allowing the memory controller to not scale up to a higher frequency, meaning that the scores here in isolation are posting worse performance than in a normal more varied real-world scenario where the big CPU cores or the GPU would also be active, hence the scores aren’t directly comparable to other measurements we’ve made.

Overall, the new A14 is massively impressive and grows the performance gap compared to the competition. Apple has now reached higher single-threaded performance within their phone SoCs than what Intel can deliver in any of their designs, whilst only losing out to the desktop variants of AMD’s new Zen3 processors.

What’s important to note here is that Apple’s performance increase this generation did not come at a cost of increased power consumption, as the designers were able to leverage the microarchitectural improvements and the new process node – actually reaching either power parity or a small power reduction compared to the 7nm based A13. This means that the performance increases this generation also results in an energy efficiency increase for the design, with the A14 using notably less energy to complete a workload.

I’ve included the efficiency cores in the chart here to showcase that they’re not weak at all. The performance showcased here roughly matches a 2.2GHz Cortex-A76 which is essentially 4x faster than the performance of any other mobile SoC today which relies on Cortex-A55 cores, all while using roughly the same amount of system power and having 3x the power efficiency.

System Performance

System performance of the new iPhones should be again excellent given the hardware advancements on the part of the new A14 chip. Alongside iOS14, we should really see no problem with everyday tasks on the phone.

Unfortunately, our benchmark suite for iOS here is still relatively barren, and we have to mostly rely on web browser benchmarks – which isn’t all too much of an issue given that’s the heaviest and most demanding every-day workload for mobile devices.

In Speedometer 2, the new A14 showcases a large performance boost of 30% for the new iPhone generation. This is likely both due to the clock frequency increase of the new CPUs as well as the fact that the new microarchitecture has in particular a larger amount of FP/SIMD resources available to itself.

Usually at this point we would point out that it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison to other devices in the chart, and that Apple’s Nitro JavaScript engine could simply be much superior to Google’s V8 engine, but the new release of the Apple Silicon Macs where we could finally compare Safari versus Chrome has shown very little performance discrepancy, meaning the performance here is actually due to the CPUs themselves.

Having that in mind, it means that Apple’s performance advantage over Android devices has grown even bigger this generation, with little hope for upcoming Cortex cores to catch up with such a gap.

JetStream 2 has heavier workloads and also make uses of WebAssembly, averaging out a smaller performance increase for the new A14 chip, but still showcasing class-leading performance amongst the competition.

WebXPRT is a browser workload that tries to mimic real-world interactions and workloads. The new iPhone 12s here actually show very little progress in terms of performance.

This small progress in WebXPRT is actually quite representative of my overall impression of responsiveness of the new iPhones: The A13 and iPhone 11 devices were already so performant and responsive that the actual speed limit for user interactions nowadays are just OS animations and just general SoC DVFS, the latter which Apple has already optimised to an ideal operation a few years back.

I would be lying if I were to say that I noticed that the new iPhone 12s are any faster than the iPhone 11 in everyday usage, but that’s simply because these are already are outstandingly fast devices.

GPU Performance & Power

GPU performance of the new A14 is something that wasn’t very clearly presented during the launch of the new iPhone 12 series. Apple had first introduced the A14 within the new iPad series where it had promised performance increases relative to the A12, not the previous generation A13, and with a bit of math this resulted into a translated 8.3% generational increase which is rather smaller than we had expected given Apple’s recent GPU trajectory over the years. Furthermore, this was also the first release where Apple compared itself to the Android SoC competition which is something the company doesn’t usually do. All these factored into some rather low expectations for the GPU of the A14 – so let’s see how that pans out in practice:

Starting off with Basemark GPU 1.2, we’re seeing a 17% increase in peak performance relative to the iPhone 11 Pro and the A13 chip, which is a nice upgrade, but doesn’t tell the whole story. In the sustained performance figure after 30 minutes of running and when the phone reaches a thermal equilibrium, we see a 45% drop in performance. In this instance, it looks like the iPhone 12 Pro reached a lower sustained performance level than the iPhone 11 Pro which isn’t a great start, but that might change with differing workloads.

In the Aztec High test, the iPhone 12’s fare a bit better in their sustained performances, with the new chip showing a 21% increase in performance generationally. The peak performance figure is only 11% higher but generally this isn’t the figure that is important for gaming experiences on iPhones.

GFXBench Aztec High Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) 🔥 Throttled	N5	28.36	3.91	7.24 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) 🔥 Throttled	N7P	26.14	3.83	6.82 fps/W
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) ❄️ Peak	N5	37.40	5.57	6.64 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) ❄️ Peak	N7P	34.00	6.21	5.47 fps/W
Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865)	N7P	20.35	3.91	5.19 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) 🔥 Throttled	N5	27.37	5.39	5.07 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) 🔥 Throttled	N7	19.32	3.81	5.07 fps/W
Reno3 5G (Dimensity 1000L)	N7	11.93	2.39	4.99 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) ❄️ Peak	N7	26.59	5.56	4.78 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) ❄️ Peak	N5	37.22	8.53	4.36 fps/W
ROG Phone III (Snapdragon 865+)	N7P	22.34	5.35	4.17 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	16.50	3.96	4.16 fps/W
Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990)	7LPP	20.20	5.02	3.59 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	16.17	4.69	3.44 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	15.59	4.80	3.24 fps/W

Looking at the power consumption of the new phones, we see again that both the peak and throttled performance figures of the new chip isn’t all that much different to the previous generation, as we’re seeing roughly 8% better performance at almost the same power envelope of around 3.9W. The peak power figure of the new chip seems to have been reduced this generation and that’s very much a welcome change, and that’s where the efficiency sees the largest delta to the A13.

In the normal setting configuration of the Aztec test, we’re seeing again a 11% increase in sustained performance generationally, and a similar 12% boost in peak performance. These are good improvements but still a bit less than we had expected given the A14’s new process node and new GPU.

GFXBench Aztec Normal Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) 🔥 Throttled	N5	77.44	3.88	19.95 fps/W
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) ❄️ Peak	N5	102.24	5.53	18.48 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) 🔥 Throttled	N7P	73.27	4.07	18.00 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) ❄️ Peak	N7P	91.62	6.08	15.06 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) 🔥 Throttled	N7	55.70	3.88	14.35 fps/W
Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865)	N7P	54.09	3.91	13.75 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) ❄️Peak	N7	76.00	5.59	13.59 fps/W
Reno3 5G (Dimensity 1000L)	N7	27.84	2.12	13.13 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) 🔥 Throttled	N5	63.56	5.37	11.84 fps/W
ROG Phone III (Snapdragon 865+)	N7P	58.77	5.34	11.00 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) ❄️ Peak	N5	82.74	7.95	10.40 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	41.68	4.01	10.39 fps/W
Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990)	7LPP	49.41	4.87	10.14 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	40.63	4.14	9.81 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	40.18	4.62	8.69 fps/W

The power figures showcase a similar generational movement, with a slight performance increase at a slight power decrease. It’s good progression but again not quite fulfilling our expectations of a new process node bump.

GFXBench Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) 🔥 Throttled	N5	103.11	3.90	26.43 fps/W
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) ❄️ Peak	N5	137.72	5.63	24.46 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) 🔥 Throttled	N7P	100.58	4.21	23.89 fps/W
Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865)	N7P	88.93	4.20	21.15 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) ❄️Peak	N7P	123.54	6.04	20.45 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) 🔥 Throttled	N7	76.51	3.79	20.18 fps/W
Reno3 5G (Dimensity 1000L)	N7	55.48	2.98	18.61 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) 🔥 Throttled	N5	87.31	4.98	17.54 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) ❄️Peak	N7	103.83	5.98	17.36 fps/W
ROG Phone III (Snapdragon 865+)	N7P	93.58	5.56	16.82 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) ❄️Peak	N5	124.69	8.28	15.05 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	75.69	5.04	15.01 fps/W
Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990)	7LPP	85.66	5.90	14.51 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	70.67	4.88	14.46 fps/W
Galaxy S10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	68.87	5.10	13.48 fps/W
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845)	10LPP	61.16	5.01	11.99 fps/W
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980)	N7	54.54	4.57	11.93 fps/W
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810)	10LPP	46.04	4.08	11.28 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835)	10LPE	38.90	3.79	10.26 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895)	10LPE	42.49	7.35	5.78 fps/W

Depending on the workload, the generational performance increases can be even smaller, as here in Manhattan the performance increase in a throttled state is only 3% better for the new A14 based iPhone, with also a minor power decrease at this state.

GFXBench T-Rex Offscreen Power Efficiency (System Active Power)
	Mfc. Process	FPS	Avg. Power (W)	Perf/W Efficiency
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) 🔥 Throttled	N5	260.28	4.08	63.97 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) 🔥 Throttled	N7P	289.03	4.78	60.46 fps/W
iPhone 12 Pro (A14) ❄️ Peak	N5	328.50	5.55	59.18 fps/W
iPhone 11 Pro (A13) ❄️ Peak	N7P	328.90	5.93	55.46 fps/W
Galaxy S20 Ultra (Snapdragon 865)	N7P	205.37	3.83	53.30 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) 🔥 Throttled	N5	147.13	2.92	50.38 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) 🔥 Throttled	N7	197.80	3.95	50.07 fps/W
ROG Phone III (Snapdragon 865+)	N7P	224.48	4.92	45.60 fps/W
iPhone XS (A12) ❄️Peak	N7	271.86	6.10	44.56 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Snapdragon 855)	N7	167.16	4.10	40.70 fps/W
Reno3 5G (Dimensity 1000L)	N7	139.30	3.57	39.01 fps/W
Mate 40 Pro (Kirin 9000) ❄️ Peak	N5	235.04	6.11	38.46 fps/W
Galaxy S20+ (Exynos 990)	7LPP	199.61	5.63	35.45 fps/W
Mate 30 Pro  (Kirin 990 4G)	N7	152.27	4.34	35.08 fps/W
Galaxy S9+ (Snapdragon 845)	10LPP	150.40	4.42	34.00 fps/W
Galaxy 10+ (Exynos 9820)	8LPP	166.00	4.96	33.40fps/W
Galaxy S9 (Exynos 9810)	10LPP	141.91	4.34	32.67 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Snapdragon 835)	10LPE	108.20	3.45	31.31 fps/W
Mate 20 Pro (Kirin 980)	N7	135.75	4.64	29.25 fps/W
Galaxy S8 (Exynos 8895)	10LPE	121.00	5.86	20.65 fps/W

Finally, T-Rex showcases no improvements on the part of peak performance figures, although it does lower power consumption, and sustained performance for some reason is lower on the newer generation iPhone, although again it showcases quite lower power consumption so it’s possible the new chip is mainly running on the efficiency CPU cores in this workload.

Reasonable Upgrades

Generally speaking, our concerns over Apple’s lacklustre marketing on the GPU side of things seem to have been warranted as the new A14 and the 5nm process node doesn’t seem to bring substantial gains this generation. Performance is a little higher, and efficiency has also gone up as well, but it’s nowhere near the levels of improvements that Apple had been able to achieve with the A12 and A13. On one side that’s pretty understandable as those two generations had made huge leaps, and on the other hand it was maybe unreasonable to expect Apple to continue to make such gigantic strides on every generation.

Overall, the new iPhone 12 devices and the A14 still offer the very best gaming performance of any smartphone out in the market, showcasing significantly better experiences than any other Android competitor, but it’s also not a major noticeable upgrade over the iPhone 11 series devices.

Display Measurement

The new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro have on paper almost the same display characteristics, both being 6.06” OLED panels with 2532 x 1170 resolution, however they differ in their characteristics when looking at the peak maximum brightness achieved, with the regular iPhone 12 model peaking at 625 nits and the 12 Pro peaking at 800 nits.

We’re not exactly sure as to the actual manufacturing differences between the two panels, but one thing that I immediately noticed as being different between the two models is their viewing angles. The iPhone 12 showcased a larger off-axis brightness drop-off and what I would consider a more classical OLED off-axis colour tint, while the iPhone 12 Pro behaved significantly better with almost perfect off-axis brightness and colour performance. This points out to a quite different lamination process and maybe different polarisation layer between the two models.

We move on to the display calibration and fundamental display measurements of the iPhone 12 screens. As always, we thank X-Rite and SpecraCal, as our measurements are performed with an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer, with the exception of black levels which are measured with an i1Display Pro colorimeter. Data is collected and examined using Portrait Display's CalMAN software.

In terms of display brightness, we pretty much measure figures in line with Apple’s advertised marketing and specifications, with the new iPhone 12 reaching 631cd/m² and the iPhone 12 Pro reaching a significantly higher 839cd/m². The latter figure is the highest and brightest amongst any OLED device we’ve ever measured, although it’s not all that much brighter than the iPhone 11 Pro models.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12 Pro

We start off the detailed measurements with the greyscale performance of the iPhone 12 Pro. Generally speaking, there’s very little to criticise the device here as there’s generally an excellent performance. Apple still showcases higher gamma at higher level colours, but that’s only a minor imperfection.

The white balance for whites actually is a tad warmer than it should be with some clearly higher-than-average levels of red. Although the total average white balance over all levels lands in at an excellent 6502K, actual whites land in at 6372K. It’s not an issue, but a little less perfect than we had come to expect from iPhones.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12

The iPhone 12 seems to showcase a different calibration than the 12 Pro, further evidence of the two different panels employed on the two models. The 12 seems to have slightly better gamma behaviour on the higher levels, but in exchange showcases worse off gamma at the lower levels, clipping lower level colours to black earlier than on the 12 Pro, which had near perfect behaviour here.

Oddly enough, colour temperature on the 12 behaved better than our 12 Pro sample. Average colour temperature landed in at 6520K while white landed in at 6462K, with less dominant reds than on the other phone.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12 Pro

sRGB colour saturations on the iPhone 12 Pro are quite excellent, with the biggest error margin happening at maximum saturation blues and magentas, with also a slightly oversaturated red. Below maximum intensity, the colours are all showcasing dEITP errors below 3 which is the just perceivable threshold for the average eye.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12

The iPhone 12 has slightly better results, with the blue and magenta error being less pronounced on this phone. Generally it looks that our sample here is again performing a little better than our 12 Pro sample.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12 Pro

In our GMB chart with common colours such as skin tones, the iPhone 12 Pro behaves admirably. Given the phone’s inaccuracies seemed to be more prevalent in higher saturations in the blue and red spectrum, and this test doesn’t contain patches in that region of the gamut, it means that the remaining test colours perform extremely well.

Portrait Displays CalMAN
iPhone 12

The iPhone 12 generally seems to beat the iPhone 12 Pro in terms of accuracy, again showcasing better results and an outstandingly good overall error result of dEITP of 1.44.

Apple Typical Best Displays

Overall, the new iPhone 12 series continues Apple’s tradition of having amongst the best calibrated displays on the market. The 12 Pro seems to just shy away from the usual Apple perfection, but the results are still outstandingly good and beyond that of any other device.

I think what’s most important for this generation of devices is the fact that the iPhone 12 now features a higher resolution OLED screen. It can’t be understated how much of an upgrade this is compared to the “Retina” grade LCD panel of the iPhone 11. Personally, this makes the iPhone 12 an actual consideration whereas I wouldn’t have been satisfied with using the iPhone 11’s LCD. It also vastly diminishes the feature gap to the Pro models – I don’t consider the brightness advantage of the 12 Pro to be all that significant, although again the Pro model does showcase better viewing angles and a more pronounced “sticker feel”.

Battery Life

Battery life of the new iPhone 12 series has been quite controversial. This is due to a couple of reasons, but primarily due to the fact that Apple has reduced the actual capacities of the batteries this generation. The new iPhone 12 and 12 Pro come with a very conservative 2815mAh unit, which is less than the 11 Pro’s 3046mAh or the 11’s 3110mAh capacity. It’s extremely unusual to see battery capacities regress like this, particularly in a time where the Android competition routinely use +4000mAh batteries. Apple does have a huge SoC efficiency advantage, but that only goes so far to bridge the battery capacity deficiency for the new iPhones.

Another controversial aspect is the 5G connectivity of the new devices. This generation, Apple made the move back to using Qualcomm modems as Intel seemingly wasn’t able to supply them with a satisfactory 5G option. Last year, Apple had purchased Intel’s modem division for $1B, but it’s likely we’ll have to wait a bit more to see the vertical integration of that acquisition.

iPhones in the US are the only models which also feature mmWave connectivity, as the rest of the world “only” gets sub-6GHz variants. Unfortunately the models I have for review here are European and mmWave isn’t an option, and I also don’t yet have any sub-6GHz 5G coverage in my area yet, and as such, I can’t really comment much on the cellular battery life of the new phones.

That being said, in our regular Wi-Fi web browser test, we’re seeing very good results for both the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. Although the 12 Pro has a 7.5% smaller battery and a larger screen than the 11 Pro, it lasted only 3% less than its predecessor, meaning that the SoC and display power efficiency gains this generations were enough to mostly counteract the smaller battery.

The iPhone 12 lasted 11% less than the iPhone 11, but that was quite expected given the 10% smaller battery and also the move from a low-resolution LCD to a higher resolution OLED panel. At 12.53h it’s still an absolute excellent result.

Apple’s decision to stick with 60Hz panels this generation, while not great in terms of fluidity of animations compared to other competitor devices, at least made a lot of sense for the battery life of the phones. 120Hz really only makes sense on the newer Note20 Ultra with its new “HOP” panel, but even that has some quirks here and there. I expect the iPhone 13 generation to finally embrace higher refresh-rate displays, once all the power efficiency concerns have been fully resolved.

Overall, the new iPhone 12’s battery longevity looks to be in line with last generation’s devices, especially comparing 11 Pro vs the new 12 Pro. While 5G remains a wildcard, especially for US users which are on mmWave carriers, it’s always something you can disable, even though that’s a suboptimal option to resort to.

Camera - Daylight Evaluation

The iPhone’s 12 and 12 Pro’s camera setup we’re reviewing today isn’t very exciting when looking at the paper specifications. Compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, the 12 Pro’s only real change is a new optics system on the part of the main camera, increasing the aperture from f/1.8 to f/1.6. The telephoto module and ultra-wide angle both remain seemingly the same at 12MP f/2.0 at 52mm equivalent, and 12MP f/2.4 at 13mm equivalent.

Where things might have changed more substantially is on the software processing side of things, where Apple has promised new improved HDR algorithms, enabled by the new processing power of the A14 SoC.

We’re limiting the comparison pictures here to the iPhone 12 Pro, with the iPhone 12 of course lacking the telephoto module but otherwise having identical hardware, the iPhone 11 Pro, as well as the latest Samsung flagship in the form of the Note20 Ultra, and S20+, as well as a Pixel 4 for the daylight pictures.

I’m including a Fujifilm X-T30 mirrorless ILC with an 18-55mm f/2.8-4 as a reference camera for the sake of colour accuracy comparisons. The shots here have been edited for dynamic range recovery and my best effort reproduction of the actual scenes.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

In this first scene I tried a worse-case scenario for the phones, shooting a contrasty scene against the sun, fully stressing the HDR algorithms of the cameras as well as the optics.

The new iPhone 12 Pro’s main camera doesn’t change the composition and exposure of the scene all too much compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, however we do see quite a bit better contrast. The sky’s discoloration around the sun is also less pronounced than on the iPhone 11 Pro, both signs that the new optics are of a high quality.

On the ultra-wide angle, we’re also seeing improved contrast – given that the hardware looks to be the same this would rather point out to an improved handling of HDR processing on the part of the new phone.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

The weather was quite cloudy during the shooting of these scenes but I tried my best to capture consistent shots between the phones. What’s immediately noticeable across all the shots of the new iPhone 12 Pro versus the 11 Pro is that while colours and general exposure is similar, the 12 produces higher contrast results which pop out more than on the predecessor.

On the telephoto module, oddly enough it feels as if things aren’t quite as detailed on the new phone as we’re seeing a HDR-like smudging of fine details such as the foliage and roof tiles of the scene. The main cameras are about the same, while on the ultra-wide angle I’d actually say the 12 Pro is able to preserve more details.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

In this next scene you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate the new iPhone. The only real difference on the part of the main camera I’m seeing are actually less defined shadows compared to the iPhone 11 Pro.

On the ultra-wide module, things change more dramatically, with much better detail retention on the new phone. Here we’re also seeing a large change in perspective correction between the two generations, especially in the corners of the image.

Compared to the competition, Apple doesn’t fare as well in terms of details as the Samsung phones are able to retain quite significantly more finer details throughout the scene while the iPhones seem to be smudging things out through the processing. Samsung’s HDR on the ultra-wide is also able to retain a better dynamic range, with more details in the shadows having been preserved.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

In this next scene it’s again visible that the new phone is able to showcase higher contrast levels. One thing that I don’t like very much on the Apple phones or the Pixel is the colour temperature which is quite too warm for this scene, being quite inaccurate compared to the real scene at the time and what the Fuji was able to capture. The Samsung phones aren’t quite as off and the best amongst the phones here.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

This is also a scene where the colour temperature of the new iPhone 12 seems to have gotten worse, being far too warm again compared to the actual scene as well as warmer than the 11, with the Samsung phones being far better in that regard.

HDR processing is much improved, especially noticeable on the ultra-wide of the new iPhone which retains a lot more details and handling of tones.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

Here again, the 12 produces a warmer picture than the 11, and veers off further away from the actual colour of the scene.

Apple opted to retain a traditional telephoto module setup on the new iPhone 12 Pro; what’s odd here is that again we’re seeing worse detail retention compared to the 11 Pro even though the hardware should in theory be the same.

This is especially visible when you have to user higher digital zooming, as the 5x magnification of the iPhone 12 Pro looks to me considerably worse than the 11 Pro. It’s as if there’s a heavy layer of noise reduction applied to the new phone’s camera processing on this new module.

Naturally, the 2x optical module can’t compete against some of the newer, more exotic camera solutions such as on the Note20 Ultra, but even the S20+’s 64MP unit using cropping and digital zooming vastly outperforms the telephoto module of the iPhone.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

This scene is a more noticeable improvement for the iPhone 12 Pro, with better HDR tone mapping as well as a better, more accurate colour temperature, although it’s still quite far off from reality, closest matched by the Note20 Ultra which has a near perfect reproduction.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 4 ] [ X-T30 ]

This last scene didn’t have a very high dynamic range as it was getting almost fully overcast; the new iPhone 12 behaved quite weirdly in terms of exposure of the foliage, as it lost saturation and is far too grey compared to the more accurate iPhone 11 shot. The Pixel 4 here had the best reproduction of the actual scene in terms of exposure and colours.

Daylight Conclusion: Better HDR, in Some Situations

Overall, the iPhone 12’s biggest changes in daylight captures can be summed around the fact that it has a new HDR algorithm, that in the majority of cases, produces better and higher contrast results. On the main camera, it’s a general positive although there’s a few scenes where for some reason the iPhone 12 processing fared off worse in terms of colour temperature and colour accuracy. Although the iPhone 12 performed well here overall, the main camera didn’t handle things as detailed or as accurately as the Note20 Ultra.

The ultra-wide angle seems to be universally improved this generation and that’s a much welcome change for the new devices: it showcases much better detail retention as well as better HDR processing. It’s still not quite at the same level as Samsung’s unit here but it’s much closer than before.

What’s quite disappointing on the new iPhone 12 Pro is the telephoto module. I felt that it universally was worse off than the 11 Pro due to the fact that it just couldn’t match the detail retention of its predecessor. I think this may be due to the new HDR processing that merges subsequent captures together. In any case, it doesn’t hold a candle to the competitions telephoto solutions which are significantly superior in hardware capabilities.

Camera - Low Light Evaluation

Low-light capture on the iPhone 12’s should be improved for two reasons: First of all, the new f/1.6 lens of the main camera should allow for 27% better light capture compared to the f/1.8 unit of the iPhone 11’s. Secondly, Apple with this generation has finally addressed the lack of Night Mode on the ultra-wide and telephoto modules, resolving a quite huge handicap that was present on the iPhone 11 generation of devices.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ]
[ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

In this first scene, the results are actually a bit disappointing as we’re seeing almost no differences between the 12 Pro and the 11 Pro. The new phone uses half the exposure time according to the EXIF data, but has to use a higher ISO level to compensate. The only thing that’s noticeably better on the 12 Pro is the improved lens flare produced by the street light.

In general Apple’s Night Mode still doesn’t look to be as competitive as Google’s or Samsung’s implementation, as the S20, Note20 Ultra and the Pixel 5 perform quite better here.

On the ultra-wide angle, the inclusion of Night Mode now turns this camera module from something unusable to rather passable results. It’s a huge upgrade compared to the iPhone 11 series, but still lags behind the Pixel phone as far behind Samsung’s implementation.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ]
[ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

Night mode being fully automatically triggered on the iPhone’s camera, means there’s no way to force it on when there’s too much light, such as in this scene – which is really odd given that it did trigger on the iPhone 11 Pro, thus producing an overall better result than the 12 Pro.

The UWA again gains massive usability with the addition of Night Mode, although all the phones here produce quite bad results for a variety of different reasons.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ]
[ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

Here, the 12 Pro uses the larger aperture optics to reduce the ISO from 800 to 640. There’s a slight change in colours, but overall I wouldn’t say that it’s something that would be immediately noticeable between the two generation of phones.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ]
[ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ]
[ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

This scene was a bit odd for the two iPhones as they both showcased identical exposure times as well as ISO levels, although the iPhone 12 Pro shot is brighter due to the larger aperture. The phone didn’t trigger Night Mode for this shot as it was too bright.

Night Mode for the UWA is a large jump for the iPhone 12, but it can’t compete against the Samsung devices or the Pixel phone, although the latter got the colour temperature completely wrong.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

Here again the iPhone 12 Pro uses the larger aperture in order to reduce the ISO levels of the shot, which is a bit odd given that I feel that the iPhone 11 Pro had the sharper and less noisy shot. There’s also a change in colour temperature although saying which is better is subjective.

[ iPhone 12 Pro ] [ iPhone 11 Pro ]
[ Note20 Ultra (S) ] [ S20+ (E) ]
[ Pixel 5 ] [ X-T30 ]

Finally, in an extreme low-light shot I’m simply challenging the light capture abilities of the cameras here. This scene was extremely dark and the first sample shot of the Fuji is likely better representation of the scene as experienced in-person, while the EV+2 shot is closer to the exposure the phones are trying to achieve.

Neither of the phones are faring well here, and the iPhone 12 Pro does change a bit of the tone-mapping compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, faring a bit better, although I feel the Samsung phones are producing a more natural look.

Low-Light Conclusion: Improved, but not Competitive

In general, I feel that Apple may have overpromised a bit on the part of the low-light capture ability of these new phones. While we do notice the larger aperture optics of the new modules in the resulting captures, Apple doesn’t seem to have substantially changed their Night Mode processing this year as sometimes it’s very hard to distinguish the iPhone 12 from the iPhone 11 results.

On the ultra-wide angle, the new Night Mode options obviously transforms previously unusable results into something that’s more passable. I feel that this shouldn’t be taken as praise versus Apple finally addressing a huge feature lack in the iPhone 11 series, as they were the only devices on the market actually lacking this functionality on the ultra-wide modules.

Although the results have improved, Apple here still largely lags behind the competition which sports better hardware, and also has been able to iterate on their computational photography modes over the past year.

It’s a pity that Apple chose to only employ a larger improved camera sensor on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, creating model differentiation on the cameras that previously didn’t exist – I would have had at least wished the 12 Pro to also house this improved sensor, if possible.

Video Recording

Video recording on the new iPhone 12 series is defined by the addition of real HDR format recording, meaning 10-bit profile within a new Dolby Vision format. Apple’s choice to go with Dolby Vision a forward-thinking one that’s certainly going to pay off in the future, however unless you have a recent compatible TV or lucky enough to feature a monitor capable of displaying the format, the playback experience on devices other than iPhones is going to be quite limited.

Video capture quality is quite excellent this generation as well, although I have a hard time to really differentiate things from the iPhone 11 series. Dynamic range of the shots is still quite good, however there’s still some key characteristics such as the jittering EIS that are still present, or the occasional pulsating exposure of certain objects in the scene, something that’s possibly related to the dual-exposure of every frame when video-recording.

At 4K30, the phone is able to take advantage of all the camera modules and allows you to switch around between the units during recording. When recording in 4K60, it’s no longer possible to switch from the main and telephoto module to the ultra-wide unit. If you start recording on the ultra-wide unit, you’re limited to this module and any zooming in will be digital.

Focusing is generally flawless on the main camera, although it’s noticeable in video that the ultra-wide angle module is of a fixed focus design, so you won’t be able to focus as near in some situations.

Conclusion & End Remarks

We’ve had the new iPhones for a few weeks now, admittedly pushing out this review in favour of coverage of Apple’s newest Apple Silicon M1 devices. As I’m finally finishing up this iPhone review, the one feeling I have is that I’m not all too excited for this new generation of phones, with several factors coming into play.

First of all, design-wise, the new iPhone 12 series are definitely a breath of fresh air for Apple’s device line-up. Finally dropping the industrial design look that was adopted 3 years ago by the iPhone X, the new iPhone 12’s design is a mix of the old and new. There’s undoubtedly homage to the iPhone 4 and 5 era which featured also featured flat metal frames in their design, and it does make the iPhone 12 series stand out versus any other phone today.

Whilst design and looks are one side of the coin, the other side is actual usability and ergonomics. In this regard, I’m just not a very big fan of Apple’s choices here as I outright feel the iPhone 12s are a step backwards compared to the iPhone 11 series. Although the width of the phones isn’t any larger on the new models, they just feel noticeably bigger in the hand due to the right-angle frame edges. I ask myself as what exactly was the reason in the first place that over the years, we transitioned to rounded phones, with various vendors investing into curved front and back glass devices, if it was not for the benefit of better ergonomics, and for the devices to fit better in our fleshy meat hands. I mean, what’s the point in making the new iPhones thinner, and lose out on battery capacity, if they don’t actually feel thinner in the hand? I know it’s a very subjective topic and people might not have the same strong opinion, but even after a few weeks I still prefer to go back to an iPhone 11 Pro because of the more natural ergonomics.

Build-quality wise, the new iPhones are great and feel extremely solid. I prefer the aluminium iPhone 12 over the steel 12 Pro due to it not collecting fingerprints and actually being much lighter, although the frosted matte glass back panel of the 12 Pro definitely has the much better feeling finish.

The displays of the iPhone 12’s are good, with the Pro devices having the better quality displays of the series, having a higher brightness and better viewing angles, although the practical differences between the two models aren’t all that great.

The fact that both the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have the same resolution OLED displays this generation means that the feature differences this year are far smaller compared to last year’s iPhone 11 vs 11 Pro juxtaposition. This is a major change in the product line-up that in my opinion makes the lower-end variants significantly more interesting and more viable versus the more expensive Pro-counterparts.

The lack of a higher refresh-rate display option is a pity, but given the battery impact on other devices on the market, it might have been wise for Apple to hold this feature back until the technology has matured enough to ensure a non-negative user experience. As it stands, the battery life of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro is in line with last year’s 11 Pro – which is excellent.

Performance of the new iPhone 12’s is both a strength-point as well as a weakness. The strength is that the new A14 chip is by far the best performing mobile SoC on the market right now. The weakness is, that compared to the A13, the generational improvements aren’t as great as prior A-series SoC jumps. In every-day usage, I’m sure the iPhone 12s are faster than the iPhone 11 devices, but I’d be hard-pressed to actually notice this without a side-by-side comparison. This includes CPU-side use-cases as well as GPU-side gaming use-cases, which see an even smaller generational upgrade.

On the camera side, Apple has kept the base formula of the iPhone 11 series, and resorted to smaller generational improvements. The largest improvement is a new HDR algorithm that is actually quite noticeable in daylight shots, and produces better tone-mapping and contrast-rich pictures. The ultra-wide-angle module especially sees much better image processing with more details. Oddly enough, the telephoto module on the 12 Pro has been consistently worse than the 11 Pro in our testing, with far less detail retention.

In low-light, the camera’s new f/1.6 aperture does allow for slightly better light capture, however the general processing and Night Mode doesn’t seem to have been changed much this generation. The ultra-wide-angle’s added capability of Night Mode means that it’s not completely useless in low-light, although it’s not quite as high quality as competitor solutions.

While I’m relatively happy with the camera experience, I feel like Apple didn’t quite push the boundaries as far as they could have. The competition both has better hardware, and has made huge strides in terms of computational photography and image processing, and there’s just better phone cameras out there right now.

Good Improvements, Although Not Very Exciting

I have two verdicts for the iPhone 12’s, one for the 12 Pro and one for the regular iPhone 12.

For the iPhone 12 Pro, unless you’re coming from an older-generation device, there’s very few selling-points compared to the iPhone 11 Pro. The screen is slightly better, the cameras are slightly better, and it’s posting slightly better performance. Battery life being the same and the ergonomics being arguable, that only leaves 5G as the major unique feature of the new device. At this stage of 5G deployment, whether a 5G-compatible device is worth the upgrade for you is going to be highly dependent on your location and carrier. At $999 or 1159€ I feel that the phone should have offered something more to make the choice easier.

The iPhone 12, on the other hand, is in my opinion Apple’s best iPhone in a very long time. At $799 / 909€, the only real tangible thing you’re losing out on versus the Pro is the telephoto module. You’re still getting an excellent screen, the same performance, almost identical battery life, and otherwise identical everyday camera experience for $200 less. Even though it’s $100 more expensive than the iPhone 11, the much better screen elevates it into a better tier-category. The fact that it’s a lighter phone and fingerprint resistant aluminium is actually a plus in my book.

The iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max are still open for debate as we didn’t have a chance to review them yet. If you’re looking for a small phone, the 12 mini looks like a perfect device, while if you’re looking for a max-sized phone and don’t mind the larger price-tag, the 12 Pro Max also certainly going to be a good option, especially if the new camera module hardware pans out.