iPhone 12 Design:
Hey, what's up? Gadget here, and this is the iPhone 12. I feel like we've all seen an iPhone before at this point; it's a pretty familiar iPhone with rounded corners, the notch, and the lightning port, but there are a couple of key changes this year that are a first for the iPhone.
I've been using this iPhone 12 for a bit since my impressions post, and it's my favorite iPhone ever, mostly because of this design. But if you're considering getting one, there are some things you should know.
Now, I'm going to do a separate post on the Pro in this sweet blue color (I think it's the best color), but these two phones are very similar—same exact size, like a case that works for one works for the other, same main cameras, almost the same screen, same battery, same charging.
But there are a couple of things that only apply to the Pro, and I'll go over those in that video. But let's just start with the 12. With this new design, shall we? I love this super flat design. It is so flat. It's not the typical almost flat, where the screen is flat right up to the edges and then curves over the very edge, and they call it like 2.5D.
No, this is flat—flat! The phone happens to be a little bit thinner and a little bit lighter than last year, but I'm not as concerned with that. But the square sides are actually the most efficient way to pack in those internals into the phone as efficiently as possible. And I happen to think it looks and feels super premium and modern.
On top of all that, this kind of red but also kind of salmon sometimes product red version, after seeing it in person, I'd probably not go for this. I'd go for either the blue or the black. But yeah, those aluminum rails are everything—they're more grippable, maybe a little less comfortable at first, but hey, the buttons are clicky. The power button is a little bit bigger.
It's still IP68 water-resistant. You've got your 5G antenna cut out on the right-hand side in some regions, which trust me, I'll get way into that in a second. And yeah, I just like holding this phone. Now, if you put a case on it, I guess a lot of that doesn't matter as much.
You'll notice it less, obviously, but still, even some cases are flattening out their dimensions for the iPhone 12, so that again will make it easier to grip, harder to drop. And speaking of dropping, all these new iPhones come with something new on the front called Ceramic Shield. This is basically a specialty hardened kind of glass with a crystal structure inside it, and it's on the front of these phones over the screen.
New Ceramic:
It's supposed to offer four times better drop protection, so shatter protection basically, which is great. But I typically care just as much, if not more, about scratch resistance—those little micro scratches your phone gathers over time.
And the thing about scratch resistance is it's typically inversely proportional to shatter resistance. So if you think about it, the softer something is, the less likely it is to shatter, but then the easier it is to scratch it, and vice versa.
The harder something is, the less likely you are to scratch it, but the more brittle it is and the more shatterable it becomes. So I see the headline of better drop protection, and that's great, but I'm not about to drop my phone to find out if it works.
I'm sure people are already on that. I have no idea how they'll land on that 4x number, but all I know is I already have a little gash in my screen on the left-hand side here, which is so sad, but that's probably out of level six. No idea how that happened. But I’m feeling like the iPhone is not significantly more scratch-resistant than before.
Of course, Zach will probably tell us the truth there, so if it shatters a lot less when dropped, we'll see. That would be nice, but I feel like a lot of the drop stuff is happenstance—if I happen to drop my phone a certain way, it's definitely gonna crack, right? And if I happen to drop my phone another way, it's probably not going to, so I don't know. I don't want to worry about it too much. Use a case if you want to, use a screen protector if you really want to. I'm just going to live my life.
Magsafe:
So possibly the biggest external hardware feature of the new iPhones is MagSafe, and I think it has bigger implications for the future of the iPhone. But right now, MagSafe is the optional new magnetic charging accessory standard on the back, right behind the Apple logo. The number one MagSafe accessory that Apple sells is the puck charger.
It doesn't come with a brick, by the way, so if you buy the charger for 40 bucks, make sure you have a USB-C charging brick. But yeah, it just kind of slaps onto the back of the phone. You line it up with the magnets, you get used to where it places right over the Apple logo, and that's all good. This charges at 15 watts, while every other wireless charger on the iPhone still charges at 7.5 watts.
A couple of other FAQs on this: Number one, yes, it is still Qi charging, so you can still charge the iPhone 12 with other wireless chargers, and you can charge other phones with the MagSafe puck if you're into that. Number two, the durability concern with MagSafe leaving marks on the iPhone: I have noticed that on mine too, but I don't think it'll turn out to be a long-term problem.
It just seems to wipe off every time, like you might remember how the HomePod was leaving these little white stained rings on certain wood tables, which is kind of understandable because not every table is the same. But I feel like—I guess I hope—Apple's probably tested this like a hundred thousand times and probably determined that it's not an issue with the way they made this, so it should be okay. And then number three.
I was getting a lot of questions about this: Yes, you can MagSafe charge through most non-MagSafe cases as long as they're thin enough, and even that magnet will actually still work through some thin cases.
5G: A Promising:
So I didn't really have any non-MagSafe cases here to test, but of course, channel-sponsored dbrand sent over a grip case, and I can confirm it's thin enough to work just fine with a MagSafe charger, kind of like it is a MagSafe charger. And yes, all the other benefits of a case—grippiness, protection—they all still apply.
Since I know most people end up looking for a good one, I'll leave a link to this case below. Now, at the beginning of this MagSafe bit, I said something: I said it was optional, which it is for now, but I feel like we can all sort of see where this is going, which is Apple is slowly moving towards eventually making a portless iPhone, which I think that's a whole separate post worth of rant.
But bottom line is, their solution to wirelessly, conveniently charging a phone that doesn't have a port is going to be MagSafe, this thing right here. So it's not amazing, but I guess it's fine. The couple of accessories they've made for it so far? Not bad. There's a regular case, of course, that you can continue to stack things through.
There's a kind of weird-looking clear version of the case for some reason. There's a wallet that I mentioned that doesn't have very strong magnets, but if you think about it, it's not so peculiar that the one accessory they chose to make outside of a case is a wallet. Let me know if there's any flaw in this series of logic, right?
So Apple wants to get rid of the port on the iPhone and go totally wireless charging for everything at a certain point, maybe next year, whatever, right? So they already see ahead of time this particular headline, which is people who use wallet cases can't wireless charge their iPhone, so they can't charge the iPhone at all.
So Apple needs to invent a way for people who use wallet cases to continue to charge their phone. So they invent an accessory, which is a removable wallet bit, so you can charge the phone, and when you don't need to charge it, you can put the wallet back on. That seems to check out, like I said, it's a whole thing, but today, optional battery life on these phones has actually been pretty good, but not noticeably better than last year at all.
Matter of fact, it's actually a slightly larger, higher-res display and actually a smaller physical battery. So it's pretty impressive that the phone still does okay. You can kill it in a day with six hours of screen-on time or just a lot of heavy use, but this isn't new with this standard size iPhone. If you want a real battery champ, you can go for the bigger phone.
The actual best new piece of the iPhone 12, though, is definitely the new display. It goes from being that 720p LCD with bigger bezels that was really easy to make fun of to this much better and even slightly bigger 6.1-inch 1080p OLED.
It's like night and day. It's basically on par with the Pro, which is actually pretty surprising to me, just a slightly lower peak brightness. Now, it's 60Hz again, and while that's kind of a missing feature at this point on an 800-dollar phone in 2020, I was actually kind of expecting that.
Conclusion:
I was just thinking the Pros would get 120Hz displays this year, but obviously none of them did, which is a bummer. But let's be honest, they probably saw that as a battery-saving measure since this phone did also just get 5G. So let's talk about 5G.
I kind of love and hate 5G right now. So this slogan Apple and I guess the carriers too really keep pushing—that 5G just got real—5G just got real, really just now? 5G just now got real. Last time I checked, like this year.
I reviewed like 30 phones with 5G, so clearly 5G has already existed. But there's a reason they're saying it this way. So first of all, I did a post all about 5G where I went to a 5G area, testing it, explaining it, showing what's good about it and what its limitations are.
I'm going to leave it linked right below the like button if you want to watch it and catch up on that. But the bottom line is, it's really promising, but it's still being built right now. But carriers and I guess Apple really like the message that 5G just got real.
because now that all of the new iPhones have 5G built in, there's about to be millions and millions and millions more people walking around with 5G capable phones in a few very short months, and when that happens, that tends to accelerate development. That sort of makes it real, which I get it. But also, the carriers would very, very much like you to upgrade to their 5G plan, please. But we got to remember, 5G in 2020 has its ups and its downs. Like this iPhone 12 I'm using here.
