The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are here and mark the beginning of a new generation of iPhone. Support for 5G, a new hardware design …
The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are here and mark the beginning of a new generation of iPhone. Support for 5G, a new hardware design and camera improvements are a significant step away from the iPhone X generation of devices. This is nothing new. Apple did something similar in 2010 with the iPhone 4 and in 2014 when it released the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. There is one big difference with the iPhone 12 generation, though. It’s the first time there are four new iPhones at once: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. If you want to go small and reap the benefits of a lower price there’s the Mini. If you want the biggest iPhone with the newest in iPhone cameras, get the Pro Max. But that leaves the 12 and 12 Pro which are similar (like basically-the-same-phone similar). That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are the same size. They both have the same design, the same display, the same insanely fast A14 Bionic chip, the same 5G support, the same selfie, wide and ultrawide cameras. Heck, they both come in blue. (Technically, the 12 Pro is Pacific blue.) This is a departure from the base and pro models from last year. The $699 iPhone 11 and $999 iPhone 11 Pro were similar but had enough differences to distinguish themselves from each other. The $829 iPhone 12 (or $799 if you activate it on a carrier when you buy it) is $130 more than the iPhone 11 when it was released. An iPhone 12 with 128GB of storage (the same as the baseline 12 Pro) costs $879 (sans carrier discount) which is only $120 less than the $999 iPhone 12 Pro. It’s best to think of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro as «better» and «best» versions of the same phone. Prices start in the UK at £799 for the iPhone 12 and £999 for the 12 Pro. In Australia they start at AU$1,349 for the 12 and AU$1,699 for the 12 Pro. See the chart at the bottom for a full pricing breakdown. Now there are many people who will just get the iPhone 12 because it doesn’t cost a thousand dollars and it’s a great phone. Which it is. And there are many people who will get the iPhone 12 Pro because it is more premium. Which it is. Either way, you’re getting an amazing phone with the best overall camera system you can find. During my time with both phones, I found myself picking the 12 Pro more. Not because it had a telephoto camera or lidar, which the 12 lacks: I preferred the matte textured back, the shiny stainless steel band around the sides and the fact that the 12 Pro, despite weighing nearly an ounce (25 grams) more, felt solid and premium in my hand. It’s brilliant that both the 12 and 12 Pro can connect to sub-6 and mmWave 5G here in the US. One phone doesn’t have better 5G support than the other. They are both the same. I tested these phones in Greenville, South Carolina on both T-Mobile’s 5G network and Verizon’s Nationwide 5G (the non-mmWave version without the bonkers speeds). I was impressed with the coverage both carriers offered, but not always with the consistency of 5G speeds. Using the app SpeedTest, the iPhone 12 on T-Mobile recorded download speeds between 10.4 and 14.9 megabits per second, while the iPhone 12 Pro on Verizon clocked in between 97.9 and 104Mbps for downloads. Speed tests aside, there isn’t a killer app that can show off how 5G is pushing things forward. Right now, you’ll see a lot of reviews showing you SpeedTest scores and how fast you can download season 3 of The Marvelous Mrs.
