Which iPhone 12 Pro model is for you? We try to help you decide with our piece looking at the two top handsets.
After several years of incremental updates, the sharp-edged iPhone 12 family has successfully cut through our smartphone apathy with a bold new outlook. Right at the top of this bulging roster sits the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPhone 12 Pro, two lean and speedy apex predators ready to pounce on their rotund rivals. But how do they square up to one another? Which is more worthy of the ‘Pro’ title? And, most importantly, which is the better phone? Let’s take a closer look. The 128GB iPhone 12 Pro hit shops on October 23,2020, with prices starting from $999/£999/AU$1,699 for the 128GB model. If you want 256GB, you’ll need to stump up $1,099/ £1,099/AU$1,899, while a range-topping 512GB model costs $1,299/ £1,299/AU$2,219. There was a slight delay in the iPhone 12 Pro Max hitting stops, courtesy of the Covid–19 outbreak hitting supply chains hard. It finally landed on 13 November,2020 at a cost of $1,099/ £1,099/AU$1,849 for 128GB of storage, rising to $1,199/£1,199/AU$2,019 for 256GB, and $1,399/£1,399/AU$2,369 for 512GB. The above prices are those stated on Apple’s own official store, but you won’t tend to find major savings from third-party retailers. Apple gear holds its value, and we’re still relatively early in the iPhone 12 range’s lifespan. Apple really reset the design clock with the iPhone 12 family. A new angular approach stands in stark contrast to the rounded, softened efforts of the past six years. Both the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max are just 7.4mm thick, and sport dead-flat surfaces on all four edges. Only the tightly rounded corners betray any hint of curvature, much as they did with the iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 years prior. If you didn’t have anything to provide a sense of scale, you’d find these two young Pros to be identical. Both are available in the same range of four finishes – Silver, Graphite, Gold, and Pacific Blue – and each comes with the same shiny fingerprint-attracting stainless steel rim. Both phones are similarly tough, too, with a front-mounted Ceramic Shield supposedly providing four times the drop-protection of regular display glass. That said, we found quite early in our testing that both phones were still susceptible to picking up small nicks and scratches, just like any other phone. An enhanced IP68 rating, meanwhile, enables both phones to remain immersed in six metres of water for up to 30 minutes. The only significant external difference between these two phones is size. As befits its name, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is much bigger than the iPhone 12 Pro: 14mm taller,7mm wider, and 39g heavier. Add in a larger camera module (which we’ll talk about later), and the iPhone 12 Pro Max is much less wieldy than the iPhone 12 Pro. You need to really want a large phone before you commit to buying one, since it isn’t the sort of device that will easily slip into a jeans pocket or tiny handbag. One other slight external difference is the relative visual impact of that display notch. The sheer fact that the iPhone 12 Pro Max has a much bigger screen means that Apple’s Face ID-enabling bar feels much less intrusive on the larger phone. The reason the iPhone 12 Pro Max is so big, of course, is that it has a whopping 6.7-inch screen, dwarfing the iPhone 12 Pro’s 6.
