My Reluctant iPhone 12 Purchase
By: Akshay G
Tags: iPhone, Tech, Review, Apple, Technology

My Reluctant iPhone 12 Purchase

Story Time

When Apple announced the new 12 series, like every year I had the familiar yearning to buy it. I looked at my iPhone X. It was running fine. In the two and a half years I’d owned it, it had picked up a few quirks, like the Face ID flaw (it stopped working anytime it didn’t see my face and I had to give the phone a restart to get it to work. Living with a mask on, this happened at least 4 or 5 times a day.) and the phone battery life had slimmed down. But it wasn’t something I couldn’t live with and I didn’t really need, need a new phone. I spent a good month thinking about it and came to the decision to stick with my iPhone X for another year. iPhone 13 (or whatever it’s called) would be it.

But that all changed when I picked up my X last Monday morning from it’s charging pad. Did the screen always pop out so much? I pulled the phone out of my case and from the left side, the phone screen had almost popped out — out enough that I could see the black strands of adhesive holding the frame and screen together and for the first time, I saw the internals of my phone. I’d seen the insides of an iPhone online but never in person. I quickly pushed the screen down and with a pop, it went back in. But it was still bulging out, slightly.

I did a quick search online to find that this is a common occurrence. It’s usually caused by a bloated battery. I booked an appointment with the Apple Store for the next day, avoided keeping my phone on a charger too often and went about my day. The funny thing was that the phone worked as normal (but all the troubleshoot guides said to get it fixed asap as the problem can get worse).

At the Apple Store, they told me that they’d replace the battery (which isn’t too expensive), but if there are any more problems, they’ll have to fix those as well and they’ll charge me extra for it. I thought about this, and went downstairs and asked the Apple store salesman if they’d be ready to buy back my iPhone X for an iPhone 12. After a little haggling, we agreed at a price and I swiped my card and held my new iPhone 12 in my hands.

iPhone 12. Blue. 128 Gb.

Photo by Shiwa ID on Unsplash

My Thoughts

This phone screams. From the first swipe up, you notice the speed. The screen may not refresh at a 120Hz rate (and I do notice it — been using my iPad Pro for almost a year and a half), it’s still one of the smoothest phones I’ve used. Much smoother than my old iPhone X. Everything is snappy, the Face ID is faster, apps loads quickly and many more remain in memory. The experience of the phone lends itself to the adjectives fast and fluid — what you’d expect from a new iPhone.

Physically, I love how the phone feels in my hands. It’s so much lighter than my iPhone X. The squared of edges are great. Reminds me of my old iPhone 5. That was a good phone — until it got water damaged. Not a major worry with this phone thanks to its IP68 water resistance.

You can see every hair out of place — or at least whatever remains.

But the sheer delight starts when you open the camera. Everything I shoot with this phone looks so much better. My friend who also bought an iPhone 12 (Black, 128 GB) recently said it makes him look more beautiful than he is. I don’t agree or disagree with him. Beauty is subjective. But what I can say is that the portrait mode pictures are sharper, more punchy. The phone gets the separation between the subject and foreground right more often. There is a lot more colour depth in pictures clicked from the main wide lens. The details are really vivid. And can we take a moment to appreciate the front-facing cameras? iPhone front-facing cameras have never been so good. I’m honestly surprised at how beautiful I look (from the camera’s perspective). I am not a selfie taker, but dang, have I been enjoying it.

I haven’t had so much fun clicking pictures in a long long while and that’s pretty much all I do with the phone. Though I do miss the tighter frame of the telephoto lens, the wide-angle lens is so much more fun to play with

Experiments with Night Mode.

I’ve used an iPhone 11 (my mom’s) and even an iPhone 11 Pro (a friend’s) to click pictures at various events. I have always enjoyed the night mode on the main lens, but not having one on the ultra wide-angle was very evident with each snap I took. It felt quite constrained — I could not throw any lighting condition and let the phone work its magic. But the 12 has no such constraints. Whatever lens you use, it’ll let night mode do its thing. I’ve sat and compared pictures from my mom’s iPhone 11 and my 12 in daylight and they are near identical, with the 12 having just a hair more colour depth. But you lower the light, and they both are different cameras. Even in darker settings, both the lenses on the 12 let in more light (though it’s way more evident in the main wide-angle than the ultra-wide). I believe there is some Deep Fusion magic going on, but it’s all invisible to the photographer. I can’t wait to travel with this phone and click pictures once the sun goes down.

But all of this pales in comparison to the videos that this device takes. Yes, I know HDR videos are a pain to upload right now on the interwebs, but just looking at the videos captured on the phone itself, it’s like you’re taking a glimpse into the future (even when what you’re looking at is a video of the past moment). I can’t wait for HDR to become the norm and other technology to catch up. Watching HDR videos (even in 1080p) is a delight for the eyes. Especially on these Super Retina XDR displays. I was able to watch several HDR videos on the OLED Super Retina screen on my iPhone X, but watching HDR videos on the Super Retina XDR display (oh! what a mouthful) of the iPhone 12 is a treat. When paired with the stereo speaker system on the 12 (which is considerably louder and fuller than the iPhone X) it’s party time for my senses. It also seems like the earpiece that doubles as a speaker is far louder and equal in volume to the regular bottom-firing speaker compared to my old iPhone X.

It took me less than 10 minutes to shoot, edit, and export this video on my iPhone 12.

The iPhone 11 and the XR still use the old LCD displays. On the occasions I borrowed my mom’s iPhone 11 to click pictures, the LCD screen, while great (really great unless you’re pixel peeping like me), was noticeably less sharp and things on the screen looked…bulky. The screen was always a deal-breaker for me. It was like using a CRT monitor after moving to an LCD (okay, maybe not that drastic, but you get my point.)

Side note: Due to the technology used in OLED displays — pulse-width modulation — I used to get a headache if I stared at the screen beyond a certain point, especially over seven to eight hours of screen-on time on my old iPhone X. This was combated thanks to the lack of battery life to keep the screen on for more than 5-hours. I have had no such effect on the iPhone 12 screen irrespective of screen-on time — which easily reaches up to 6–9 hours depending on what I’m doing.

Shooting HDR videos is one thing, editing them and exporting them on the fly without a single stutter is mind-blowing. I cannot even begin to imagine the power in the palms of my hand when I export a video. And even with all of this, the battery doesn’t really take a hit. The battery on this phone lasts me a good average of 7-hour screen-on time, which includes video editing, picture taking, video clicking and regular phone use. Also includes being outdoors on LTE and being indoors on WiFi.

Note: India does not have any 5G right now, so I cannot test it.

Let me take a minute to talk about LTE (or 4G as it’s commonly called here in India). Thanks to the new Qualcomm 5G modem inside the phone, the LTE gets such a boost. I couldn’t believe it but I’ve been getting phenomenal reception. Places where I’d never get any signal, I’ve got two bars. Places where I used to get two bars, I get full signal. No call drops and the internet speeds are so high — in my room, it’s faster than my WiFi too. I compared the signal strength with my father’s iPhone 8 (which has the same internals as my old iPhone X) and there was a 2 MB/s difference. That’s a decent boost.