Tech giant Apple has just dropped a massive bit of news, that we want to share with you today. They’ve just wrapped up their annual iPhone event and to tell us the news was Kaiann Drance, the VP of iPhone Product Marketing.
During the announcement, the biggest feature was 5G connectivity, which is a first for Apple.
But the killer news is that Apple have released a brand new design for their iPhone 12. The phone now features flat edges and has two rear cameras. The phone is definitely reminincent of older iPhones, and although it doesn’t look highly modern, it still looks premium.
There’s also antennas installed into the frame too, so connectivity promises to be even better with the new iPhone.
It also comes in several colours, including black, white, red, silver and blue. And personally, they all look as good as eachother.
The phone still features a 6.1-inch display, which is the same size of the current iPhone 11, but the borders and bezels have been shrunk slightly, which gives the impression of a larger screen, without actually making it bigger.
The phone also promises to be 11% thinner, 15% smaller and 16% lighter and is now using Apple’s custom OLED display, called the Apple Retina XDR. What’s special, is that each pixel has its own lightsource, which enables Apple to produce a lot higher contrast ratio and colour saturation.
And HDR content promises to be a lot better on iPhone 12, with a max peak brightness of 1,200nits. And of course the HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision buzzwords got thrown out there.
Apple are going with a new chip this time round, named the A14 Bionic which Apple are claiming is the fastest chip ever in a smartphone. Bold claims there Apple. Let’s wait for the reviews to find out. It’s a six core chip with two high performance cores, and four high-efficiency cores. There’s also a four cour GPU, which again, Apple threw a bunch of buzzwords out there to claim it’s the fastest. Again, let’s wait for the tests shall we? The neural engine has grown from eight to 16 cores, and the CPU ML accelerators are now 70% faster than older iPhones.
That’s the nerdy stuff out the way. Let’s talk about the dual camera. The first is an ultra-wide camera which spurs on creativity, and a wide camera with an f/1.6 aperture. The lenses now have sevel elements to increase quality, and HDR 3 continues to bring out detail in the highlights and shadows like never before.
Video mode is getting a few improvements, with the likes of night mode timelapse for those sunset timelapse shots.
One thing that surprised us though is the fact that the new iPhone now uses MagSafe chargers. It’s somerthing that wasn’t asked for, and Apple has blatently ignored people’s requests for MagSafe to return to the Macbooks. I haven’t once thought MagSafe on a phone would be a good idea. I mean it is, but I’d rather that be on my Macbook for sure.
However, this new MagSafe feature requires an added accesory, which snaps onto the back of an iPhone. I’m guessing these will be available from Apple, but we’ve not seen any third party products come through our office yet.
But there was one thing that Apple has really dropped the ball on, and that’s the non-inclusion of a USB charger. Apple claim that this is to protect the environment, as they want to produce less plastic waste. A bold statement, and one I can fully get behind. But when they’re also releasing a new charger to buy as an added accessory for £20, it’s EXTREMELY counterintuitive, and really comes down to Apple wanting to make more money. It’s anabsolute garbage PR move and one that quite frankly paints Apple in the worst light. Apple are including a USB Type-C to Lightning cable in the box. So all of those people with existing iPhones, which probably have USB Type-A chargers, are going to need a new charger anyway. Absolutely disgusting practices Apple.
iPhone of course like they do every time they release a new phone, releases them at various sizes. This time round you’ve got the standard, which we’ve just ran through above, and now the iPhone 12 Mini, which features a 5.4-inch display and features all the same things as the standard iPhone 12. The Mini starts from $699, and the standard sizes iPhone 12 comes in at $799.
Now there’s the Pro, which features a stainless steel band and some extra coating which protects the phone from damage and an IPS68 rating for going swimming with your phone up to six meters for 30 minutes. They still have the XDR Retina display at 6.7-inch display. The c ameras on the back are the same, but the iPhone 12 Pro has a telephoto lens too on the back which has an f/2.0 aperture and a 4x optical zoom. There’s also HDR video recording too for decent 10-bit colour capture with 4K resolution at 60fps. Now this is some impressive spec. There’s also a liDAR scanner too, so you can scan rooms, scan objects, and accurately place Augmented Reality elements within a space. All this can be yours for just $999 which by todays standards of ultra flagship handsets is pretty good. And for the Pro Max, the price tag starts at $1099 for a bigger screen and best camera tech. Sizes vary, but they now start at 128GB.
iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro preorders have started already, and they’re being released to the market on October 23rd. 12 Pro Max and 12 Mini will begin shipping on November 13th 2020. So which one would you go for? Let us know in the comments below.
