The best smartphone of 2020
HIGHLIGHTS
• The iPhone 12 uses Apple's 5nm A14 Bionic SoC
• It is priced starting at Rs. 79,900 in India for 64GB of storage
• The crisp OLED screen is a huge improvement, but the notch remains
iPhone 12 price in india:
iPhone 12 design :
We return to a completely flat front and back, as well as a flat frame running around the perimeter of the iPhone 12 family. This is somewhat like the iPhone 5 generation, but without even bevelled or chamfered edges meeting the display glass. If you choose one of the brighter colour options, you'll see the metal frame around the edges of your device. That means the front and rear panels are more protected, but I suspected that the frame would likely get scuffed or dented without a case, and that's exactly what happened within a week of using the iPhone 12.
Apple says its new Ceramic Shield material, used on the front, is four times more resistant to damage in case of drops, but that doesn't mean it's scratch-resistant. You also get an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance, and this phone did survive being tossed in a swimming pool and even being used to record video underwater for several minutes during the review period.
The lack of rounded edges means that the iPhone 12 does feel a little less comfortable in the hand and against the ear than the. However, it is considerably smaller in all dimensions, especially thickness, and also quite a bit lighter. At just 7.4mm thick and 162g, the differences are immediately noticeable. If you're talking on the phone, playing games, shooting video, or even just scrolling through endless feeds, the iPhone 12 is an ergonomic improvement overall.
One-handed usage isn't much of a problem, since thankfully the glass rear panel isn't slippery. Without a case, the two camera rings on the rear do protrude quite a bit, which is a cause for concern. You get the usual power button on the right, and volume buttons plus mute switch on the left. There's a Lightning connector on the bottom and invisible MagSafe magnetic ring on the back for Apple's new line of wireless charging accessories. There's a single Nano-SIM tray but you can use an eSIM if you need a second line.
iPhone 12 specifications and software:
We're now quite familiar with Apple's A14 Bionic SoC, which can be found across the iPhone 12 lineup and in the new iPad Air (2020). It has two high-performance and four energy-efficient CPU cores, a quad-core GPU, next-gen “Neural Engine” AI logic, and more. Apple claims that this 5nm chip is not only the fastest current smartphone processor, but also incredibly power efficient. The big push with this generation is machine learning, which can be used to accelerate on-device AI to make apps and the UI itself more personal and secure.
One of the most noticeable upgrades that the iPhone 12 introduces is its screen. Apple has used almost exactly the same OLED panel on this device as on the iPhone 12 Pro, in stark contrast to previous generations in which lower-end models were saddled with noticeably lower-resolution LCD screens. This makes the iPhone 12 feel a lot more premium than its predecessors.
The 6.1-inch 1170x2532 HDR panel supports the wide P3 colour gamut and Apple's True Tone ambient light adjustment feature. The notch at the top is pretty huge by today's standards, and it's definitely annoying when watching videos full screen, but it isn't otherwise much of a problem if you're used to using any fairly recent iPhone. A high refresh rate would have been nice, but that remains an advantage for the Android camp for now.
Apple doesn't officially disclose things like battery capacity and amount of RAM for its products, but we know from third-party teardowns that the iPhone 12 has a 2,815mAh battery and 4GB of RAM. You can choose between 64GB, 128GB and 256GB of storage – considering the prices, the base model really should have had more, but cloud and streaming services these days have alleviated a lot of the pain of running out of space.
The entire iPhone 12 family supports sub-6GHz 5G, which isn't a selling point now, but will hopefully be useful in India in the near future. There's also Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5, Ultra-wideband positioning, GPS, and NFC, though Apple restricts how some of these standards can be used.
iOS 14 runs exceptionally smoothly without a hint of hesitation. The UI is responsive and animations are super slick. Apps load quickly, even if they haven't been used in a while. You do get more customisation options and built-in features (including some localised ones) than with earlier versions but you still have to learn to do many things Apple's way. Despite the high prices of iPhones, iOS 14's stability and longevity, as well as its privacy features, do keep a lot of people within the fold.
Much of the appeal of iPhones is down to Apple's various apps and services including iMessage, FaceTime, and iCloud. The company pushes its Apple Music, Arcade, and TV+ subscriptions heavily, and some of the notifications can get annoying. You can claim three free months of Apple Arcade and an entire year of TV+ with the purchase of any new iOS device, but iCloud storage is limited to 5GB without a paid subscription.
iphone 12 camera:
Dual 12MP camera: 26mm main wide-angle, F/1.6, OIS, Dual Pixel AF; 13mm ultrawide-angle, F/2.4, 120-degree field of view; dual-LED flash with slow sync. Night Mode, Smart HDR 3, Deep Fusion.
Memory:
4GB of RAM; 64/128/256GB of internal storage.
IPHONE 12 PERFORMANCE, BATTERY LIFE, AND SOFTWARE REVIEW
iPhone 12 is blisteringly fast. The new A14 Bionic chip is built on a new 5nm process — one that we expect will also power upcoming Mac computers. Games load fast and there’s no lag, webpages render without hassle, and I’m seeing fewer apps need to reload when multitasking.
But in actual day-to-day use, I suspect nobody will see an appreciable difference from the iPhone 11, which was and is very fast, too. The importance of the iPhone 12’s speed isn’t that it’s fast today; it’s that it’s likely to still be fast in three or even five years.
Battery life is good but does seem to be a small regression from the iPhone 11 (an absolute battery champion). The fact that Apple felt the need to create a special mode for silently turning off 5G is a little worrying in terms of battery life. Luckily, I don’t think the battery life on the iPhone 12 is bad at all. I can get through a full day without much issue. On the other hand, I have to admit that it’s easier to kill this thing with a full day of heavy use than the iPhone 11.
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