HORIZON TOP 10
Have a gander at the long-awaited iPhone 12 and the bank-balancefriendly Google Pixel 5
From £699 (iPhone 12 mini)/£799 (iPhone 12), apple.com
Leave it to Apple to go big. Where Google’s Pixel 5 elicited, if we’re honest, a bit of a shrug, Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 12 – and its attendant mini, Pro and Pro Max variants – caused a stir for all the right reasons. Reasons like the company bringing the ludicrously fast A14 Bionic processor from the iPad Air 4 into a phone form factor, or finally (finally!) giving the iPhone 5G capabilities with, suggests Apple, cover for more 5G bands than any other phone. Reasons like the sevenelement rear camera, and the return of Apple’s MagSafe branding in the iPhone 12’s autoaligning, extra-efficient Qi charging setup.
The flat-edged design more than hints at the classic metal frame of the iPhone 4, bringing with it vastly reduced bezels on the upgraded 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR (ie OLED) display for a 15% smaller, 11% thinner, and 16% tougher phone, too. The IP68 water and dust resistance we’ve seen on other recent models is topped off with what Apple calls Ceramic Shield, giving the display an extra level of resilience.
What’s coolest (for us, at least) is that all of these key upgrades are also crammed into the smaller and cheaper iPhone 12 mini, which cuts the display size down to 5.4 inches in a phone smaller than the iPhone SE – if you’ve been clamouring for a pocket-sized phone in a world increasingly dominated by trouser-busting phablets, this is the one to get.