Apple iphone 12

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The phrase ‘simplicity attracts’ suits very well to the iphone maker, Apple. The company has created a niche for itself which extends beyond the notion of just commodity fetishism. The successor of iphone 11 is out now which is iphone 12, a phone which will strike you with the nostalgia of iphone 4 and 5 from its looks, and comparatively more speed of course, but it’s not just the speed you get.

The iphone 12 also features a range of other updates, including an enhanced durability design, an OLED screen, and 5G support. The updated OLED display has narrower bezels and the new Magsafe magnetically fitted charging support. Apple is known for creating some controversy with its every new launch and this time as well the company has created a lot of buzz by removing earbuds and the charger from its box to cut the carbon footprints.

Design

The iphone 12 is a dualglass smartphone with a metal casing, much like the many iphones of the past. However while it may be one of the lightest new flagships,

it is still one of the toughest smartphones in glass ever.

The 12th iphone generation blends the best of the 4th and 5th series with new features and a lot more longevity. The iphone 12 fits nicely into your palm and it’s a total joy to work with. The device is light and convenient. The new form, the matte structure, and the grip panels give it a strong grip. This is an incredible upgrade over and we love to work with the iphone 12. There’s nothing on the top of the flat frame, while the bottom is where the mouthpiece, the Lightning outlet, and the other stereo speaker are located. The silver screws, which, physically, are very much visible and noticeable. The silencer, the volume rockers, and the nanosim slot are located on the left side. You will see the Power/

Side key on the right. The rear side has a dual-camera configuration. It is housed in a

Camera, Performance

No Charger, Earphone matte square glass and not more than 1 mm from the rear panel protruding out. The rectangular frame consists of dual camera sensors, an LED flash, and a stereo mic. Both snappers are surrounded and covered by sapphire glass with metal bands. These metal confines are 1 mm higher than matt square glass. The front fascia is dominated by the 6.1 inch OLED screen which has very thin bezels, thinner than iphone 11. The company kept the big notch in the iphone 12 as well.

Display

The iphone 12 has an OLED screen size of 6.1 inches and has the same size as the iphone 11’s, with rounded corners and a wide notch at the end. The latest panel has 1170x2532 pixels and is called Super Retina XDR OLED. It is covered by Corning’s brand new Ceramic Shield glass and is fully smooth while working on it. HDR10 and Dolby Vision content is supported by the new Super Retina XDR OLED screen. This one also comes with True Tone changes, Wide Color support, as with the iphones before the 12, and it has the Haptic Touch feature supported under the screen by the Taptic Engine. The device has a 60Hz refresh rate and features 120Hz touch input. The brightness level of the phone is very good as it has a 600nits brightness level which makes the screen easily visible under bright daylight. The iphone 12 supports DCI-P3, and when content is sent on the screen, it immediately changes to this gamma. The gaming experience is also very good as there is more space now and the super-smooth screen adds more fun to it.

Platform

The new iphones ship with the updated IOS 14.1 preinstalled. It’s a small upgrade over the IOS 14 featuring mainly bug fixes and newly introduced support for 10-bit

HDR video playback. The current OS focus is on the latest widgets and the App Library, which if you plan to use them, will boost your experience. It’s good to see that Apple has opted to make new features as optional as possible rather than automatically pushing them on you. If you like and neglect the application library, you can continue using IOS 14 in the old way. However, there is no way to uninstall the App Library. The more compact Siri GUI is another new feature of IOS 14. You will see a small ball around the bottom upon summoning Siri, and your answer will be given in a small pop-up window. You can also see what’s happening in your working app in this way.

The iphone 12 is powered by the new Apple A14 Bionic chip. It is the world’s first

5nm chipset, carrying a total of 11.8 billion transistors, equivalent to 40 percent more than the A13. The new Apple processor, the

A14 has a six-core CPU. It has 2 large 3.1GHZ clocked Firestorm cores and 4 small 1.8GHZ Icestorm cores with Turboboost capability to go to 3.1GHZ. A new 4-core Apple GPU is available in the new iphone 12 and there is a new 16-core NPU for machine learning that improves the performance of AI. The variant which we got to review has 4GB of RAM and internal storage of 256 GB. The latest A14 Bionic chip has improved performance capability and while testing its power we were very pleased to see how it handled the apps and big games very comfortably. The gaming experience was also very pleasant as we enjoyed games in their top graphics quality without and fall or stutter. The Bionic Apple A14 chip also comes with the X55 5G modem of Qualcomm, which is why the full lineup of the iphone 12 supports a 5G connection meaning the phone will be ready to make use of the 5G feature whenever it will be launched in India. The new A14 Bionic chip and its ISP have improved the camera quality. The new A14 chip very smoothly supports the Smart HDR 3, Deep Fusion, Night Mode, Dolby Vision recording, etc. The processor of the new iphone 12 is the fastest processor till now and the good thing is that the whole series of iphone 12 carries the same gene of power and performance.

Cameras

The new iphone 12 comes with a dual rear camera sensor of 12 MP and a selfie sensor of 12MP. The selfie camera sensor has 1.0μm pixels and a 23mm f/2.2 lens. The focus of the camera is fixed just like the previous iphone 11. The selfie camera captures depth information with the structured-light 3D scanner by using portrait mode on this camera, which means that is very much capable of taking amazing portrait selfies. The selfies captured look very natural and there are no better selfie camera sensors than that of the iphone and the new iphone 12 proves it. The 12MP selfies are excellent, with excellent colors and wellhandled noise, high in detail and contrast. Night Mode is also available on the selfie camera, and it brightens the entire photo and exposes

more detail and to be honest, the iphone 12 selfies in dim lighting conditions are one of the best you’ll ever see. Apple provides a selfie camera with a two-field-of-view mode: a slightly zoomed 7MP crop that equals a 30mm field of view and a full 12mp mode with a FOV equivalent of 23mm. The primary sensor of the rear camera delivers stunningly natural looking photos with a great level of accuracy and detail. The contrast level of the images is on point and you will not find any ill exposure of the natural colors. The ultra-wide 12MP images capture a wide array. These are among the widest photos we’ve captured, and the distortion correction is done very professionally. With the main camera, the portrait images taken are outstanding. With true-life colors, excellent contrast, and very natural-looking blur. The subject distinction is indeed very proficient in the iphone 12. The night mode is automatically triggered if the light is low and the indicated exposure period can be adjusted or corrected. It normally uses exposures of 1s or 2s, and the image is immediately saved, making it one of the best night modes we have used. The nightmode enhanced images are of worthy flagship-level as they are sharp and very accurate, with low noise and yet a small noise reduction. Without going overboard the color saturation is kept natural and the pictures are also very balanced with conserved highlights, balanced colors, and overall contrast. Night Mode is now also available on the ultra-wide camera. Ultrawide images of the 12 MP Night Mode are very good as they have balanced exposure and highlights which provide more detail than the normal ones. Apple iphone 12 comes with a 16 Neural engine that selects the right frames and produces a very detailed, sharp, and natural-looking HDR picture of high quality. The deep learning method of the neural processor analyses and processes the picture according to the frame - say, sky, foliage, or skin tones.

The structure and color tones meanwhile are based on the ratios obtained from the A14

CPU neural unit.

Battery

Last but not the least is the battery power, and the charging of the new iphone 12 which created a lot of controversies as Apple removed the charger in the new iphone 12 series. To charge the phone you can use Apple’s 20W PD charger or another USB-PD compatible adapter. The iphone 12 supports 15W fast wireless charging but only when using Magsafe chargers which you have to buy on your own. The battery capacity of the phone is of 2,815mah which is a downgrade from its predecessor iphone 11 which had 3,110mah battery power. Though the battery power is less when compared to its predecessor the new iphone 12 is very much capable of lasting a whole day quite easily. The Magsafe charger heats the phone when charged through it which is something Apple needs to work upon. You can also use any other Qi-certified wireless pad for charging like Belkin.

Conclusion

The iphone 12 could be said to be the ‘controversy child’ of Apple in 2020. The trillion dollar company continues with the same design, same notch, and the same camera configuration as we saw in iphone 11. Another blow comes from the absence of power adapter and earphone from the box. The new age

A14 Bionic chipset improves much then what we had earlier in iphone 11. The Lidar-supported lenses work more brilliantly in different environments. The low light photography goes a level up in iphone 12. The selfies move much closer to the reality.

For charging you need to buy a Magsafe wireless pad separately or if you have your old iphone charger that will also work. The iphone 12 is 5G compatible but is of no use in India at the moment. The Apple iphone 12 costs around Rs 79,900 for the 64GB variant in India, plus you need to spend a minimum of Rs 4,500 on a Magsafe pad. The iphone 12 could be a possession for the first time Apple user but, on the contrary offers nothing unusual to an iphone 11 user.

Apple could have gone with a different strategy of removing the accessories from the box for a country like India or has done it in phased manner.

The intention may be right but anyway we need a charger and somebody, somewhere is making it, packaging it, transporting it, and that means more amount of carbon

haider@mymobile.co.in