iPhone 12 Pro Review

It is actually my favorite iPhone ever to use that's fact but it's not really quite worth the money. So this 12 pro does have a few bits of advantages over the regular 12. See almost everything that's better about the 12 pro that could be a real significant reason to get it over the 12 is gonna be even better in the 12 pro max, and you know that phone's coming out a little bit later, yes and that phone is going to be bigger, yes and that phone is going to be even more expensive, yes but it is a weird dilemma to find yourself in so 12 or 12 pro. That is the question, well okay if we start off with the build this is easily the most noticeable difference actually between these two phones 12 pro comes in different possibly superior colors. It's the only one that comes in gold and it's also the only one that comes in this specific pacific blue color that is in my opinion the best available color for any iPhone right now. But also the finishes so another year another glossy iPhone with a matte camera bump versus a matte iPhone with a glossy camera bump and I still of course prefer the matte iPhone 12 pro. But it's a little bit watered down instantly by the stainless steel sides which gather more fingerprints than the CSI employee of the month meaning they look pretty bad now apple's using stainless steel for a reason , it's actually more durable it's more scratch resistant it's it's just a higher quality material than aluminum technically speaking so that is nice. But the byproduct is definitely more fingerprints more shininess and actually it's a little bit heavier than the other phone. 

So okay the build maybe that's a wash you can just pick whichever one you want from those two. Then there's the camera system so the 12 pro has a improved camera system over the 12 and by improved I mean it's the same exact primary sensor it's the same exact ultra-wide sensor and it's an additional 2x telephoto zoom camera. There are going to be some people that do see that telephoto by itself as an advantage people who take a lot of zoom photos and it's not a space zoom it's not a 3x or 5x or 10x or anything crazy like that, but it's an advantage maybe you have kids that run far away or you're in the back row of a concert although in 2020 ,are you really? I don't know but it is real. I'm not going to get down on optical zoom it is fine you will notice crispier shots at and beyond 2x zoom in good light but I'm saying in good light for a reason and that's because pretty much every smartphone that's ever had a second telephoto camera is using a worse smaller less light gathering sensor for the telephoto and the iPhone's included in that. So when your lighting starts to get shady or a little bit dark or it's nighttime turns out the phone smartly realizes that the main camera with the bigger sensor and this brighter f1.6 aperture is actually still capable of better zoom shots than the telephoto camera so it just keeps using that main camera, anyway as you zoom in you can try yourself you can literally cover up the telephoto camera at night and typically everything still works the exact way you'd expect it. So the extra 2x telephoto lens on the pro it's there it's better sometimes in nice light for those telephoto shots but it's probably not a reason by itself for you to upgrade spend more money. However if you do really care about a better camera system, you need to buy the 12 pro max .It's have a bunch of things, It's have a bigger primary sensor for the first time in a while in an iPhone that's a pretty big deal and It's have sensor shift auto-focus which have IBIS or in-body image stabilization instead of in lens image stabilization and some mirror-less cameras that should also make some pretty big improvements to low light shooting, handheld shooting and even video stabilization. So that's the 12 pro max have a slightly longer 2.5 x optical zoom on the telephoto.So this is the first year apple's really divvying up the camera capabilities and only giving the best camera stuff .

So okay build quality pick your poison there extra cameras not a huge deal,then there's lidar-sensor ,this new little circle cutout down here at the bottom of the camera module that we first saw on the iPad pro. Essentially it's a depth sensor so it has some niche uses for photography. It's actually pretty much inactive during daylight again but at night and in poor lighting it'll do up to six times faster auto-focus and i have actually noticed really impressive night time auto focus on this iPhone. So that's worth noting and it'll also let you do portrait mode at night which is sweet and then there are some pretty massive benefits for AR(Augmented reality) now augmented reality you may or may not use that much at all depends on who you are if you don't care you don't care. If you're in the AR world you kind of got to get this one, I'm using the measure app as an example but there's a pretty significant speed and accuracy improvement across everything AR related object permanence in space is way better. AR games are much more playable and even in the measure app you can instantly measure someone's height with i mean an acceptable degree of accuracy.

So 12 and 12 pro aside from that are very very similar the displays ,the notch ,the haptic, the ceramic shield, the a14 bionic all this stuff is identical even a case for the 12 will work with the 12 pro but for some reason the 12 pro does have a slightly higher normal brightness on the display and then 12 pro also has 6 gigs of ram instead of the 4 in the 12. which to me is interesting because apple as we know never really talks about the ram. So we kind of had to discover that they quietly added ram to the phone which to me suggests there was a reason for it maybe that's a little more future proofing a little bit better multitasking maybe that's what allowed it to do 4k Dolby vision video at 60fps instead of at 30 and then weirdly despite these phones being like, I said identical in size and presumably having the same battery the 12 pro's battery has been consistently slightly worse than the 12. There are some theories about how this could be possibly just more ram taking a little bit more power or maybe it does have a different battery or something's different inside.But I think it's safe to say both these phones don't have the most amazing battery life and, if you care about battery again the 12 pro max  have a bigger battery.So I think the moral of the story here is, if you really care about these upgrades if you care about a screen upgrade bigger screen, if you care about a battery upgrade bigger battery, if you care about a camera upgrade bigger sensors. See now there's a whole spectrum of iPhones available anywhere from that iPhone SE starting at $399 all the way up to $1399 for the highest end 12 pro max and so apple's strategy and it's kind of more clear and deliberate than ever is to give you all those offerings at all those different prices and then see if they can try to up-sell you a little bit inside of that chain. 

So that brings me to the last maybe most interesting point which is storage the iPhone 12 starts at 64GB of base storage and the iPhone 12 pro starts at 128 GB of base storage. So I would say my advice is to just make sure are you sure about that? do you actually have good reasons to get the pro? because there's going to be people who are just going to get the pro because it's it's the better phone it's got the extra thing it's shinier i'm going to get this one that's cool maybe even the better colors are a reason you get it but if you're looking specifically to get the best value to get the most phone for your money and you're considering getting the pro i don't think it's a good buy and i think you'd be better go for the 12 pro max.