On the Tuesday the 13th of October 2020 technology giant; Apple announced its latest flagship smartphones; the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini. Both devices which will be sold alongside the more expensive and more higher end iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max, come with powerful features, have quite affordable prices and are perfect for users who are not really keen on the camera features fitted into the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro max.
The iPhone 12 which is a 6.1 inch device is the successor to the iPhone 11. The iPhone 12 Mini on the other hand and its 5.4 inch size is the smallest iPhone that Apple has launched since 2016 when it released the iPhone SE. If you are in the market for an iPhone with state of the art features and can be used conveniently on one hand then you should consider the iPhone 12 Mini.
Battery size and screen size aside, the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini are quite identical.
Every iPhones released by Apple this year (2020), come fitted with Super Retina XDR OLED display. This is a first from the tech giant.
The iPhones also come with edge to edge designs, with the exception of the Face ID notch and little bezels around the edge.
The base iPhone 12 models and iPhone 12 Pro models all have the same display quality.
The iPhone 12 Mini has a 2430 x 1080 resolution with 476 pixels per inch. The iPhone 12 has a 2532 x 1170 resolution, with 460 pixels per inch.
Both displays come with support for HDR, 1,200 nits peak brightness Wide Color which ensures that colours displayed are true to life and vivid, Haptic Touch for feedback, and True Tone which ensures that the colour temperature of the display matches the ambient lighting for a much more natural viewing experience for users.
Apple revamped the entire design for this year’s iPhones and introduced flat edges which are a far cry from the usual rounded edges users have come to expect in recent times, bringing this year’s models much closer in design to the iPad Pro.
The iPhones 12s are all protected at the front by Ceramic Shield covers which have now replaced the standard glass covers. According to Apple, the Ceramic Shield is permeated with nano-ceramic crystals. What this means is that the Ceramic Shields have a 4 times better drop performance.
The back of this year’s iPhones however, retain their glass covers with the two halves of the devices covering an aerospace grade aluminum enclosure which comes in 5 colours; Black, Blue, White, Green and of course PRODUCT RED.
The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini like their Pro siblings, come with IP68 water and dust resistance. They can withstand up to 6 meters of water submersion, for as long as 30 minutes.
This year’s iPhone models all support 5G connectivity which would enable users get much faster downloads and uploads, better gaming, improved quality for video streaming, as well as much higher definition 1080p FaceTime calls
Although 5G coverage is available in numerous locations worldwide, only the iPhone 12 variants sold in the United States (US) will support the mmWave 5G technology which is currently the fastest 5G technology available today. This means that the 5G speeds in the United States could get as high as 4GB per second, even in places which are highly populated.
All other other iPhone 12 models that will be sold in others countries will only support the more widely available Sub-6GHz 5G connectivity.
The iPhone 12s also support Gigabit LTE for times and instances when the 5G is not available.
The Smart Data Mode on the iPhone 12s ensure that users can preserve battery life when on 5G and switch automatically to LTE connections whenever 5G speeds are not essential.
The iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12 both support Bluetooth 5.0 and WiFi 6. Both models also come with a U1 Ultra Wideband chip that allows for interactivity with other devices that support the U1 feature, like the HomePod Mini. The U1 Ultra Wideband chip also allows for spatial awareness.
All iPhone 12 models come with the brand new A14 chip which is the very first chip in any smartphone to be built on a 5 nanometer process to improve efficiency and boost performance.
According to Apple, the 4 core GPU and 6 core CPU in the A14 chip are faster (50 times faster) than any other smartphone chip available today. It also offers a 16 core Neural Engine which offers an increase of up to 80 percent in performance for all machine learning tasks.
The major difference between the iPhone 12, the iPhone 12 Mini and there Pro siblings, are the cameras.
The iPhone 12 Pro variants all come with triple lens camera setups and a LiDAR Scanner, while the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini have dual lens camera setups.
The dual lens camera setups does not mean that the base iPhone 12 models are walkovers. They have really impressive upgrades especially when compared with iPhone 11.
The iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Mini come with a f/2.4 Ultra Wide camera and a Wide Camera which has an improved f1/6 aperture that allows more light by up to 27 percent. This would ensure that it would perform much better in low light situations. It also comes with a digital zoom of up to 5 times and an optical zoom of up to 2 times.
Apple’s A14 chip supports brand new photography features like a very much improved Night Mode that guarantees way better contrast in images and Deep Fusion feature that pictures captured have less noise and much butter texture.
The Smart HDR 3 feature helps users tweak the contrast, saturation white balance and texture in pictures to help them achieve pictures that look much more natural.
The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini can capture 30fps HDR videos with Dolby Vision just like their pro siblings. What this means is that users can capture, edit and share cinema quality videos via their iPhones.
4K video recordings of up to 60fps are supported as well.
The iPhones come with a Nighy Mode Time Lapse functionality, improved cinematic video stabilization and Dolby Vision selfie videos via the TrueDepth camera.
The TrueDepth camera will continue to support the iPhones’ Face ID facial recognition biometric authentication feature. It also comes with a 12 megapixel selfie camera which supports Night Mode, Smart HDR 3, Night Mode Portrait Shots and Deep Fusion.
With battery life the iPhone 12 Mini offers up to an impressive 50 hours of audio playback, 15 hours of video playback and 10 hours of streaming video playback. The iPhone 12 offers up to 65 hours of audio playback, 17 hours of video playback, and 11 hours of streaming video playback.
The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini both support fast charging and give up to 50 percent charge in 30 minutes when users use 20W power adapters.
Apple’s EarPods and power adapters will not be coming with the iPhone 12. Users will have to purchase those products separately.
Apple is doing away with the USB type A. All the new iPhone models will come with a USB type C to lightning cable default.
The iPhone 12 In Its Five Colour Variants. Image From Tech Radar. www.techradar.com
The iPhone 12 will be available for preorder on Friday the 16th of October 2020 and available for release on Friday the 23rd of October 2020. The starting price will be 799 dollars (86,811 Kenyan Shillings) for the 64GB variant of the iPhone 12. The 128GB and 256GB will be available at higher costs.
The iPhone 12 Mini will be available for preorder on Friday the 6th of November with date set for the following Friday; November 13th 2020. The iPhone 12 Mini will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB with the 64GB variant starting at 699 dollars 75,925 Kenyan Shillings).
The SIM free versions of the base iPhone 12 models start at 729 dollars (79,184 Kenyan Shillings) for the iPhone 12 Mini and 829 dollars (90,054 Kenyan Shillings) for the iPhone 12.
The new iPhone 12 models will be launched in Japan, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, China, United States, and over 30 other countries and regions.
Apple Inc. has also introduced the MagSafe accessories. The MagSafe accessories are designed to work seamlessly with the magnets that have been built into the back of iPhones.
The MagSafe charger supports up to 15W of wireless charging which is much more impressive than the standard Qi-based wireless chargers which only support up to 7.5W charging.
Other MagSafe accessories include iPhone cases and wallet accessories.
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