2020 has been a really unusual year. And that’s putting it lightly. To add to the weirdness, Apple’s iPhone event, which usually takes place in September, was instead in October. It seems like Apple decided to continue this theme of being unusual by releasing 4 new iPhones to choose from instead of their usual 3.
The company updated their iPhone lineup with the new iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and the iPhone 12 Max. However this year, they also decided to release a fourth phone called the iPhone 12 Mini. As if choosing between three new iPhone’s alone wasn’t hard enough, now you have four which makes it even more difficult.
So after doing some research, I wanted to put all the information I could find together in one place and am going to treat this post as a buyer’s guide to help you decide if you should upgrade to the newest line of phones.
I’ll be going over the major differences between these phones as well as explaining who would benefit the most from each model.
Before we get into the differences of these phones, we need to cover the similarities you’ll get with all four iPhones.
Apple is advertising quite a bit with these phones. Some we’ve seen before, but some we haven’t (you’ll see what I mean in a second). Here are the main similarities between these iPhones according to Apple.
Apple is introducing a new material in their displays called Ceramic Shield. According to Apple, this is a new material that has tiny ceramic crystals that are grown on top of the glass for added protection.
This technology is supposed to be stronger than previous glass materials used on the previous generation iPhones and are supposed to have better durability with up to four times better drop performance.
There are some concerns regarding scratch resistance with this new material. and I’ve included a video below for more information.
Wireless charging has been a feature on iPhones for a while now. This year, Apple is improving wireless charging with MagSafe.
MagSafe charging is an updated system of wireless charging for iPhones. Apple has added magnets inside that allows Apple’s new charging pad to securely snap to the back of the iPhone and charge the smartphone wirelessly.
Besides wireless charging, this also creates a new way of using a range of accessories and opens up the potential of creating new accessories.
I do have to mention that while the iPhone 12 has this new feature, you’ll have to buy the MagSafe charger separately (in typical Apple fashion).
While we’re on the topic, it’s also worth noting that Apple’s decided not to include a charging brick with the iPhone 12 series, which follows their decision not to include the charging brick with the Apple Watch packaging earlier this year.
They do include the charging cable in the packaging however, it’s a USB-C to lightning cable. Apple’s reasoning is to reduce waste and the company assumes that users upgrading to these phones will have a charging block already.
This would make sense if it was the typical USB power adapter, but they’re referencing the USB-C power adapters that came with the iPhone 11’s or iPad Pros.
If you’re the (un)lucky person that doesn’t have a USB-C charging block, you’ll have to buy one or get a USB-C power bank that has enough Watts to enable fast charging for the iPhone.
We’ve covered the similarities between all iPhones in the lineup, now, let’s get into what sets these phones apart from each other.
Read More: iPhone X Accessories - The Best 11 Accessories for Your iPhone
This is the base model of the iPhone lineup and direct upgrade to last year’s iPhone 11. Lets see what upgrades it has this year as well as what makes it different from the other models in this year’s lineup.
The display on the iPhone 12 now comes with a 6.1 inch OLED display. While all the iPhone 12’s are now equipped with OLED displays, the thing to note is the max brightness is different between the base iPhone 12/12 Mini model and the Pro lineup. The iPhone 12 only gets up to 625 nits.
All this means is that the brightness will be bright, however, the brightness on the pro models will be slightly brighter. This will play a part in daylight situations or how bright the display gets when viewing regular content.
However, all iPhone models can get up to a Max brightness of 1200 nits when watching HDR video. For example, watching HDR video content on Netflix.
Both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini are equipped with a dual camera system. Within this camera system you’ll find an ultra wide-angle lens and a wide-angle lens. The wide-angle lens has been updated for the iPhone 12 now sporting a 12 megapixel camera lens with a 1.6 aperture.
This spec bump is important because this aperture will allow more light in when taking photos. It's also important because it makes for better low-light photography.
If that wasn’t good enough, you can now achieve the blurry background effect like the kind you see in professional photography without the use of portrait mode.
To further separate the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini from the pro line, the iPhone 12 and 12 mini are made with an aluminum frame and a glass back. This gives them a more fun quality and look, overall, compared to the Pro Models.
With this new design you can find the phones in an assortment of colors.
These colors are…
All models of the iPhone line come with three storage capacities. The IPhone 12 and 12 Mini Storage starts at 64GB and maxes out at 256GB. The iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, storage starts at 128GB and maxes out at 512 gigabytes.
Unless you're able to deal with 64GB you're going to find yourself upgrading to the 128GB for the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini which means you'll have to spend more money to get more storage.
As you might’ve guessed, the iPhone 12 Pro is the direct upgrade to the iPhone 11 Pro. And with the “Pro” in its name, you’d assume that it has more features than the iPhone 12. In all honesty, there’s not much different between the 12 and 12 Pro other than a few incremental things.
Let’s get into what those differences are.
The size of the display on the iPhone 12 Pro is 6.1 in. which is the same as the iPhone 12. However, the difference between the two is the screen brightness on the iPhone 12 Pro gets up to a Max brightness of 800 nits. This means that it’ll be a bit brighter in sunlight or overall viewing brightness over the iPhone 12 and 12 Mini.
The Pro and Pro Max have a 3 camera setup instead of a dual camera setup. Not only do they have an ultra-wide and a wide-angle lens like the iPhone 12 and 12 Mini, but they have the addition of a telephoto lens.
The focal length of the telephoto lens is 52mm with a 2.0 aperture. With the telephoto lens you can do optical zoom when taking images. Instead of digital zooming which can make the image lose quality, you can physically zoom in using the camera. This should make for better images.