The iPhone 12 sports a gorgeous new design, full 5G support, great cameras and even better performance.
It’s fortunate, then, that the new iPhone that most people will probably buy is also mostly a success. The iPhone 12 has an attractive new design, a straightforward and complete approach to 5G, good cameras and even better performance.
iPhone 12 review: Performance
Armed with the first 5-nanometer processor ever embedded in a smartphone — Apple’s new A14 Bionic — the iPhone 12 delivers best-in-class performance that never wavers. The A13 Bionic chip in the iPhone 11 series was already faster than Qualcomm’s latest and greatest silicon, the Snapdragon 865 Plus, but the A14 extends that gap further still.
Most phones need about a minute or more to complete our video encoding test, where a short 4K video is transcoded to 1080p using Adobe’s Premiere Rush app. The iPhone 11 Pro needed 46 seconds to complete this task; the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, 1 minute and 16 seconds. The iPhone 12, though? Just 26 seconds.
The Geekbench 5 test, which measures overall system performance, shows a similar advantage for Apple’s newest CPU. Here, the iPhone 12 set a blistering pace with a score of 3,859 in the multicore portion of the benchmark. The fastest comparable Android phone, the 865 Plus-powered Asus’ ROG Phone 3, could muster no more than 3,293 points.
And Apple hasn’t skimped on the graphics side of things, either. Apple says the GPU inside the A14 Bionic is 50% faster than the one in the A13. While the latest mobile games don’t always take full advantage of phone makers’ rapid innovation, I can say that Asphalt 9 Legends — a game that can occasionally be chuggy on some higher-end Android phones — felt smooth and sharp on the iPhone 12. (Of course, a faster refresh-rate display would have heightened the illusion of responsiveness and immersion, but that’s another issue.)
A better measure of performance is 3DMark’s Wild Life graphics benchmark, which tasks devices with rendering complex, taxing scenes in real-time. The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra tops out at 24.9 fps in this test, with an overall score of 4,164. The iPhone 12 hit 39 fps in our testing, and 6,562 points.
iPhone 12 review: Battery life and charging
Apple never reveals battery capacity figures for its devices, which makes it challenging to glean any insights regarding longevity from a spec sheet. A recent teardown suggests the iPhone 12 could be working with a 2,815-mAh unit, which translates to roughly 200 mAh less capacity than the iPhone 11 Pro had at its disposal.
Nevertheless, larger screen iPhones tend to perform decently in our custom battery test, where devices continuously surf the web over cellular at 150 nits of screen brightness.
For a bit of perspective, the iPhone 11 tallied 11 hours and 16 minutes in this test, and we deem anything over the 11 hour mark to be very good. The iPhone 12, however, averaged 8 hours and 25 minutes in the very same test, which would appear to be a significant decrease.
However, there is a deeper story here. Like the iPhone 11, Apple rates the iPhone 12 for an identical 17 hours of video playback, along with 65 hours of audio. However, the iPhone 11 didn’t have 5G to contend with. And when we ran our test again with 5G switched off in favor of LTE, the iPhone 12 performed better — a lot better.
The iPhone 12 lasted 10 hours and 23 minutes on 4G — two hours longer than its 5G time. If we had to guess, the culprit could be that 5G consumes more power, or that the limited span of 5G networks makes it difficult for the iPhone 12 to maintain a consistent 5G connection, forcing it to switch back and forth between 5G and 4G. It could very well be a combination of both factors, as we noticed some switching in our testing, but ultimately it’s too early to conclusively say what the culprits are.
The battery story gets a bit worse as we approach the elephant in the room — Apple’s decision to forgo a charging brick and wired headphones with every iPhone going forward.
Say what you like about how much of this can be chalked up to Cupertino’s environmental initiative, but the fact of the matter is that this will leave prospective iPhone buyers without the fastest-charging solution for the iPhone 12 unless they shell out an additional $20 for Apple’s 20-watt USB-C adapter. And, to add insult to injury, the Lightning-to-USB-C cable that Apple does pack in with the iPhone 12 won’t work with older chargers, and won’t be of much use to you unless you buy a new brick.
The charger situation is the same for U.K. buyers, with Apple wanting £39 for the MagSafe charger and £19 for the wired 20-watt charging block.
In our testing, the new 20-watt adapter got the iPhone 12 from empty to 57% in 30 minutes. That exceeds Apple's own 50% estimate, though you assuredly won’t see that kind of speed if you depend on your old 5-watt brick from iPhones of yore to charge your new device. The iPhone 12 can also now charge wirelessly at a peak speed of 15 watts, which is noticeably better than Apple’s lethargic old 7.5-watt mandate.
iPhone 12 review: iOS 14
Like every new iPhone, the iPhone 12 launches with iOS 14 — Apple’s latest update to its long-running mobile platform that adds some very intriguing and long-awaited features, like true widget support, a new scheme for app organization, picture-in-picture video, improvements to basic privacy and more.
It’s a great update, and you can take a look at our iOS 14 review for a deeper look into what it brings. However, what’s arguably better than iOS 14 itself is Apple’s commitment to keep old iPhones up to date with the latest software, for many more years than its Android counterparts ever see. Google’s latest Pixels are guaranteed only three major software updates; meanwhile, the iPhone 6S, which launched in 2015, received iOS 14 alongside the iPhone 11 range just last month.
iPhone 12 review: Verdict
I’m of two minds about the iPhone 12. There’s no question this is a great phone overall, and many of the changes Apple has made to its most popular iPhone are for the better. The new Super Retina XDR panel is a phenomenal improvement over the disappointing LCD panels in previous models at this price, even if it lacks a high refresh rate. And the fresh new design, MagSafe system and excellent dual-camera system all earn the iPhone 12 high marks.
But Apple’s resistance to change in key areas is still disappointing, to put it mildly. Practically every major phone maker has stopped being stingy with base storage — even Google offers 128GB on the $349 Pixel 4a, for crying out loud. The fact the iPhone 12 still only starts with 64GB is borderline criminal. Equally frustrating, Apple has committed the only sin worse than packing horrendously slow charging bricks with its phones — it’s stopped including them altogether.
Factor in extra storage and a charger for your new iPhone 12, and that initially enticing $829 base price balloons up to $900.
These aren’t compromises the competition forces you to make — certainly not OnePlus, for example, which offers its OnePlus 8T with 65-watt charging out of the box, at nearly $100 less than the iPhone 12. But then you have to consider that there are certain aspects to the iPhone experience you won’t find anywhere else, like comprehensive 5G support, or that unrivaled A14 chip and all those years of guaranteed iOS updates.
Indeed, the iPhone 12 is still very much worth buying, and clearly more compelling than its predecessor ever was. Had Apple gone a little further, though, I can’t help feeling it would have been perfect.
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