At their “Hi, Speed” event from Apple Park, the company announced its new lineup of iPhone 12s. With four new phones, from the small iPhone Mini to the largest iPhone to date in the iPhone 12 Pro Max, they’ve given the average consumer and the die-hard Apple fan plenty to choose from.
While the jump in technology or form isn’t as big as the iPhone 8 to iPhone X, there’s still plenty of upgrades and neat features to make it an interesting announcement. The much-anticipated 5G capability is getting much of the (deserved) news, but there are a few other things that make the iPhone 12s stand out from their predecessors.
Laser Measurement
The iPhone 12 Pro line comes with a LiDAR scanner. Standing for Light Detection and ranging, LiDAR uses pulsed lasers to measure the distance between physical objects. Possibly its most well-known current use is in self-driving cars, which use it to avoid objects.
Apple said that in addition to being used in augmented reality applications to help implement better object placement, the LiDAR will be used in conjunction with the phone’s camera system to implement better and faster autofocusing on the new phones equipped with it.
Stick To Things
If users still bummed out that Apple removed the MagSafe chargers from the MacBook line, rejoice! But maybe only a little. After all, it’s still gone from there. They’ve resurrected the MagSafe name and some of its concepts to make the new iPhone 12s more charging friendly. A magnet in the back of the phone itself allows things like a more precise placement on wireless chargers. While still being compatible with standard Qi chargers, new chargers that will be available for the iPhone 12 have their own magnets, allowing the phone to snap into place and stick there in the optimal position for charging. Apple briefly showed a Belkin car charger using the magnets, allowing you to mount and charge your phone in the car by simply touching the magnets.
In addition to using it for charge alignment, the new magnet will allow quick swapping of accessories. Several new cases were announced that use the magnet. One sleeve allows you to slide your phone in when not in use, and when the magnet in the phone detects the sleeve the screen lights up to show the time through a cut out. More standard cases simply adhere to the phone through the use of a matching magnet. Finally, Apple is offering a wallet pouch that snaps on and off easily with the technology.
More Night Mode Photography
When Apple first introduced its Night Mode, only the main camera could use it. Now, it’s going to be available on all of the cameras, including the front facing camera. When you couple this together with the new cameras themselves allowing larger amounts of light through the aperture, expect quite an increase in the ability to capture photos at night or in low light settings.
Maybe Save A Little Money
With four new phones just announced, there’s quite a selection and a range of prices. Going all out and getting the iPhone 12 Max with the largest storage capacity will set Apple fans back $1399. But if users are willing to give up a little as far as size and camera capacities are concerned, the iPhone 12 Mini starts at just $699 and unlike this spring's iPhone SE, it has higher specs than the iPhone 11.
Zoom
One of the nicest things about the cameras on the new iPhones is the increased optical zoom distance provided by the lenses. The telephoto lens on the iPhone 12 Pro is 52mm, and ups the optical zoom range to 4x, while the 65mm lens on the Pro Max provides 5x the optical zoom. Using optical zoom, the lenses are able to actually fill the entire camera sensor with whatever image users are trying to capture, giving a crisper, clearer photo. The inferior digital zoom takes the middle part of what users are aiming the camera at an and blows it up digitally, losing a lot of detail and frequently adding digital noise to the final image.
Play Console Quality Games
With the new A14 Bionic processor in the phone, part of Apple’s successful foray into making its own silicon, the iPhone 12 can play console-quality games anywhere. In a partnership with Riot, the developers behind the incredibly successful League of Legends, the “Hi, Speed” event showed off the phone’s ability to play the upcoming spinoff of the popular game intended for mobile devices. With the processing power of the A14 chip and new 5G capability in the new phones, players will be able to play the same quality of game they’re used to playing on dedicated devices without stutter and lag.
Smart Power Management
While Apple has had power management in its phones for years for things like charging while protecting the battery or Low Power Mode, with the iPhone 12 they’ve added a new Smart Data mode. One of the drawbacks of 5G has been a high power consumption- and now that Apple has released phones capable of 5G service, they’ve added this new mode. The phone will automatically use existing LTE networks to save battery whenever the faster speeds of 5G aren’t necessary based on the current use. If the user switches to something more data-intensive, or an app in use needs more bandwidth, the phone will switch over automatically without input from the user.
Record In Dolby Vision With HDR
Another benefit of having such a powerful processor in a mobile device is this new ability on the Pro models. As live video is recorded, it’s processed automatically through Dolby Vision for HDR grading as each frame is captured. Although HDR is often maligned because of overuse or over saturation, HDR applied properly can really bring out the colors in an image, and balance highlights and shadows in images instead of leaving them too bright or too dark.