The iPhone 12 & 12 Pro Review: New Design and Diminishing Returns
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 30, 2020 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Apple
- Smartphones
- Apple A14
- iPhone 12
- iPhone 12 Pro
Video Recording
Video recording on the new iPhone 12 series is defined by the addition of real HDR format recording, meaning 10-bit profile within a new Dolby Vision format. Apple’s choice to go with Dolby Vision a forward-thinking one that’s certainly going to pay off in the future, however unless you have a recent compatible TV or lucky enough to feature a monitor capable of displaying the format, the playback experience on devices other than iPhones is going to be quite limited.
Video capture quality is quite excellent this generation as well, although I have a hard time to really differentiate things from the iPhone 11 series. Dynamic range of the shots is still quite good, however there’s still some key characteristics such as the jittering EIS that are still present, or the occasional pulsating exposure of certain objects in the scene, something that’s possibly related to the dual-exposure of every frame when video-recording.
At 4K30, the phone is able to take advantage of all the camera modules and allows you to switch around between the units during recording. When recording in 4K60, it’s no longer possible to switch from the main and telephoto module to the ultra-wide unit. If you start recording on the ultra-wide unit, you’re limited to this module and any zooming in will be digital.
Focusing is generally flawless on the main camera, although it’s noticeable in video that the ultra-wide angle module is of a fixed focus design, so you won’t be able to focus as near in some situations.
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vFunct - Tuesday, December 1, 2020 - link
"Portrait-mode" is the least important piece of information necessary here for a camera review.You test your subjects on people to understand how well it recreates skin tones and textures.
There were issues with previous iPhones where it would over-smooth skin textures leading to a plastic doll-like effect, for example.
michael2k - Tuesday, December 1, 2020 - link
Right, but that requires you perform a Portrait Mode test, which you just claimed was the least important piece of information here.You cannot perform a test of the camera's skill at rendering skin tone and texture without also executing the Portrait Mode code, since that is the code that was creating the over-smooth skin texture.
PickUrPoison - Saturday, December 12, 2020 - link
That over smoothing was corrected after a few weeks with an update.ABR - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
The larger phones are real porkers. I have no desire to carry a half-pound of phone around, and that's before a case!name99 - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
My favorite color is blue.Maybe everyone wants to chime in with totally non-technical personal statements of choice?
The Garden Variety - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
When I'm taking photos of my pizza with my iPhone, I tend to prefer almost any kind of pizza. Meat pizzas, veggie pizzas, thin crust, thick crust, New York-style crust, whatever. Not picky about pizza. Don't really care for Chicago-style, as it's basically just dough and cheese, but other than that, I'm pretty easy to please.flyingpants265 - Tuesday, December 1, 2020 - link
Wow, you are not too bright.dudedud - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
Feels like the iphone 6 update coming from a 5S all over again: much better screen, somewhat better / somewhat flat on everything else.Hope the base 13 comes with 6GB of RAM next year to upgrade from my 11.
name99 - Monday, November 30, 2020 - link
Like I said -- Apple does a (multi-year) tick tock with the guts vs the design.iPhone 6 was the A8 CPU.
A7 excitement was housed in the good old familiar A5S case.
A8 was very much a catch-up CPU, cleanup, tweak power, nothing exciting; the excitement was in the new phone casing.
But then the next year the A9... 70%+ speed boost! Maybe too much to hope for with the A15 (as I discussed above!) But maybe we can expect ~15..20% IPC for the A15 and then 40..50% overall for the A16 (especially if it transitions to N3).
flyingpants265 - Tuesday, December 1, 2020 - link
What the hell? 5S and 6? Who the hell is keeping track of all these models? They suck and they're overpriced, you get the last year's one for $500 or something.