Apple's iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro: Sharper Edges, Faster Benchmarks

We just received the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro. We're going to take several days to test them and see how they compare with other phones on the market (as well as other iPhones), so we won't have a full review until next week. But for now we have some first impressions after unboxing the phones and handling them for a couple of hours.

For starters, the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro feel a lot alike—much more than the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro do. At 5.8 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD), they're exactly the same size and width; I keep having to turn them over to figure out which is which.

The Pro is noticeably heavier at 6.7 ounces to the iPhone 12's 5.8 ounces, with a shiny band around the edge that attracts fingerprints; I very much prefer the iPhone 12's matte band around the edge. The textures are reversed on the back: My dark blue iPhone 12 has a shiny, reflective back, while my dark gray iPhone 12 Pro has a smooth, matte surface.

Both phones are a lot squarer than the iPhone 11 series, designed so the edges can contain their millimeter-wave 5G antennas. There's a gray antenna window on the right side of each phone. The sharper, harder edges give the phones a different personality in the hand than the iPhone 11 has, and definitely different from the iPhone SE: They feel a little more serious and high-tech just because of those angles.

The one test I've been able to run so far has been Geekbench. The phones have the same 3GHz A14 Bionic processor; the iPhone 12 has 3.6GB of available RAM, while the Pro has 5.6GB. The iPhone 12 scored 20 percent better than the iPhone 11 Pro in single-core testing, and 10 percent better in multi-core testing. It scored an impressive 45 percent better on the Geekbench Compute benchmark, which tests the GPU.

Other than that, the obvious difference between the two phones is in the cameras. The iPhone 12 Pro offers a 2x optical zoom lens, while the iPhone 12 doesn't.

The color balance on the screens is interesting. The True Tone OLEDs seem richer and yellower than the LCD in the iPhone 11; of course, that's true for the iPhone 11 Pro's OLED screen as well.

Both phones fit higher-resolution screens into bodies slightly smaller than the iPhone 11. But I wouldn't call them small phones; my thumb still can't reach all the way across them. If you're looking for a small phone, the iPhone 12 mini is coming next month.

Both phones have 5G, of course, and each showed a 5G icon as soon as I popped my T-Mobile SIM in. I have it on pretty good word that all of the devices this year use Qualcomm's X55 modem, the same as in other leading 5G smartphones. Unlike other phones released in the US, though, these seem to be already certified for the upcoming c-band networks in late 2021, making them more future-proof.

I'll have a full review of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro after I get a chance to spend more time with them, so check back soon.

Posted in: Cell Phone