Review: iPhone 12 Pro
Price: £1,099 from fave.co/3l1Oi68
Delayed by one month thanks to the ravages of 2020, Apple’s new iPhones are here at last – and there are four of them. In the first leg of what’s shaping up to be a Sisyphean ordeal, I’ve reviewed the iPhone 12 Pro.
It’s got the same screen size (6.1in) and tech (OLED) as the standard iPhone 12, but costs considerably more. Do the powerful camera set-up and other upgraded features offer enough to justify the price? I’ve tested the 12 Pro’s photographic capabilities, as well as its battery, graphics and processing performance, to help you decide if this is the phone for you.
PRICE
The 12 Pro, which is available right now, starts at £999 for the lowest-capacity version. Here’s the full list:
128GB: £999
256GB: £1,099
512GB: £1,299
DESIGN
As was long rumoured, the 12-series handsets have a square-edged design that harks back to the iPhone 4, and more recently to the 2018 and 2020 editions of the iPad Pro. The curved edges of the 11-series, and nearly every iPhone since 2014, are gone.
In some respects this is an aesthetic decision, and your feelings about it will depend on subjective factors. Personally I think it looks smart and counter-intuitively modern, although this may be influenced by how long we’ve been looking at curved-edge iPhones. After a design has stayed the same for a long time, any change feels fresh.
There are practical considerations too. From Apple’s point of view, one would imagine that a squared-off edge is easier to work with: battery cells presumably fit more efficiently into such shapes, for example.
But the curve had its advantages too. For one thing it made the device both more appealing and easier to pick up off a flat surface; I often find myself scrabbling unhappily at the edges of my 2018 iPad Pro, which hugs tables so seamlessly. I found that less of an issue with the iPhone 12 Pro, however, partly because it’s so much lighter and can be picked up with one hand, and partly because I mostly had it inside a silicone case which adds friction.
Some 12 Pro owners have complained that the edges make it
