Nearly a month after the launch, iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max are now available for sale. Despite the fact that iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro have already been on sale, many people are still looking forward to these two phones, which represent the best of both worlds and represent the best of iPhone. It is the best feeling iPhone in recent years in the hand, the other is the largest screen iPhone yet, and with a new imaging system unlike the other three iPhone 12 models, it represents the most configurable iPhone ever.
iPhone 12 mini: The Best-Feeling iPhone in Recent Years
If this year’s four iPhone 12 models inherit the classic design of the iPhone 4 generation, then the iPhone 12 mini must be the best example of that legacy.
I don’t need to tell you that Apple resized the internal components to fit into the mini’s body, or that the mini has the narrowest screen bezel of the four iPhone 12 models, the moment you pick it up, your eyes and hands will tell you that this is a fine phone.
You don’t have to be someone who’s been waiting for a “full-screen iPhone SE” day and night, nor do you have to be a long-time iPhone 4 or iPhone 5 user. Even my friends who buy a Max every year, or students who are the same age as iPhone 4, when I took the iPhone 12 mini out of my jacket pocket and handed it to them, the comments were almost unanimous: “small, cute, and sophisticated”.
I’ve been using iPhone 12 mini for a week now, and this feeling is even more pronounced every time I take the subway or public transportation. It’s easy to do one-handed things on iPhone 12 mini without having to carefully wiggle your fingers on the back like you do with Max, and you have to keep your palm steady to help your thumb press “skip” before the countdown ends to avoid testing the phone’s resistance to drops.
The body of iPhone 12 mini is only slightly larger than that of iPhone 5, but it has a 5.4-inch full-screen OLED display that is only slightly smaller than that of iPhone 8 Plus. It’s not as impressive as the large screen of the Max model, but you won’t feel cramped typing or watching videos in landscape orientation, and you won’t even think of using it. The word “cramped” is used to describe this experience.
The “shrunken” iPhone 12 mini has the same rear camera and A14 chip as iPhone 12, so the image quality is the same. The previous iPhone 12 experience article about the rear lens experience could have been placed on iPhone 12 mini.
The upgraded Deep Fusion and Intelligent HDR 3 bring visible changes to photos: details of buildings, textures of fabrics, animal and human hair are all sharper; outdoors in scenes with large changes in light and darkness, the iPhone can also take care of both light and dark areas, and automatically recognize objects in the picture such as the sky and people to optimize the processing.
In fact, when the distance is far enough, a wide-angle lens can record the entire landscape, so if you want to record the city at night the next time you go high, you should probably try a wide-angle lens with better image quality.
In contrast, super wide-angle lenses are good for when you are very close to the subject you want to photograph, and when you want to capture the full picture, you need to shoot at a wider angle, such as in a restaurant or bar where there isn’t much space and the light is usually not too bright, and the super wide-angle night mode comes in handy. It should also be noted that objects near the edges of a photo taken with an ultra-wide-angle lens have a stretching effect, which can produce unexpected results, but if you don’t know how to use it, it’s best not to put people near the edges.
Although the lens specs of iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 are the same, the compact size of iPhone 12 mini gives it a couple of unique advantages for taking photos. The first is a more stable grip, which is useful when taking night mode photos because night mode requires you to hold the phone steady for a few seconds, and the more stable you are, the better the final photo quality will be. In scenes where you need to shoot from above, such as sticking your hand out of a window, the fact that you can hold the mini tightly with one hand will also ease some of the psychological burden of worrying about the phone crashing.
In addition, with the mini’s small size, we can take some shots that are not easily captured by larger phones, such as placing the phone in a tight place and shooting from the inside out.
There are two things to be aware of when taking pictures with iPhone 12 mini. Due to the smaller size of the phone, your fingers are more likely to be out of focus on the edge of the lens when holding the phone and it is easier to press your fingers on the lens when you are using it in general.
A lot of people are concerned about the battery life of the iPhone 12 mini, and we’re going to talk about it here. If you ask me if the iPhone 12 mini has the shortest battery life of the four iPhone 12 models, I would say yes. If the question goes further, how short is it? I would say that it’s not that short.
During the test, I disconnected the charger at 8:00 a.m., and after that, I followed my normal workday routine of listening to music, sending WeChat messages, swiping Weibo, watching a few videos with a total duration of no more than 30 minutes, and reading an hour-long book in WeChat. 8:00 The phone still has 10-15% battery left, which is a little worse than Max, but if you don’t need to work outdoors for a long time, you can easily find charging opportunities, even if you use iPhone 12 mini to play games, you don’t need to worry too much about the power, with 18W fast charging, the battery capacity is relatively small. The mini will also give you the “illusion” of a more efficient charge.
People on the Internet have suggested many ways to save battery life on the mini, such as turning off background refresh or making good use of the low battery mode, etc. These methods are somewhat effective, but the only one I’m using is to turn off the 5G.
When the iPhone 12 Pro went on sale, I upgraded my Unicom 4G package to the $199 5G Extreme package, and in two months of use, I’ve found that I don’t really need 5G at the moment. Even in big cities, many shopping malls and subways don’t have 5G coverage, and there are no other services that are worthy of 5G other than fast Internet speeds.
iPhone 12 Pro Max: The Best of iPhone
This year’s iPhone 12 Pro Max really lives up to its name, as it is the largest iPhone to date, with a 6.7-inch screen that is slightly larger than that of iPhone 11 Pro Max, and slightly wider. The 12 Pro is basically the same, so I won’t repeat the similarities in the form factor here, but will focus on the differences in experience.
When I experienced the iPhone 8 Plus, I said that its design “doesn’t alleviate visual fatigue, but it alleviates hand fatigue.
Although iPhone 12 Pro Max weighs the same 226g as iPhone 11 Pro Max, the former has a right-angled bezel and the latter has a curved bezel, which requires more force to hold it in one hand. . If you are in the habit of using phone cases, picking a case with a sleeker frame can ease this pressure to a great extent.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max is not only about the screen, but also about the rear camera, which is the biggest change among the four iPhone 12 models, so big that you can notice that the lens module on the back of the 12 Pro Max is more prominent.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max’s telephoto lens has a focal length of 65mm, up from 52mm, which simply means that you can stand in the same position and shoot objects that are farther away than before, or allow you to take a picture of an object that’s not as far away as before. The object you want to photograph is a larger percentage of the frame. In many cases, we can’t hold the phone close to the subject due to location (water in front, road) or environment (the cat will run away if we get too close), and a longer focal length will make it harder for us to take the picture.
Of course, the benefit of a longer focal length is not only to bring us closer to the object, but also to bring the background bokeh effect more easily. Previously, when photographing food, we would sometimes turn on the portrait mode, hoping to get a better bokeh effect to highlight the dish, but the portrait mode is not designed for photographing food, and often needs to be repeatedly adjusted to activate the angle, and the “calculated” bokeh effect is not always successful.
The lens sensor on the iPhone 12 Pro Max is 47% larger than the previous generation, which means that the wide-angle lens can collect more light in the same amount of time, which is hard to see in the final image when you take photos in well-lit conditions, but when you take photos in less well-lit conditions, it’s big. When you take a pristine picture at night with your iPhone 12 Pro Max, it’s not just the larger sensor that gets the job done, there’s an important new feature, sensor-shift, which counteracts the shake of handheld shots by moving the sensor. Displacement stabilization works at all times, especially in night mode, which usually requires holding the camera steady for a few seconds to take multiple shots and then algorithmically eliminating the blurry ones in the middle to combine them into a single photo that we finally see. With the system automatically controlling the shooting duration, iPhone 12 Pro Max takes less time to complete a shot than iPhone 12 Pro, and at the same time, iPhone 12 Pro Max can take sharper Night Mode photos than iPhone 12 Pro.
The wide angle lens upgrade even slightly benefits telephoto lenses, which do not support night mode. The next time you take a picture in low light, try blocking the telephoto lens with your finger and you’ll find that you can still take the picture, so the improved quality of the wide angle lens on iPhone 12 Pro Max makes a little difference to the cropped telephoto picture, but in low light conditions, you don’t have to. The telephoto lens should be avoided as much as possible.
In addition to supporting 4K60fps high-definition Dolby Vision video shooting, a series of hardware and algorithm upgrades also provide a better shooting experience for shooters. After receiving the iPhone 12 Pro Max, the Nucleus Group team immediately went to Guizhou Province to shoot the short film “Yishanren” with iPhone 12 Pro Max to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the video capabilities of iPhone 12 Pro Max. Derrick to talk about how it feels.
It is much more difficult to talk about video than photos, because video has an important foundation of "stable consistency" compared to photos. Therefore, we can't judge the quality of a video just by shooting some clips. So when we got the iPhone 12 Pro Max, we decided to shoot a project. And that's how we came up with our documentary, "The Man on the Mountain".
So in this section, I'm going to tell you some of my impressions based on this shoot.
First of all, the key to the iPhone 12 Pro Max's displacement sensor is not the improved low-light image quality, especially when shooting video, but the "stabilization" of the image. Obviously, there are a number of "artists" in the iPhone camera engineering team, and it is these artists that make iPhone anti-shake not just "shake or not shake", but a deeper "lens motion language". When we watch movies, we know that camera movement is an important tool to enrich the movie, but actually the rise and fall of the movie camera is very delicate. The iPhone 12 Pro Max is the only phone that I have ever seen that takes into account the natural inertia at the beginning and end of camera movement.
Just this one detail makes the whole picture much more advanced.
Second, the telephoto image quality is excellent. The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 65mm telephoto lens. A 65mm will greatly expand your subject matter, and at least you'll have a "close-up lens".
Although you may have read some tech reviews, such as MKBHD, which say that the increase in sensor size does not add significantly to the image quality of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, in fact, in the video, we conclude that the 65mm lens is a great addition to the image quality of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. But actually, in the video, we conclude.
Obviously, many images are the difference between noise or no noise, and better equipment is supposed to work in "extreme scenes". If it's sunny, there's not much difference between APS-C and full frame.
Of course, I know there's no getting around "ghosting". In an environment with a lot of point light, the performance can still be considered bad. Let's not talk about the principle of what causes this, but you have to admit that it is problematic.
Overall, even leaving aside the Dolby Vision, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the best camera phone out there, bar none. It's totally a body ahead.
So, if you want a phone for shooting short movies, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is the best choice.
Whether it’s the imaging style, or the photo processing you see when you open an album immediately after taking a photo, Apple has made a lot of improvements to its image algorithms for all four of this year’s iPhones, and that improvement continues to this day. It can provide more space for photographers to manipulate in post-processing, and based on the current situation, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is waiting to unlock the unlocked image performance.
The two extremes of the iPhone
The iPhone 12 mini is a new experiment for Apple, with the lightest body, the most comfortable one-handed grip, and the same hardware configuration as other flagship models, except for the “shrinkage” in size. As always, iPhone 12 mini has the most powerful features, the most visually striking screen, the most advanced imaging technology, and the heaviest weight of any iPhone.
In my opinion, iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max are the two phones that don’t really need buying advice because their features are so clear and they are both “one without the other” features. People who want to buy these two phones will usually decide which one to buy because of a need, and which one is not suitable for a reason. For example, some people just want to buy the biggest screen, even if they don’t take photos, Max is still the first choice. Some people just want a small screen phone, not too much requirement on battery life, and don’t need dual SIM standby, mini can definitely satisfy them.
Given the choice between these four models, I still think the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro are still the best for most people, especially the iPhone 12, which strikes a balance between screen size, weight, range, and shooting, and is relatively inexpensive. As for my own choice, as much as I like the iPhone 12 mini and the screen size and range aren’t a problem for me, I’d rather have a phone with a telephoto lens. iPhone 12 Pro Max, but I’m really jealous of people who can use the iPhone 12 mini.
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