iphone 12 has been out for about a month it released alongside the iphone 12 pro and i've been using it on and off i used it for an entire week and also my daughter's been using it full time and so i wanted to share her battery life with you as well since i've been using the 12 pro max as well so let's talk about how it's held up over that time and also how it's actually working and if you should still pick one up so the first thing is this phone i still love the design and i think for most people the 6.1 inch display with this design is the perfect size in general i think the display being 6.1 inches if you're coming from something like an iphone 7 plus it's a little bit bigger so you'll have a nicer display but a smaller body so it's easier to hold on to the squared edges are something i really like and i really like that they made the matte on the iphone 12. i wish they would have done the same with the 12 pro series i think it just looks better and it doesn't show fingerprints so that's something that's an advantage it's aluminum so it feels nice and light and i haven't dropped it or anything so it's held up well of course and it's only been a month and most of the time it's in a case i do carry this with me everywhere and i've used the camera quite a bit too i'll talk more about that in a little bit but overall it's held up really well like i said no dings or anything on the outside edge.
it's held up well there and the display is held up generally well the first week i had it there's a small scratch right there you can see by my fingernail here there's a small scratch that's the only scratch i'm not even sure where it came from and for some reason it's there it's not on any of my other phones that i've been using the same amount of time so i don't know if something dinged it maybe it hit one of the cameras of the iphone 12 pros or something like that this sapphire display will cause that to scratch so you never want to touch the sapphire lenses rather to the display it will scratch them right away but so far it's holding up really well now as far as usability well this is fantastic like i said it fits in my hands perfectly it may be a little bit large for some but if you're coming from say an older design such as the iphone 10r or the iphone 11 like i have here it's actually going to feel a little bit smaller and a little more secure in your hands because the corners not rounded so you can see here if i put these side by side it's definitely smaller so if you're coming from an 11 or a 10r for example it's a little bit smaller and it's a little bit shorter but the screen is the same size and the other upgrade you get which is either an upgrade for some or not others depending on if pwm bothers your eyes or the flickering of the display to control brightness this is an oled display in this year apple is not compromised between any of the phones this is the same oled display with a similar pixel density as all the others so if you get a 12 pro or a 12 you're getting the same display but this one will only go to 625 nits of brightness so apple has sort of limited it for that because if you watch hdr they go to the same brightness so with hdr you get 1200 nits of brightness
i'm not exactly sure if there's a hardware limitation there or not because this actually has a couple small differences but i think it's more that it's fine in sunlight for most people unless you need something super bright the brightness is fine for most people in sunlight it's not an issue so i don't know that that's really a consideration for many now this phone feels plenty fast it's got the a14 bionic cpu but with four gigs of ram instead of six gigs of ram like the pro but still you never see any slow downs i never have any issues with ram management everything seems to open quickly and if i go through different apps you can go back and forth no problem go into the camera it loads quickly and the camera is one of those things that i really like on this phone you're not getting a compromise between this camera and the 12 pro other than the frame rate so you can recall record in dolby vision hdr up to 30 frames per second but you can use 4k 60 anyway either way so if you go into the camera settings this camera like i said is great i've used it for many videos and my 12 pro one month later video was recorded with a 12 pro it's the same camera but you get one less lens you get 4k 60 like i said and hdr up to 30 frames per second instead of 60. that may be one of the limitations with the ram but other than that you get the same experience so you will pay a little bit less for this phone than you will with the 12 pro and of course like i said you have this edge and it makes it feel much lighter so it's great that way i don't have any issues as far as its weight it feels nice and light compared to the others and it's very similar to the iphone 11 as far as weight maybe a little bit lighter although i'd have to look up the specs and tell you exactly but as far as battery life i know a lot of people want to know that if i go to photos here
we'll go to battery life and this is actually my daughter's battery life playing some games three hours and 40 minutes of screen on time and at that point she used about 65 to 70 percent of the battery probably around 70 percent of the battery in three hours and 40 minutes i find that most people are getting about six hours of screen on time you can also see that there's eight hours and 17 minutes of screen off time playing music for example or youtube audio now there's another screenshot here as well where one day it was less so two hours and 17 minutes with almost 50 percent of battery usage but again 27 of that was minecraft using a lot of power if you're not playing games you probably can get up to seven hours of screen on time with this phone depending on what you're doing if you're just using safari for example or listening to music or occasionally watching a video and making phone calls and speaking of phone calls that's one of the best things with the iphone 12 series of phones they're now using qualcomm 5g modems now in the united states wrong side here in the united states we have the millimeter wave antenna and that's not everywhere around the world because millimeter wave is not really a standard yet or available around the world in fact in the united states it's only available on two carriers
mostly just one verizon but t-mobile for example doesn't have it so it doesn't really matter that much it's not that significant and in fact it doesn't matter to me at all if it has it but one of the advantages you get is faster speeds with sub 6 5g and other 5g frequencies you might have as well as better connectivity when you're making a phone call i've had zero phone call drops in fact i asked my wife and daughter that are both using iphone 12 series phones and they said the same thing they haven't noticed a single phone call drop where we would have with the intel modems that were in the previous generation so that makes a big difference as far as that call quality is clear you have no issues there in fact i had my wife tell me that the calls were clear the other day just out of nowhere saying she noticed that with her new phone and also you have great speed so if we go into something like speed test for example and we'll turn off wi-fi you'll see here i've got two bars of 5g we'll hit go we'll give it a second it's going to find a server t-mobile and with two bars of service indoor.
in a brick building i'm getting about a hundred and ten to a hundred and well second down and it keeps going up so that's pretty phenomenal that's double what i get with 5g in the same area i hit 138 and i'm getting about 15 megabits per second up so that's actually quite good for where i'm at the regular internet could be much slower for some depending where you live so you'll see the speeds are more than acceptable and they improve the better the signal is of course so that's going to make a difference depending where you're at it also makes a difference where you live so that could be a difference as well but other than that the display is great the speakers i would say after using the speakers on all the iphone 12 series i would say they're not as good as the iphone 11. they're louder but they're not as clear or as bassy maybe as rich in my opinion that could just be a design change with the frame of the phone maybe the way it resonates the sound throughout and then pushes the speaker out but i do think that the top speaker is louder and you get a better stereo sound overall so i'm not really seeing any issues with it it's just some people that regularly listen to music through their phones may notice a difference so it's something that i can pick up i'm pretty particular on music a lot of people won't notice but some people will other than that there's not much more to say i think it's an excellent phone although if you're going to go for the 128 option you may want to opt for the 12 pro because it's not that much more expensive so if you go with the 128 gigabyte storage option you may want to opt for that higher end phone just because you'll get an extra camera you get the 4k 60 hdr recording ability an extra 2 gigs of ram and it's not that much more however if you can get an iphone 12 in a deal where you can get a buy one get one free or some sort of deal through your carrier with a trade-in well then definitely go for it there's no reason not to
it has a phenomenal camera and like i said i've recorded plenty of videos with the camera and i'm thoroughly impressed with what it's capable of the speed of the camera the quality and i've even used the camera for thumbnails in my videos full video recordings and it looks phenomenal in hdr if you want to check those out i'll link those in the description but in general the camera is incredibly impressive as long as you have the right lighting if you don't have good light well it's okay then other than that though i think it's phenomenal pick one up if you're still looking for an iphone and maybe you're coming from an iphone 7 or 8 or even an 11 i think you'll be happy with it but let me know if you picked one up in the comments below the last thing i didn't mention is the display not being 120 hertz for ios i don't think this is much of an issue some people are going to be frustrated by it but most people won't really mind since ios is smooth in general so if that's something that bothers you then you may want to wait till iphone 13 where they'll probably update the display to 120hz promotion otherwise it's a great phone and i highly recommend it if you'd like.
