Why iPhone 12 is NOT what you think in 2023..

the iPhone 12 changed the game when it was released in 2020 but I don't think many people caught on to it until a year or two later and in this video we're going to explain how it changed the direction of Apple's non-pro iPhones and also why it is now the best iPhone you can buy in 2023 for reasons you probably are not thinking about 2020 was a weird year covet happened people were losing money in the stock market there was fear that the world was going to end but it was business as usual for Apple almost the iPhone 12 did get pushed back from its expected September release to October but still the iPhone 12 was released alongside the pro and pro Max and for the first time ever the mini iPhone and while the regular 12 was the best-selling model of the lineup it was still a down year for iPhone sales the lowest since 2016 to be exact but here we are in 2023 and apple is still selling the iPhone 12. currently the oldest iPhone they sell brand new but somehow with a lot of the same specs as the two succeeding iPhones build quality matters regardless of if you rock a case or not and the iPhone 12 is not only ip68 water and dust resistant but it was also the first iPhone to adopt the ceramic shield glass which Apple claims will give you four times better drop resistance over previous iPhones and that kind of makes up for the aluminum squared off edges that not everybody was a fan of when this phone was released so we have a 6.1 inch super retina xdr OLED display with a resolution of 25 32 by 1170 at 460 pixels per inch along with a 2 million to one contrast ratio all the exact same as the iPhone 14. and that's the reason I said that this phone changed the direction of Apple's display strategy because this was the first base model iPhone to ship with an OLED display and ever since this was released every base model iPhone has had an OLED display besides the SE of course now the display is not as bright as the flagships and especially now Within the iPhone 14 series with a 625 nit Peak brightness compared to 800 on the 14 but still it's two generations older and unless you're outside or under Bright Lights very often it's not going to be a major difference or a deal breaker for you you can tell the difference but for most people you know it's not going to be that big of an issue and you can see the screen still hasn't dimmed it's been at full brightness for a while now and it still has not dimmed which is pretty impressive you do however have a bigger notch on the iPhone 12 which may or may not be a big deal to you if you're coming from an older iPhone you're definitely not going to care about the bigger Notch because you've never seen a notch before so it might be annoying but to me you know I was always in the camp of you kind of get over that Notch after like a week of usage you just kind of don't see it it kind of disappears because you're not looking for the not just watching the content on your screen watching movies and playing games is just as enjoyable as any other non-pro iPhone on the market so I have no complaints there and speaking of games they do play pretty much just as well as the two iPhone roads that proceed this warm at 13 and 14 despite the 14 having an additional GPU core and you know honestly even because of that additional GPU core and the 14 I could not tell the difference in gaming whatsoever and I was playing pretty intensive games like pubg and Call of Duty mobile you know for like over an hour straight and I could not tell the difference in gaming performance the chip inside the iPhone 12 is only one generation newer than the 14 since it was the first year we had the same processor you know year over year so we had the A14 bionic with the same amount of CPU cores as the 14 so your more basic tasks like web browsing multitasking you know social media writing emails all of that is going to be almost identical if not identical to the latest iPhone however I will say that multitasking is one drawback one downside of the iPhone 12. for the time it was fine we did have four gigabytes of RAM but now with six gigabytes of RAM and the newer iPhones you can definitely tell a difference in multitasking apps don't stay open as long on the iPhone 12 as they do like on my 13 and 14 and just anytime I go in an application and out you know back and forth between them sometimes they reload and it can be quite annoying I do want to say though multitasking Is Not Great like I'm going from the camera to notes and back and forth between camera and notes and it's a little bit laggy here on the iPhone 12. a lot more lagged than I'm used to like on the 14 series but again if you're not coming from a newer iPhone you're probably not going to be let down by the RAM management and the overall you know multitasking performance but at the end of the day even if you are disappointed with multitasking you still have the A14 bionic chip inside this phone which means that you're going to get software support for at least the next four years before we talk about the price and why I think this is the best iPhone to buy in 2023 we have to talk about this camera and you know the camera is always one of the top two biggest deal breakers or deal makers when you're going to buy a phone and with the iPhone 12 you know I didn't feel like I was missing out on much even coming from an iPhone 14 pro and pro Max with the amazing cameras I did not feel like I was missing out on a ton with the iPhone 112 so we have that dual 12 megapixel camera setup one wide and one Ultra wide and for daytime shots with good lighting I was not really able to tell a big difference between the 12 and the 14. I went out and took pictures side by side with both of them and it was very hard to tell a difference between the two and it was the same with videos in both HDR and non-hdr and the good thing about that is you know those are the two primary reasons you pull out your phone and open the camera app is to just shoot regular daytime shots and you know to shoot video in either HDR non-hdr and both times you know both different scenarios the 12 performed almost just as well as the 14. so since I couldn't tell the difference between the 13 and the 12 in terms of camera or video quality I compared it to the 14 plus and I'm going to take a picture right now just to show you guys there is a little bit of a difference the 14 plus is a little bit better in terms of quality but it's really not a huge difference definitely not hundreds of dollars worth of difference I'm going to record a quick little video as well so you guys can see a little tiny bit of video here I already showed you a little bit earlier but honestly not a huge difference I'm very impressed with the iPhone 12 still three years later and if you're coming from an iPhone 11 or earlier you're going to see a big difference in photo and video performance when you have the iPhone 12 because I always say this but the iPhone 12 in my opinion was a massive turning point for Apple in terms of overall photo quality now some people don't like the you know over processing that the iPhone does but I think with the introduction of smart hdr3 when the iPhone 12 came out was a big leap forward in photo quality especially on the iPhone and because of that smart hdr3 if I was in the market for a new iPhone and I cared a lot about photos the iPhone 12 is where I would start I would not get anything older than this phone just because I believe this is the big step forward in the past few years but the iPhone 12 was where I would start looking if I cared for photos a lot and I was in the market for a new phone and didn't want to you know break the bank the only areas where I really found that the iPhone 12 didn't really live up to my expectations in terms of the camera here in 2023 where with more sophisticated tasks like night mode video was not near as good as it is on the iPhone 14 the ois you know stabilization when I'm walking was not near as good on the iPhone 12 as you know the 13 and 14 portrait mode is also not as good and that's probably more so to do with the chip inside that's why the iPhone 14 is better at just defining those edges and also the big one I noticed was Zoom zooming on this phone was the quality just you know went to crap when I zoomed in to be honest on this phone I really was not a fan of zooming in on this I did miss being able to press that 2x like on the pro phones so zooming you know I would not recommend it if you have a regular iPhone 12 it's not going to be the best in terms of quality but all in all the iPhone 12 camera is awesome and for most people who aren't really doing these you know super detailed comparisons you're going to like the camera on the iPhone 12 and I think it's the best bang for your buck iPhone right now in terms of overall camera performance now we have to talk about the other big deciding factor when buying an iPhone and that is of course battery life and I did do a battery test here on the channel a few years back and you can see that the iPhone 12 lasted a good bit longer than the iPhone 10r the iPhone 11 and the SE at 8 hours and 13 minutes and that particular test and now years later the battery life is just about as good as it was back then now if you're coming from an iPhone 10r or earlier this phone is going to offer you a very nice Improvement in battery life as long as you make sure the battery health is over 95 on the phone you're looking to buy or if you have an iPhone 12 now you know your battery health hopefully is above 90 if not you may want to look into getting any new battery just to make sure you know you get the most battery life possible that is if you're looking to keep this phone for a long time which I think you can now unfortunately with my usage I averaged about five hours a day of screen time and was not able to make it through an entire day but if you're not as active on your phone with social media and taking videos and photos like I am you could easily stretch this battery to last seven to eight hours I would say and only have to charge when you go to sleep at night but for me the iPhone 14 offers noticeably better battery life so if you know long lasting battery is your number one priority you might find that extra money to go up to the iPhone 14 but I'd say for most people it's not necessary if anything just bring a mobile charger with you if you're going to be out all day because you're only going to need to charge it up one time with that mobile charger and then as far as the other small details go we do have 5G connectivity we have dual SIM and esim support Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0 macsafe compatibility and emergency SOS but no crash detection unfortunately like we have on the iPhone 14. okay so all of that sounds great but why is the iPhone 12 the best iPhone to buy in 2023 in my opinion okay so a brand new iPhone 12 is being sold by Apple for around 730 dollars after tax and by the way I'm using a 128 gigabyte model as reference since I don't think you should buy a 64 gigabyte iPhone in 2023 and let me just tell you one thing this phone is not worth 730 dollars so please do not buy this brand new because it is absolutely not the best iPhone to buy in 2023 if you're buying it brand new especially because you can get a brand new iPhone 14 for just 150 more and that's the reason I strongly suggest going the refurbished or the used route when looking to pick up an iPhone 12. so I prefer used personally because I found dozens of killer deals over the years and before you even think about going to eBay to look for a phone you need to watch my used iPhone buying guide so you don't get ripped off or scammed and can confined things to look for in listings that way you get the best deal possible anyways looking at eBay you can see that a used iPhone 12 in great condition is going for around 350 to 400 and you could also go the renewed route on Amazon for around 440 but I feel like you're overpaying at that point and you could also see that the iPhone 13 just for reference is going for around 500 to 550 on eBay so on average about 150 less is where you can pick up the iPhone 12 for on the used markets and that's exactly why I think the iPhone 12 is the best iPhone to buy in 2023 I don't think you could buy any other phone on the market for 400 and get as good a performance all around we're talking about performance we're talking about camera we're talking about battery life everything combined I don't think there's a better phone out there on the market for 400 that you can buy right now in 2023. so if you have an iPhone 10r if you have an iPhone 10s or anything older even an iPhone 11 if you have anything older than those phones I think the iPhone 12 is definitely worth picking up here in 2023 and yes I said if you have an iPhone 11 I do think it's worth it to buy an iPhone 12 go up and buy an iPhone 12 because you could sell that iPhone 11 and make most of the money it takes to buy an iPhone 12. I mean you're probably going to be like 80 plus percent of the way there after you sell your iPhone 11 and I think the iPhone 12 is better you know in multiple areas you see multiple improvements especially in that camera because of smart hdr3 so those are my thoughts on the iPhone 12 here in 2023 if you have an iPhone 12 let me know your thoughts on this phone down in the comments below are you going to be keeping yours are you going to sell it for an iPhone 14 let me know what you're doing with your iPhone 12 and if you're looking to pick up an iPhone 12 in 2023 let me know in a comment down below I hope this video did help you out and help make your decision a little bit easier if it did I would appreciate also if you gave this video a thumbs up also make sure to subscribe for a lot more videos just like this one I like covering older iPhones here in 2023 and I have a lot more videos just like this coming up very soon but anyways guys thanks again for watching and I'll see you soon

Channel: Brandon Butch

Views: 272,122

Keywords: Brandon butch, iphone, ios, apple, iOS 16, iOS 15

Id: LVPHcM1b6DU

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023