Tim Cook Apple CEO during the launch of Apple’s 5G products Pic: Photo Courtesy
iPhone 12: Apple Inc unveils its flagship 5G phones
At Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday, the company introduced a range of new phones, led by the just-announced flagships: the iPhone 12 Pro, starting at $999, and iPhone 12 Pro Max, starting at $1099. The new 5G-ready devices sport an all-screen Super Retina XDR display, the A14 Bionic chip, a Ceramic Shield front cover, LiDAR Scanner, and of course, the iPhone line’s best camera system.
iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max will be available in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB configurations and four stainless steel finishes, including graphite, silver, gold, and pacific blue.
5G, of course, will be one of the bigger selling points for the devices as the new technology will boost speeds, meaning faster downloads and uploads, higher quality streaming, more responsive gaming and faster responses in apps, among other things.
Of course, some of the immediate demand for new 5G phones may be tempered by the coronavirus pandemic, which is causing economic hardships for many — particularly in markets like the U.S. where the virus is still spinning out of control. Work-from-home users may also not feel as strong a need for an immediate upgrade to the technology, as they would have before the pandemic, given that many are now spending a larger portion of their time indoors on their home Wi-Fi.
In the U.S., Apple says the iPhone 12 Pro models will be able to reach speeds of up to 4Gbps, even in densely populated areas. A “Smart Data” feature will also help with the transition to faster speeds, by intelligently balancing data usage and battery power in real-time.
Inside, the new devices also include the A14 Bionic chip, featuring a 16-core Neural Engine — for an 80% increase in performance, Apple claims. It’s capable of completing 11 trillion operations per second, and is faster and more efficient than prior iterations.
Aesthetically, the new iPhones will look somewhat different too.
The 6.1-inch iPhone 12 Pro and 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max will now have a flat-edge design and an edge-to-edge OLED display with reduced borders. These “squarer” edges give the device a more classic look reminiscent of older model iPhones.
On the Pro Max, iPhone gets its biggest-ever screen and the highest resolution, at neary 3.5M pixels.
The back for these new devices is matte glass and the phone sports at stainless steel band, around the edges. But what’s new is something Apple is calling “Ceramic Shield.” This tougher front cover aims to improve the “shatterability,” so to speak, which Apple claims improves drop performance by 4x compared with iPhone 11 Pro. (Oh, we’ll see!)
