Apple announced the iPhone 12 lineup on October 13 during its virtual event. Especially, this time, there is a cheaper model called iPhone 12 Mini, which is priced at Rs 69,900. The highest-end model of the lineup is the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which comes at Rs 1,29,900. The base model of the new lineup is the iPhone 12, which is priced at Rs 79,900. Apart from that, there’s the iPhone 12 Pro whose price starts at Rs 1,19,900.

Display

The standard iPhone 12 Mini sports a Super Retina XDR OLED panel measuring 5.4 inches. It features a resolution of 1080x2340 pixels, a maximum brightness of 625 nits that can peak at 1200 nits. In addition, it has a screen-to-body ratio of 85.1%, an aspect ratio of 19.5:9, and a pixel density of 476 ppi.  It’s protected with scratch-resistant glass and oleophobic coating, offering a wide color gamut, Dolby Vision, and True-tone.

The OLED screen delivers a significant improvement in image quality. The difference is especially noticeable when you view photos, clips, and movies encoded in HDR while you may not spot that when surfing the web. The enhanced image quality really pops out when it comes to sampling HDR content on iTunes, artistic images on Twitter, and content on Netflix.

Even without the HDR mode, images displayed on this phone look more vibrant, rich, and startling. The display also delivers sharp images that are clear from all angles.

In addition, the 120Hz refresh rate allows for a faster screen with more fluid scrolling compared with the new iPads and some premium Android smartphones. Not just that, but the higher refresh rate also means better interaction between your finger and the screen.

For those wondering how the screen performs in gaming, there’s no doubt the iPhone 12 Pro Max does a great job. The action seems very smooth and the graphics look outstanding though there are a few lags here and there in Samurai Jack. The lags are not a big deal but still noticeable. All in all, this is a reliable device to play games on.

Chip

The iPhone 12 Mini is powered by the Bionic A14 chipset, a 5nm Hexa-core processor from Apple, paired with Apple GPU for graphics power. This is the newest chipset from Apple that also powers the new iPad. Apple has always been confident with its processors and it has all the rights too.

On Geekbench 5, the chip gets 1,573 points for the single-core score, compared with 904 points for the Snapdragon 865+. At the same time, the A14 Bionic gets 4,051 points for the multi-core score, as opposed to 3,254 points of the Snapdragon 865+.

The A14 Bionic is the first 5nm chip in the industry, featuring a smaller size and more transistors in an area. This also means the chip consumes less power for a given task. Like its predecessors including the A11, 12, 13, the A14 Bionic still consists of quad high-efficiency cores and dual high-performance cores. According to Apple, the CPU has received a big update and runs more instructions simultaneously.

The performance of the chip has been partly demonstrated in the gaming test. As we have mentioned in the previous section, the iPhone 12 Mini, with the power of this chip, runs games smoothly. There are some lags in action but not significant and the lags don’t appear in many titles.

Storage

When it comes to storage, the iPhone 12 Mini comes in three variants. There’s one featuring 4GB RAM with 64GB internal storage, another variant featuring 4GB RAM with 128GB internal storage, and the other one featuring 4GB RAM with 256GB internal storage.

As you can see, all three variants feature only 4GB of RAM, which is common among most smartphones these days. However, when the RAM capacity is paired with an efficient processor like the A14 Bionic, the overall performance is ensured.

We haven’t seen any complaints about an overheating issue on the phone when gaming. Probably after the phone goes to more users, we will have a further and more detailed review of this matter.  

Battery

The iPhone 12 Mini packs a 2,227mAh battery with support for 20W fast charging that’s said to fill 50% of the battery juice in 30 minutes. In addition, you will get 15W Qi wireless charging. Initial testing shows that the phone can last for 15 hours of multimedia and 50 hours of music play.

The battery has never been a selling point for iPhone and you can see that the iPhone always has a smaller battery capacity than other smartphones. The phone can get you through an entire day of moderate use, but if you play games continuously, it may not last long.

Cameras

The iPhone 12 Mini sports a dual-camera module on the back, including a 12MP wide-angle lens, and a 12MP ultra-wide-angle lens. The camera setup is supported by dual-LED dual-tone flash and HDR for both photo and panorama modes. You can record video at either 1080-pixel or 4K resolution with a frame rate of 24 or 30 or 60 or 120 or 240 fps.

On the front, there is a single wide-angle lens, which is supported by HDR. The front-facing camera lets you record videos at 4K or 1080-pixel resolution and a frame rate of 24 or 30 or 60 or 120 fps.