Hey guys, Adam Lobo here from Adam Lobo TV! In this article, I will give you my review of the most affordable iPhone 12 series phone, which is the iPhone 12 Mini.
If you prefer a video review, head over to my YouTube channel below!
Unboxing
The iPhone 12 Mini comes in a small white box, with the visuals of the phone in front and yes, the box is indeed very tiny, smaller than the palm of my hand. Then there is the Apple Logo and just iPhone at the sides and the variant at the back.
Opening the box, you will immediately find the phone inside. Then there’s the:
- Sim Ejector Pin,
- User guide
- A small-sized Apple Sticker
- USB-C to Lightning Cable (yeap still no USB-C!)
Specs
As for the phone’s specs, the iPhone 12 Mini comes with:
- Apple’s A14 Bionic Chipset
- Apple 4-Core GPU
- 4GB of RAM
- Storage option of 64, 128, and 256GB
- iOS version 14.1
Built Quality
Looking at the design and built, although small phones are getting almost extinct, AND I am very used to bigger screen phones, for some strange reason, I kind of liked the small form factor, as it reminded me of the Google Pixel 4a, in terms of being a small-sized phone, although the Pixel 4a is just a bit bigger. So, if you are one of those people who prefer a smaller sized phone, you might really like this small built of this phone
At the back, it is made of glass with the Corning Gorilla Glass protection, with the aluminium frame which is also quite solid, as Apple went back to the iPhone 5’s design to increase the durability of the phone. Based on what I have seen online in terms of a typical drop test, it seems way more durable the previous iPhone 11 series.
There are no changes on the rear camera placements, where the camera bump was also similar where if you place the phone on a surface, it will slightly wobble if you type towards the right side of the phone.
While the front screen’s notch is exactly the same as the previous series as well, Apple claims that the screen is 4 times more durable now compared to last year’s phones
And in terms of colour choices, the one which I am reviewing is in white (#white love) and it is also available in Black, Product Red, Green and Blue.
Ports & Buttons
As for the ports and buttons, down below there is the Lighting Port, and one of the two stereo speakers, as the other is available at the earpiece area.
Then on the left, there is the alert slider, which I’ve always appreciated where only OnePlus devices had it other than iPhones. Then there is the volume rocker over there and the SIM card slot with no micro SD card expansion port.
Then finally there is the power button on the right.
Display
As for the phone’s screen, everyone was expecting a high refresh rate, but it didn’t come for any of the iPhone 12 series. But I have to admit that I was surprised that Apple didn’t compromise on the screen for this Mini variant of the phone, as it comes with the exact Super Retina XDR OLED Display, which is the same exact screen of ALL of the other iPhone 12 variants.
But of course, since this is the Mini variant, it comes with a smaller 5.4 inches and a lower 1080 by 2340 pixel resolution compared to the others.
And compared to the iPhone 11 which I reviewed last year, I could immediately see the difference in the screen’s quality as using the phone daily was great, with or without the TrueTone display on or off.
What’s interesting is that when I was checking out some Netflix Content, I noticed that there is the Dolby Vision Logo on some of the titles which supported that, which I was pleasantly surprised. As I double-checked with flagships like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, it had HDR but no Dolby Vision support.
So yes, overall, I would give a A minus for the phone’s screen although it comes in a smaller form factor and a tiny bit lower resolution, and the minus is because of the screen refresh rate of course.
Camera Specs Back / Front Image Quality
Looking at the camera’s specs, while many other smartphones come with several lenses at this price range, Apple has decided to stick with just two, where:
- The main lens: a 12-megapixel f1.6 aperture 26mm wide lens
- The other one: a 12-megapixel f 2.4 13mm ultrawide angle lens
And what I found also interesting is the fact that these two lenses are the SAME lenses with the iPhone12, iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max variant. But of course, that two latter has the additional telephoto lens.
Therefore, pictures on the iPhone 12 Mini looked great. In my humble opinion, I felt it was way nicer than the iPhone 11 series. The regular shots were great with nice dynamic range even in situations where there was backlight as well.
As for the portrait mode, the shallow depth of field and edge detection were great even if the subject was far away. I took some shots from the rear camera, with a timer and a tripod by myself, and I was surprised at how it turned out with it comes to the subject to the background blur. And as usual you can adjust the bokeh accordingly before taking a picture.
But you will need to still be aware of any harsh lighting or backlight, as the HDR processing can make the images look a bit overprocessed.
As for the Ultrawide angle shots, here is where there is a huge improvement compared to the previous 11 series, where the dynamic range and the colour temperature stayed consistent between this and the main lens +with no distortion at the edges.
However, if you are one of those who loves the zoom features for your phone’s camera, you will be disappointed as you can only zoom digitally up to 5 times, where since it’s not an optical zoom, you will find the pictures to be not at its best.
As for the outdoor lowlight shots, Apple still didn’t include a dedicated night mode in the app. It senses the surrounding area first, before needing to adjust the shutter speed accordingly to compensate for the lowlight.
I still have mixed feelings about this, as you will have to just guess if it’s on a night mode or not.
And there is this weird lens flare little ball like artifacts, when there is any light bulb light like streetlight, especially on the main lens. But the good news is that there are the “lowlight adjustments” for the wide-angle lens too.
As for the front camera, it has a 12-megapixel f 2.2 23mm wide lens
And looking at the regular shots, it had the similar iPhone-ish type of image processing, where again, if the light is on you, it turned out really great but if it’s against you, it will produce mediocre images, so keep that in mind.
And once again, the portrait mode for the selfie camera was hugely improved with amazing shallow depth of field, with the subject and background as well.
Camera Video Back / Front Quality, Image Stabilisation
As for the video recording, again, Apple decided to take the back seat on the recording resolution, where it still records up to 4k 60 frames per second.
The video quality both from the main and the ultrawide angle lens was great, where you can switch the lenses in between WHILE recording video, where I did find that both lenses had great image stabilization, but it is a bit smoother on the main lens.
Then as for the front, it also records with the same resolution and frame rate, where the image stabilization was really great, and I found that the HDR capabilities for the front video were also great. I intentionally went against a highly exposed sky and while it took a while to process it, it did give a better dynamic range but of course compromising on the skin tones, but still very much usable.
So with this, once again, I would recommend shooting video, not against the light, but the results were better on video compared to photos.
Sound Quality
As for the phone’s sound quality, it was great that also in the Mini, Apple stuck to having stereo speakers.
The overall loudness was just decent, at about 86 DB due to its smaller size, vocal clarity was great but I noticed that the vocal highs can sometimes sound a bit distorted at its maximum volume.
Navigation
In terms of the Software, it comes with the latest iOS 14.1, where we are VERY slowly seeing some “android-like” features. Now, while there are minor adjustments here and there, what’s new is the introduction of widgets. Finally, after almost 10 years.
However, it is not as customizable as android where you can’t resize it according to taste but it’s great that there is finally an option to do so.
Then there is also the stack feature, where your widgets become a scrollable stack, which was nice but unfortunately, at this time their overall widgets available is very limited, since this is new.
Then Siri is now not on a full screen like before, where there is a small icon below instead.
Then finally a feature that even Apple didn’t mention is the Back Tap feature where it is available through the Accessibility Settings, that I have set it to the Notification Centre for Double Tap and Triple Tap to Control Centre and THAT to me is innovation Apple, finally…
And what I still didn’t like about the IOS 14 is the only option to customizes Icons is through Shortcut App, which can be quite a pain to setup up like how I got a whole Minimalist White theme, where I needed go through each app one by one through the Shortcut commands. And once you are done with it, it doesn’t directly open up the apps, as it is technically a Shortcut so here is where I still feel there is so much more lacking on IOS 14 compared to Android. No, I am not being an Android fanboy but these are real-time experience using the phone as my daily driver.
And speaking of which, I think it’s also about time that touch ID comes back to iPhones again maybe like those side-mounted ones at least because I find it extremely frustrating to unlock the phone through a pin passcode, since the face ID doesn’t detect you when you are wearing a mask with this crazy pandemic.
Battery Life
Now on to the phone’s battery, the phone comes with one of the smallest battery capacity for the year 2020, at only 2,227 milliamps of battery but as how it is for newer iPhones (especially when it is just out) it did give me a good battery life of 5 hours and 18 minutes of screen on time when I was at 10 percent battery.
Now, here is where I feel a bit sceptical on this as I had lots of a long time iPhone users friends who were using phones, like the iPhone XR and the iPhone SE 2020, that were seeing a huge drop in battery life as soon as iOS 14 was updated.
So will that be the same for the iPhone Mini after a year? We will just have to wait and see.
Also, the iPhone 12 Mini comes with fast charging up to 20 watts, where the charger doesn’t come inside of the box. It also has wireless charging up to 12 watts which in 2020 is not the best.
And the MagSafe Charger will only charge the phone up to 12 watts instead of 15 watts compared to the other iPhone 12 variants, so keep that in mind. Oh, speaking of the Magsafe Charger, since Apple has not changed to USB-C port until now, we all kind of know which direction they are going with their future devices, probably a port-less charging, which I guess we shall wait and see.
Gaming
In terms of gaming, there were no issues at all during gameplay as expected. PUBG Mobile ran smoothly at Graphics at HD and frame rate to HIGH.
And playing Asphalt 9 was great especially the sound experience through the stereo speakers. The phone did heat up just a bit during a very long gameplay, but without slowing the game down.
Conclusion
So, with all of this, the real question is… who is this iPhone 12 Mini for?
Now, while I was quite impressed with the overall cameras on the iPhone 12 Mini and the current state of the battery life, I feel that the software experience still does feel a little crippled.
Now if you have always been using an IOS device then you won’t find an issue over here but if you are switching from an Android device to the iPhone 12 Mini, you will need to think about the software experience and of course, if you are OK with the smaller sized screen and a bigger Apple price tag, especially with the available storage option-to-price ratio.
So if you don’t mind those stuff, then the iPhone 12 Mini would be an appealing choice since it is the cheapest variant priced at RM3,399 for the 64GB variant, which is definitely not a lot of storage space. And the 128GB version is RM3,599 with the 256GB variant at a high price of RM4,099.
All right guys, that’s all for this review. What you guys think of the iPhone 12 Mini Pro? Would you get it?
