iPhone 12 mini Review Hi everyone Aaron here for Zollotech and this is the iPhone 12 mini I have three iPhone 12 minis here I have one in black one in green and one in blue and so I wanted to help you decide if you should pick one of these up this year and the first thing many people ask me is how big is it or what can I compare it with so let me move two of these
out of the way and show you a size comparison we’ll start with an older phone the iphone 4s and the iphone 5s next to it to give you a general size idea then we’ll bring in the iphone 7. so if you have an iphone 6 7 or 8 those are all basically the same size and then an iphone 10r an iphone 12 and an iphone 12 pro max so this gives you a general idea of their size overall it’s smaller than a seven it’s about the same thickness as a seven and here’s a 6s plus also if that helps with
size overall comparing the different ones so this should give you a general idea of their overall size but it’s somewhere between the 5s and the 6 7 and 8. they’re very similar in size and if i put them face to face so you can see the actual size difference here that gives you an idea of size so the mini is very mini and let me put it face to face with the 5s so you’ll see it’s really in between the 5s and the 6 7 and 8
like i said so it’s got a nice size screen and keep in mind the 7 is the same size as the second generation se also so that gives you a general idea of what its size is overall now let me move these out of the way and the overall design of the phone is pretty standard this year on the right hand side we have our power sleep wake button we have our millimeter wave antenna in the united states for 5g on the bottom we have our microphone speaker and lightning port on the left hand side you’ve got your silent switch at the top your volume buttons
and then you’ve got your sim card tray now this sim card tray this year is 5g but it’s 5g and an esim you cannot use them concurrently at least currently many people say this is a hardware limitation others are hoping for a software fix later on but you can use one or the other in 5g but not both at the same time for whatever reason now also you’ve got glass front and back so you can see it collects a lot of fingerprints
just from me handling the phones during this video already it’s got this many fingerprints on it so i would definitely maybe get a case from apple something like this which looks really good this is the the sort of tan leather color we’ll put this on the black and it looks great so it goes goes along really well with this particular iphone and i think for most people even with a case this
is super small you can see it in my hands my hands are huge and next to a 12 pro max like i said it’s very different in size and it may be the perfect size for people this year it’s easy to hang on to you can bridge your fingers across it no problem for most people and for those looking for a smaller phone of course you’re going to appreciate it now like i said we have glass front and back
and we have ceramic shield this year and ceramic shield makes the glass four times less likely to break in the event that you drop your phone now the glass is flush to the frame the aluminum frame of the body so that helps if you drop it since it’s not hitting the edge of the frame like some of the curved displays we’ve had in the past with the iphone 7 for example where it sticks up a little bit so
you’re not going to drop it directly on the glass so that combined with ceramic shield should help you maybe protect this phone a little bit better than we’ve had in the past and let’s talk about the display because this year we get oled displays in all of them and they look really vibrant so whether you’re inside or outside the display looks great now as you can see the display is easy to see in the sunlight it’s very bright out i’m just shaded by some trees and the brightness is all the way up it goes up to 625 nits of brightness so
it should be plenty for outdoor use and then 1200 nits if you’re watching hdr video so the display in general looks great and the display does use pwm to control brightness that means it’s flickering the display all the time to control brightness the lower the brightness the slower it’s flickering the higher the faster you can’t see this with your eyes but it does cause some people to feel nauseated gives them headaches or eye strain i have not experienced any of that with any of the 12 oled panels this year and so because of that
i can recommend this to most people even the iphone 10 and 10s and 10s max i couldn’t use because of that flickering with the iphone 11 it got better and i think with the 12 it’s not even noticeable at all even if that bothers you so hopefully this is a better panel than what we’ve had in the past and i don’t think you’ll have an issue with that now this is an hdr display that on youtube can play 4k 60 in hdr so you can see you have the 2160p hdr option if you can use that and it’s super vibrant and nice and as you can see this is my iphone 12 pro review the good and the bad in 4k hdr so let me go ahead and hit
play and turn it up so you can hear how loud the speakers go so you have that stainless steel on the outside like an iphone 4 but you have sort of the flattened edges of the iphone 5 and 5s so this is a great design it’s one of my favorite so you have the options of hdr displays great speakers that go really loud and i think this will be a great phone for those that really want something that’s a little bit small and the next thing is the camera the camera in this is phenomenal
as you saw in that last video i just showed you on youtube that was recorded with an iphone 12 pro and this camera is the exact same camera we have the same ability up to 4k 60 hdr up to 30 and it’s just a phenomenal camera it looks great it has great quality decent stabilization and take a look at some of these photos and videos that i shot with this just a moment ago this is the forward-facing camera of the iphone 12 mini i’m just hand holding it on a tripod and
this year the iphone 12 mini 12 12 pro and 12 pro max all have the same forward facing cameras so you get 4k quality you can do this in hdr as well although you wouldn’t be able to see it if i use that but as i move you’ll see that it’s adjusting in real time the exposure of the sky my face and everything else to give us the best quality possible so i’m pretty impressed with it but let me know what
you think about it in the comments below we get night mode on the cameras this year as well so with wide or ultra wide you can take a photo at night 30 second exposure on a tripod and it looks amazing the amount of light a small camera is of able to actually capture and then expose using the neural engine and ai it’s pretty incredible now with the iphone 12 series we have 5g and 5g is pretty nice it’s fast i’ve shown it in other videos i get about double the speed with my current carrier than if i’m using 4g but if you really want those crazy fast speeds that apple showed in ideal conditions well you’re going to have to
find a specific spot be on verizon or maybe a t and use the millimeter wave antenna and that’s not widely available for example in the charlotte metro area near where i live it’s on a few different corners within the city right in the middle of the city otherwise you won’t get those speeds you’ll get normally about 100 to 200 megabits per second so i wouldn’t run out and get one of these just to have
5g but it’s nice that it’s there for future proofing as it gets more and more readily available where you are and from your carrier but if you have t-mobile or someone with a lot of sub 65g coverage well then it’s going to be great it’s going to give you double the speed of probably what you had with 4g but it really depends on where you live it’s not really that much faster than 4g depending on your area
and what kind of coverage you have now with the iphone 12 mini of course it’s really easy to hold and it’s easy to use especially if you have huge hands like me i can easily reach across the screen do whatever i need to do but also you’re not going to notice any slowdowns or any compromises here because this has apple’s a14 bionic cpu and this one has four gigs of ram whatever you’re doing whether it be imovie maybe you’re editing a 4k video this is the first time iPhone 12 mini Review
i’m opening imovie on here maybe you’re editing a 4k video it’s just going to be super fast all the time if you’re opening weather if you’re opening music and then you’re going back and playing a youtube video everything’s just going to be super fast and fluid and it doesn’t matter what you’re doing it just acts like that all the time it’s just the normal use case for this phone it’s just super fast and a joy to use so there’s no compromises there and of course you have a smaller screen so it’s easier to use for a lot of people as you can just reach across the display
easily or even if your hands are small it should be a much better use case than maybe last year’s iphone 11 for example which was much larger now a lot of people have asked me how’s the battery life with the iphone 12 mini i think that’s the second most asked question what size is it and how’s its battery so the battery life for most people seems to be about five hours i would say in most tests that i’ve seen as well as my use you’re going to get about five hours of screen on time with this iPhone 12 mini Review
some people are getting less is around three hours some people are getting more at six to seven hours it really depends on what you’re doing if you’re just playing music you’re going to get more battery life if you’re doing something like watching or recording online video or you’re using the camera to record 4k hdr video well then you’re going to drain the battery much faster it just depends what you’re doing but i would say overall it’s impressive this year with its battery life so
expect around i would say probably around five hours but again this really depends on how you use it if you’re on facetime calls or something that’s using the camera and the cpu heavily well then it’s going to actually use that battery much more quickly and if you look at some of the earlier days on this particular black iphone 12 mini you’ll see here i only got 32 minutes and 50 percent while it was doing background activity but then the next day 30 minutes of screen on time use 25 so it really depends on obviously which one you’re using and how you’re using it but if
you’re watching a lot of youtube for example and you’re streaming that it’s going to take a more of a battery hit than if you were just listening to music so it really depends on what you’re doing but overall i would say it’s good battery it’s better than the second generation se but not quite as good as the iphone 12 or 12 pro max in my experience now this year we get magsafe and magsafe is a wireless charger that magnetically adheres to the back of the phone iPhone 12 mini Review
and it’s a really nice way to charge your phone it holds on nice and tight and on the mini it will charge at 12 watts so you’ll see i can hold the cable and it holds on to the phone and because the mini’s so light it sticks on there quite nicely and you’ll charge the phone if you’re using a wired connection the same speed as all the other phones even though it’s charging at a slower rate with the wireless charger if you use the wired charger you’ll get about 50
battery in 30 minutes and then it slows down just like any of the others so it charges nice and fast no problems there even though the magsafe charger charges a little slower in the smaller phone and this is a fantastic phone and i think people that have been wanting a small phone for a long time will be really happy with this phone because it’s all of the best things of this year’s phones in a iPhone 12 mini Review
compact package and i know a lot of people that have been looking for this sort of thing for a long time the squared off edges make it easier to hold and so should you pick one up i would say if you’re looking for a small phone then absolutely if you’re concerned more about battery life and you don’t care about the size well then you could go with the 12 pro max which will give you over 10 hours of screen on time so it really depends on what you want to do and what
sort of thing matters most to you if battery matters most then maybe a bigger phone would be better for you but if you need the compact phone with no compromise of camera quality and the night modes and hdr adobe video well then the mini is an
excellent choice and given that it’s the least expensive and there’s a lot of carrier deals well then it’s easy to recommend especially if you can get a deal on these but let me know if you’re picking up the mini in the comments below iPhone 12 mini Review
i’d love to hear from you and if so which color did you pick up if not what other phone did you get or are you holding off this year i’d love to hear from you in the comments below if you’d like to get your hands on the wallpaper i have in this video of course i’ll link it in the description like i normally do and if you haven’t subscribed already please subscribe and if you enjoyed the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is aaron i’ll see you next time
iPhone 12 mini Review