iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro Max first evaluation: the price difference of 4000 yuan, what is the difference?
The following is a transcript of the video with some adjustments.
The same outline, the same right-angle frame, and even the same processing performance appear on four mobile phones of different sizes.
This is the iPhone 12 lineup this year.
Half a month ago, we just finished the evaluation of iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, and now there are two new protagonists: iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 mini.
To be honest, I prefer to think of them as the two extremes of the iPhone 12. After all, one of them is a very rare small-screen flagship on the market, and the other is a large-screen mobile phone that has reached a new high in stacking materials.
What's the difference?
When the smallest meets the largest
I still remember that when I saw the iPhone 12 mini being taken out of my pocket at the Apple conference, it really felt like lying on the spot.
In my impression, since the iPhone 5 and SE generations, Apple has never produced such a small iPhone.
This is Apple’s second-generation iPhone SE, and this is the iPhone 5, the size of the iPhone 12 mini, which is just between the two models.
If you still have no idea about its size, then these things will give you a better reference.
If you switch to the front, the three phones are completely different things. Only when you see the full-screen design of the 12 mini, you will be sure that it is not a retro product like SE, but one is indeed from 2020. Phone of the year.
Let's take a look at the iPhone 12 Pro Max. This screen is really big, even bigger than last year's iPhone 11 Pro Max, reaching 6.7 inches.
Compare the 12 mini just now to see the cutest height difference.
I don't know if there are any comments on the trouser pocket for such a big mobile phone. I only know that it is definitely uncomfortable to hit the dumbbell on the face.
The 12 Pro Max is also the largest iPhone ever. The 12 mini, which was originally held in one hand, has to be left and right.
But the big screen can indeed be seen more and wider. Whether you see a line of small print hidden at the bottom when you browse the web, or you get an immersive feeling when you watch a video, these can only be found on the 12 Pro Max.
In addition, we also found two hidden details in the 12 Pro Max.
The first is the button arrangement on the side. Although the sizes of the 11 Pro Max, 12 mini, and 12 phones are different, the positions of the mute button, volume button, and lock screen button on their sides are the same.
Only the 12 Pro Max is different. Its side buttons will be lowered, making it easier for people with small hands to press.
The second is the lens thickness. We re-checked Apple's official CAD drawing data and found that the lens height of iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini are both 1.51 mm, while iPhone 12 Pro is slightly taller at 1.72 mm.
But when it comes to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, it becomes 2.79 mm. Don't underestimate the gap of a few millimeters. You can feel a sense of abruptness when you slide your finger across the lens area.
As for why, only the 12 Pro Max lens should be thicker, we still have to find the answer from its imaging capabilities.
The biggest difference in image capability is night shooting
The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a larger lens protrusion because its main camera, which is a wide-angle lens, is equipped with a larger photosensitive element, and a larger unit pixel area can receive more light .
In line with the principle of crushing people to death, we originally had high expectations for the imaging capabilities of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. We also invited photographer @randymu to shoot several blockbuster films for us.
But we were very surprised by the result, because the 12 Pro Max was not in terms of picture quality, which was a clear gap with the 12 mini and 12 Pro.
The first is a set of ultra-wide-angle and wide-angle photos in normal light. All 12 series will be better than 11 Pro Max, especially the black building in the upper left corner. The 12 series has significantly better control of purple fringing.
In the dark part, the main camera imaging of the 12 Pro Max will not be significantly different from that of the 12 mini and 12 Pro. Only when you zoom in, you will see the edges and dark parts of the 12 Pro Max look better
Based on the principle of not believing in evil, Mr. Randy chose some darker environments, hoping to squeeze the main camera outsole performance of the 12 Pro Max.
We found that the exposure time of 12 Pro Max in night mode is indeed shorter than that of 12 Pro/ 12 mini and 11 Pro Max. Among them, 11 Pro Max takes 15 seconds, 12 mini/Pro takes 13 seconds, and 12 Pro Max takes 7 seconds.
In the case of a shorter exposure time, the 12 Pro Max image quality crushes the 11 Pro Max, which is similar to the 12 Pro/12mini.
If you change to an environment where you can’t see your fingers, several models are manually adjusted to night mode for 30 seconds exposure. At this time, the advantages of 12 Pro Max are finally reflected. You can see that the book has more details and a sense of smearing. less.
After talking about the super wide-angle and wide-angle main camera, let's take a look at the telephoto lens. The telephoto of the 12 Pro Max has changed from 52mm to 65mm this year. The longer focal length can zoom in on distant objects. Therefore, the optical zoom of the 12 Pro Max has become 2.5x. Note that the 5x optical zoom on the official website is based on Ultra wide-angle is the benchmark.
In a bright light environment, we compared the 2.5x telephoto of the 12 Pro Max and the 2x telephoto of the 12 Pro. It can be seen that under the same 2.5x zoom range, the optical zoom of the 12 Pro Max will indeed capture richer architectural details than the digital zoom of the 12 Pro.
This also means that the 12 Pro Max has better telephoto capabilities. Even if you directly zoom digitally to 4 or 5 times, with the support of Deep Fusion, the image quality is still within an acceptable range.
The change of focal length also changes the viewing angle of portrait mode to a certain extent. It can make the subject in the picture bigger and more detailed. So compared to 12 Pro, using 12 Pro Max to shoot portraits at the same distance can bring the subject closer, and at the same aperture value, the blur effect of 12 Pro Max will be more obvious.
Of course, not everyone has an object. For those little mages who silently hide at home and take pictures of plastic villains, or those students who are accustomed to letting their phones eat before meals, they can also enjoy the benefits of 65mm.
You will obviously see that the food and still life taken by the 12 Pro Max will have a more close-up feel, and the blur will be more natural.
However, we also noticed that the 12 Pro Max's telephoto lens has an aperture of only f2.2, which is not as good as the 12 Pro's f2.0. In actual shooting, the 12 Pro Max handheld shooting is indeed more susceptible to jitter. After all, smaller apertures and longer focal lengths have higher requirements for hand stability.
But even so, shooting portraits in extremely dark environments, the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max still show a huge advantage. We specially found a very dark place to take portraits. Among them, it is difficult to turn on the portrait mode for 11 Pro Max and 12 mini, but only 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max can achieve accurate recognition, noise control and better picture quality.
The reason why there is such a big gap is thanks to the lidar of the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max. The night vision device helped us record the amazing pictures that the naked eye can't see when the two phones take pictures.
These dense spots are the infrared laser beam projected by the iPhone 12 Pro LiDAR. Infrared can see through objects in the dark, measure the absolute depth by touching the object and then reflecting the time it takes to measure its absolute depth, so as to understand the relationship between the objects and realize the separation of the background and the subject.
Therefore, students who were not satisfied with the transition of the subject in the 11 Pro Max portrait mode in the past can create with confidence this time. The edges of the hair, the transition of the left and right eyes on the side face, and the gap between the chin and the shoulder, the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max are handled more naturally.
We also tried out the video recording application Protake of the flypig teacher. With the LiDAR feature of the iPhone 12 Pro series, it can achieve real-time portrait blurring of videos, which is better than the built-in functions of many Android machines.
Another app, 3D Scanner, uses lidar to realize 3D scanning modeling. Question: How to turn someone else's home into your own. Answer: Scan it!
In the future, we are also looking forward to more third-party developers who can use LiDAR to do some interesting things.
Another difference of the 12 Pro Max is reflected in the anti-shake technology of the main camera lens, which uses sensor displacement anti-shake instead of traditional optical image anti-shake.
In order to find out the anti-shake effect, we ran several scenes and experienced the painful process of running with a hand, strapping a mobile phone to a bicycle, or even sticking it to a sanitation worker’s trolley, sloshing on a stone road.
Who knows, after a round of tossing, I fed the mosquitoes, but only came to a conclusion that "perception is not strong".
One guess is that the 12 Pro Max will use sensor anti-shake this time because the overall lens module has become larger and heavier. The original OIS design has been difficult to guarantee the anti-shake effect, but it just took another A scheme replaces it.
But after this test, we also found that the anti-shake of the iPhone 12 is indeed very, very good.
Finally, to add a detail, the algorithm becomes more intelligent when shooting time-lapse photography in all iPhone 12 series. For example, when shooting traffic, pay attention to the fact that iPhone 12 will automatically lower the shutter to create the effect of optical flow smear. In contrast, iPhone 11 Pro Max looks unremarkable.
Generally speaking, the image quality of iPhone 12 Pro Max is not far from that of iPhone 12 Pro. Whether it is normal light, low light, night scene or video anti-shake quality, it is only in a few harsh low-light environments that some naked eyes can appear. Difficult promotion.
The only thing that makes you noticeably feel the change is the change in the field of view brought about by the 65mm telephoto. If you prefer to take photos of people, still lifes, and food, 12 Pro Max should work better.
Since Max does not bring Max's image performance, can a larger body bring better battery life?
Battery life, heat, big screen still has the advantage of big screen
Small size means small battery. Considering the small size of the 12 mini, we have always been worried about its actual battery life. According to Apple's official data, its overall battery life is probably between the second-generation iPhone SE and iPhone 12. However, it still has to go through a round of actual testing.
The battery life comparison is carried out among the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. All three mobile phones are connected to China Unicom's 5G network, and the screen brightness is limited to 80%, and the speaker volume is set to 50%.
As far as the results are concerned, the worst performance is definitely the iPhone 12 mini. After three hours of heavy use, it enters the low battery mode directly. With this endurance, I will definitely have a guilty conscience without a power bank.
In contrast, the iPhone 12 Pro Max finally regained its due dignity in the battery life part. The remaining power is about 30% more than that of the 12 mini and 10% more than that of the 12 Pro. So, ah, big The battery is always reliable. Switch to moderate and light use, there is no stress for a day.
Another point we want to say is that the power consumption of the three iPhone 12s will increase a lot under the 5G network.
If you have seen the battery life results of our last iPhone 12 and 12 Pro, we did a test under the WIFI network. The duration and test items are the same as now, but now we switch from WiFi to 5G, 12 Pro The remaining battery power has been reduced by 20%.
Will the use of 5G network make iPhone 12 more prone to heat? In order to clarify this problem, we used the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro Max and the previous generation iPhone 11 Pro Max to do a round of heat comparison. The three mobile phones were played on WiFi and cellular networks for half an hour. 》, and use a thermal imager to monitor the whole process.
We came to three conclusions.
First, the heat condition of the iPhone 12 Pro Max will be better than that of the previous generation 11 Pro Max. The highest temperature of the former is around 45-47°C, while the hottest area of the latter has reached 50°C.
Second, whether it is on WiFi or 5G network, there is no difference in the heating status of iPhone 12 mini and 12 Pro. The truth is that they are quite hot, and because of the small size of the 12 mini, heat is more likely to spread throughout the body.
Third, because the motherboard of the iPhone 12 series is placed on the right side of the camera, and the motherboard of the iPhone 11 series is below the camera, the heating areas of the two generations of iPhone are also different.
This is why, when we play games while holding the iPhone 12 horizontally, we feel that it is "hot". Because our fingers just hit the core heating zone, but the previous generation iPhone 11 series will not be so embarrassing.
How to choose four iPhone 12s?
Well, we have talked about the core functions of the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 mini. Many people will also ask, which of the four iPhone 12s is the most worth buying?
To be honest, I know that many people are interested in the 12 mini. The small one in my hand is light and cute. It is also the cheapest one. I like it myself.
Another sigh is that although the 12 mini is very lightweight, it does not open the gap with other iPhone 12s in terms of screen quality and configuration. The difference is only in the size and number of cameras that you can see.
The body of a small cup, but has the strength of a big cup, Apple's mini, in fact, is really not a mini.
But what should also be noticed is that this year’s iPhone 12 mini does not support dual card dual standby, has a small body and a small battery, and has a 5.4-inch screen, which is still too small compared to mainstream Android or the other three iPhone 12. Play a game, hold it with both hands, and immediately cover most of the screen. At this time, you will miss the big screen again.
Who is the 12 mini suitable for? What I can think of is probably some Buddhist users who just simply scan WeChat and Weibo, and don't play games and watch videos. You can indeed consider starting a small screen.
Otherwise, I would recommend the iPhone 12 more when it comes to the choice of main machine.
After all, the battery life of the iPhone 12 is moderate, and the size and weight are also perfect. Compared with the 12 Pro, it lacks a telephoto lens and has a lower storage capacity. It depends on whether you attach importance to taking pictures and multitasking.
As for not bad money, sturdy trouser pockets, and users who are absolutely impossible to compromise on the big screen, battery life, and taking pictures, staring at the iPhone 12 Pro Max, just buy it.
It's hard for Apple to seize the market with an iPhone
In fact, I can hardly imagine that, to this day, even buying an iPhone will have to suffer from entanglement. If you go back a few years ago and only have one iPhone a year, you only need to consider "buy" or "not buy"
With the passage of time, the screen size, computing power, and camera capabilities of smartphones are constantly changing. It is actually difficult to satisfy everyone with a single product.
Most people use smartphones to consume content. This is the user that iPhone 12 mini and 12 want to win.
But there are other people who use mobile phones as a tool for creating content. They hope to use larger screen mobile phones to check documents, process emails, or use lenses with different focal lengths for image creation. They are naturally willing to spend more money in exchange for more performance. Obviously this is 12 Pro and 12 The reason for Pro Max.
More scenarios and more detailed functional requirements have prompted the iPhone to constantly adjust its boundaries to win more users. Today's mobile phone industry is actually no different from the PCs and computers in various configurations back then.
It must be balanced and extreme, but also mainstream and niche. For Apple, expanding its product line is the best choice at the moment, and it is difficult to go back to the past.
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