- Joined
- Mar 16, 2002
- Messages
- 6,649
- Reaction score
- 568
I have had the iPhone 12 mini for exactly a month now. It turned out to be a great phone which fit perfectly in my hands, offering great screen quality and speed to do just about anything you throw at it.
The connectivity has been stellar in the sense that while out and about I was able to get it to a download speed of over 250 Mbps on 5G and that was the fastest, but, was not available all the time. Some spots had very low speeds too like 15 Mbps and switching to LTE mode yielded much better results at over 50 Mbps. In time this should improve as more and more towers are being built and put into service. Anyway as of now I would not recommend this phone just for 5G functionality alone.
As for photography, it takes fantastic images and does even go one step further when it comes to video. In my opinion, the video from this phone is as good/or dare I say better than any Android phone out there at any price. My last Android was the Galaxy S10 and it was nowhere near in terms of both the image quality as well as video quality. After having owned every Samsung flagship since Galaxy S4 all the way to the S10. The night mode on the Samsung was very disappointing indeed, I never like how its jpeg processing engine computer the final image, it was always unnatural to my eyes. I felt that Samsung was going on a path that I did not want to follow and noted along the way that the iPhone was going in the right direction and has more to offer to me than the Samsung. The iPhone 11 I had before this also was a great phone when it came to photography. The 12 however is a bit better when it comes to low-light photography. To see the results from this phone check this link. I also shot a short handheld 4K video from the Iphone 12 mini which you can check at this link
Make no mistake about the 60Hz display, it is wonderfully tweaked by Apple to look and feel smooth and easy on the eye. The iPhone 11, on the other hand, had an LCD display instead of an OLED in the 12 but Apple knows how to get the best out of its display by fine-tuning it via software.
Now coming to the size of the display and that is what is of some concern to me. My old eyes are not able to resolve the screen well and I have a problem reading the text even though I tried everything that the IOS software offered, namely, switching to zoomed mode instead of the standard, increasing the size of text, using dark more for better readability etc. None of it worked for my old eyes and I continued to have difficulty. This is not the problem of the phone but it is my personal issue. I am pretty sure for younger folks this would not be a problem with their great vision but for me, it is an issue I am not able to solve.
The other problem I encountered is the small battery and I had to every once in a while charge it during the day for the second time especially if I was out and about using the GPS, doing photography and checking messages and mail on top of using social media. Of course, I never had any issues while I was out and about (since I could plug the phone in and charge it while driving) but the fact of the matter is there was no way I could use the phone without worrying about the battery dying on me when I needed it most. I did create a shortcut for the software to kick-in and switch to low power mode automatically when the battery was at 30% charge. This was the other problem I am unable to really solve.
Other than the two issues I mentioned above, there is absolutely no other issue with the phone and most of the bugs have already been fixed with the software updates from Apple.
This phone would suit those who are looking for a phone they can easily be handled with one hand comfortably. If you are not a heavy user and can manage the smaller battery and screen this may be one of the best phones out there in this price range. In my humble opinion also the best in terms of photography, both for still images as well as the video.
I have decided to move on to the iPhone 12 to address the two issues I had. It has been shipped and should be arriving by Wednesday. I will update my impression right here, after using it for a few days.
The connectivity has been stellar in the sense that while out and about I was able to get it to a download speed of over 250 Mbps on 5G and that was the fastest, but, was not available all the time. Some spots had very low speeds too like 15 Mbps and switching to LTE mode yielded much better results at over 50 Mbps. In time this should improve as more and more towers are being built and put into service. Anyway as of now I would not recommend this phone just for 5G functionality alone.
As for photography, it takes fantastic images and does even go one step further when it comes to video. In my opinion, the video from this phone is as good/or dare I say better than any Android phone out there at any price. My last Android was the Galaxy S10 and it was nowhere near in terms of both the image quality as well as video quality. After having owned every Samsung flagship since Galaxy S4 all the way to the S10. The night mode on the Samsung was very disappointing indeed, I never like how its jpeg processing engine computer the final image, it was always unnatural to my eyes. I felt that Samsung was going on a path that I did not want to follow and noted along the way that the iPhone was going in the right direction and has more to offer to me than the Samsung. The iPhone 11 I had before this also was a great phone when it came to photography. The 12 however is a bit better when it comes to low-light photography. To see the results from this phone check this link. I also shot a short handheld 4K video from the Iphone 12 mini which you can check at this link
Make no mistake about the 60Hz display, it is wonderfully tweaked by Apple to look and feel smooth and easy on the eye. The iPhone 11, on the other hand, had an LCD display instead of an OLED in the 12 but Apple knows how to get the best out of its display by fine-tuning it via software.
Now coming to the size of the display and that is what is of some concern to me. My old eyes are not able to resolve the screen well and I have a problem reading the text even though I tried everything that the IOS software offered, namely, switching to zoomed mode instead of the standard, increasing the size of text, using dark more for better readability etc. None of it worked for my old eyes and I continued to have difficulty. This is not the problem of the phone but it is my personal issue. I am pretty sure for younger folks this would not be a problem with their great vision but for me, it is an issue I am not able to solve.
The other problem I encountered is the small battery and I had to every once in a while charge it during the day for the second time especially if I was out and about using the GPS, doing photography and checking messages and mail on top of using social media. Of course, I never had any issues while I was out and about (since I could plug the phone in and charge it while driving) but the fact of the matter is there was no way I could use the phone without worrying about the battery dying on me when I needed it most. I did create a shortcut for the software to kick-in and switch to low power mode automatically when the battery was at 30% charge. This was the other problem I am unable to really solve.
Other than the two issues I mentioned above, there is absolutely no other issue with the phone and most of the bugs have already been fixed with the software updates from Apple.
This phone would suit those who are looking for a phone they can easily be handled with one hand comfortably. If you are not a heavy user and can manage the smaller battery and screen this may be one of the best phones out there in this price range. In my humble opinion also the best in terms of photography, both for still images as well as the video.
I have decided to move on to the iPhone 12 to address the two issues I had. It has been shipped and should be arriving by Wednesday. I will update my impression right here, after using it for a few days.
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Now do the math and tell me how much faster is that compared to your VDSL connection? I will test it again maybe in the next week when I am in downtown just to see how it performs.
