The Vergecast - iPhone 12 and 12 Pro review with Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Every Tuesday this month, Vergecast co-host Dieter Bohn is hosting a series of discussions diving deep into tech review season, each focusing on a specific product. This week, Dieter brings back Vergecast co-host Nilay Patel and senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal Joanna Stern to discuss their reviews of the latest iteration of the iPhone. Dieter reviewed the iPhone 12, Nilay reviewed the iPhone 12 Pro, and Joanna reviewed them both side by side. The trio discusses what they focused on in their reviews — like 5G, Dolby Vison, and MagSafe — and how significant the upgrades are for this year’s devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Greetings, mobile accomplishers. I am Deeter Bone, and you're listening to our special run of director's cuts of the reviews that we have been writing. And this week, we are talking about the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro. We didn't get to them in the regular Vergecast chat show. So this week, I wanted to bring on somebody you may have heard of before. His name is Nilai Patel.

He's the editor-in-chief of the Verge. And we also brought back Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal. And we talked about all of our reviews of these phones and the process that we used to get them done. Joanna literally went to a stadium to test 5G. You wanted to go deep on that. Talk to Nealai, of course, about Dolby Vision. They each pick the technical thing that they really wanted to focus on. And then I tried to focus on a bunch of more general stuff.

So that was really an interesting conversation. Also, Nilai gets into what it's like to have every photo that he takes to his house, look like it comes from a horror movie. It's a thing that happened. Anyway, I think you're going to enjoy this conversation. It's super fun. Here's Neelai and Joanna. Joanna Stern, welcome back. You are still the Senior Technology, Senior Personal Technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal.

Hello. Two weeks later, still the same job. That's right. It's a big accomplishment in this industry. Nealai Patel, you, you're an editor-chief for a website that our listeners may have heard of called The Verge. I am. I would like to note also that Joanna is one of the most notable traders in Verge history because she is one of our co-founders. There are four iPhones this year, and we've only seen two out of the four.

In our own hands. In our own hands. So the first decision we had to make was do you review them together or separately? So Neil and I reviewed them separately. Joanna, you reviewed them together. How did you make that decision? When I looked at them, I said, people may actually really be considering these side by side. I actually don't think that that many people consider the iPhone 12 next to an iPhone Pro Max.

And the mini we can just talk about like separately, but I really still think there are three phones. and then there's like a AB model of the first phone, which is the iPhone 12, right? Because the iPhone 12 is just the mini. It's the same exact phone, just a smaller screen. And so I was just looking at them on paper. I was like, people may actually consider this and actually not only people, but when I'm thinking about buying a phone for my wife, I keep going back and forth between those two. So it made sense to me to review them side by side.

Naila, can you talk a little bit about why we decided to do it separately? Well, there's two of us. Yeah, that's true. So I made it easy. We actually have two as well. We have me and Nicole when. And so iPhones together, iPad separately was our decision. Yeah, I think that makes sense.

I was joking. Like there are indeed two of us. But really it comes down to there are so much to talk about with these phones. They're the newest phones in quite some time. New design. New camera features in some ways. New modems, 5G. Like it made sense to actually break them apart, talk about their similarities,

and then be able to be focused on their differences. Right. If there was less new stuff, we would have leaned towards doing them together. Right. But there's so much new stuff that I wanted to be able to go deep on the nerdy stuff. I wanted to go deep on and still make sure people could get a review with the iPhone 12 from Deeter. So the thing that's frustrating, though, John is like, well, people are really going to be considering maybe these two devices. I think a lot of people are actually looking at all four.

And, you know, like some people are like, oh, maybe I'd want to go back to a small phone or I've been waiting desperately for a small phone. and a bunch of people are like, I want the pro because a pro has a better camera. And the only one that actually does have a truly better camera is probably the pro max. And the screen. I mean, like, it's funny. I'm in a year where actually, like, pretty much everyone in my life needs a new iPhone. So my wife needs a new iPhone. My dad desperately needs a new iPhone.

And with my dad, I knew instantly he needs the max. He likes the bigger screen. He also doesn't upgrade his phone for 15 years. So it's fine for him. Then with my wife, I was sort of really. really debating the other three to your point. And I'm sort of like holding out for the mini. I'm like maybe she would want a smaller phone. But honestly, after the pro and like knowing that the telephotos there, we're just going to go with the pro. Right. So I totally agree with you,

though. Like you, most people are looking at all of them. And probably most people cannot articulate what is different with them. And probably even when they buy them, we'll not know what's different with them. Yeah. It's actually like, it's a weirdly short list, but then it feels long and like fiddly when you get into it. So the thing for me, with the 12 was just, Well, okay, you either just want the default iPhone or you want the better camera and the bigger screen or you want a smaller one. I actually don't know for me how many people I want to point at the pro unless you really want to tell a photo. Like, Neela, how do you think about when we're actually starting to give like the recommendation of if you need an upgrade of which one to get, given that you haven't even touched or seen two out of the four of these phones? Yeah, I think it's really hard. Matt Panzerino at TechCrunch use this word.

that I kind of wish I had used. But the more I think about it, I didn't. He called the pro a compromise. Yeah. So there's the 12, which everyone should get. There's this pro max waiting in the wings. It seems like the best thing you can get. And he said the pro, the regular 12 pro is the compromise between the two.

And if I had held the pro max in my hand and I knew it was good. I think calling a compromise at this point in time is really just a bet on how much you think Apple can execute. It is a safe bet that they will execute. I'm not saying he did anything wrong. I'm just more cautious. Like I want to have used it before I say that's the best one. Well, there's also the fact that it has a bigger sensor, which is a risk. Yeah.

And as you have pointed out in your review of various Samsung phones and Marquez's pointed out, those bigger sensors come with a host of assorted problems. Now Apple's got a lighter sensor. Like, again, do you think Apple can execute? Yeah. Probably they can. But just given what we know about the problems others have had, I would like to hold it in my hand and take a bunch of photos before I,

I'd confidently say the 12 is a compromise. But if I had to bet, I think the 12 is a compromise. You mean the 12, not the 12 pro? The 12 pro is a compromise. Okay. Right. Between the best thing you can get from Apple and the thing that everyone should get. And I think that it's a unique place for the 12 pro to be.

Like you don't usually think of any of Apple's products as being the compromise. Yeah. But it just right now, I don't think that the value for dollars, it's not as obvious as last year when you got an OLED display instead of an LCD. Yeah. I mean, to me, I think they could just get rid of that pro, right? But they don't want to because margins. And the only reason to buy that pro is for the telephoto lens.

Yeah. To me, the only reason to buy the pros for the telephotal lens. We should actually list out the things that the pro has that the regular 12 doesn't. And it is the telephotal lens, LiDAR, shiny sides made out of steel, and so they weigh more. A matte glass back instead of a glossy back. Apple's still doing this annoying thing where, like, they like swap what gets glossy and matte. It has a higher typical screen brightness compared to the 12, which makes no sense to me.

And it will also someday in the future support this new pro-a-a-image format. It will also support Dolby Vision HDR at 60 frames per second instead of 30. Who knows why. And finally, the batteries between these two phones may, in fact, be different. We don't know. There's been some teardowns already that suggest they're the same. I don't know the answer to that either. And I think the other things you mentioned are which of those are software limitations

and which of those are hardware limitations, right? So we assume the pro has more RAM. Two gigs more, right? Right. Six versus four, I think is. It's hard. That's what the numbers tell us, but like Apple just will refuse to tell you. And actually, as we're recording this right now, I Fixit is doing their iPhone 12 tear down live.

So we can't just like go look at the part yet because they're doing it right now. But no, like, what is a limitation because of two gigs more of RAM? Is that pro ragh can't work on four gigas RAM? Is that Dolby Vision can't work at 60 because of four gigs of RAM? You need the extra RAM. And what is a software limitation? And I just over time with these phones, I think that line is getting blurrier and we actually don't know. So the peak brightness thing you mentioned, their actual peak brightness in Dolby Vision is the same number.

Yes, correct. Yep. When you're in HDR watching Dolby Vision, they both can hit. I think it's 1,200 Nets. But then for typical use, they ramp the 12 down to a, I forget the numbers. It was like 625. 6.25 and like 800 or something. Right.

And it's like, is that a software limitation? Is that a hard? We will never know the answer because you can't just like unlock iOS and find out for yourself. Yeah. And also just in your regular day-to-day life with automatic brightness and TrueTun and all that stuff on, the goal of all that software is to make the screens look the same.

Yep. So I think that that's like a, the screen stuff to me is. it's caught in that world of what is a software limitation, what is a hardware limitation, and what is the actual experience you're going to have. So, Joanna, because Neil and I reviewed them separately, neither of us has actually held both phones and looked at them together at the same time. Does you notice any differences between the screens or, like, any other, like, notable differences is one way more than the other?

Is, like, any other, like, I don't know, do you want to talk about hand feel? Yes, so actually, it's funny, the things you listed at the beginning about the design, I actually feel having both of these phones together, that the 12 is, a better design of the phone, even though the 12 pro feels weightier. Like, you definitely feel, like, when you go to pick it up, you know which one you've picked up. Interesting. If they're both on the table, like, and you're not looking at the back of the phone, you know

exactly which one you've picked up because of the weightiness of the, of the pro. I also don't like on the pro the edges, the stainless steel edges. The sides are silver, basically. Yeah. And get very, very fingerprinted up. like there's lots of smudges on the sides and even though the back of the pro the glass gets very smudgy I'm used to that because I've had the 11 and you could also just like do an easy wipe on your pants and that like comes off versus the sides which like kind of you need a microfiber cloth to like polish up

the sides which is something I do every night you know I polish my phone every night. Yeah yeah same and so yeah I just take out my power washer usually and I just get it. You know what they have a brand new attachment for power washers you know you need to get it's an iPhone Joan and I, by the way, are deep into power washers. That would be a great TikTok channel. I think you just power washing phones every night. People would go crazy for it. I haven't seen the pro, but I agree.

I think it's a better design. The 12 is a better design of the pro. I think those shiny sides are ostentatious. Yeah. I like it. I mean, I haven't seen the other ones, but I mean, that was like the joke of my entire review, was that some people are just going to spend the extra money to get the shiny one. Yeah.

And that's fine. but like we should just be honest that the biggest draw of this phone is not the telephoto lens. It is not some marginal software features that you can't get. It's that it's shiny. Like let's just be honest with each other.

I'll be honest with myself. I've come to accept who I am. I'm by the shiny one. And like that's fine. If you were to buy one, Neil, which one would you go for? I'm like a full big screen person.

Even at home in quarantine, I spend most of my mornings working on a phone because I have our kid in the morning. And so, like, I'm always just sort of, like, working on the phone. So, like, the biggest screen I can get is the most useful to me in that context. And then I always want the best camera I can get. Like, I'm a camera nerd, and this camera looks really interesting. And, like, if I had to choose right now between the two of them, I'd obviously get the

12 pro, the regular one, because it has the slightly better camera. But I wouldn't buy one right now because I'm waiting to see what this other thing can do. Right. Joanna, how about you? I'm definitely buying my wife the pro. Yeah. But funny enough, like, now that review is, review time is over, my sim is in the 12. Wait, why are you buying your wife a pro?

Because the size, she's, mostly she's had a 10 and she's actually really liked it, except for the camera, which she doesn't see the issues, but I see it all the time in the photo she texts the family. Yes. And so she loves the size of it. And she's used to the telephoto. Like, we're not going back on the telephoto now. So, and I miss the only, I like, I love this 12, and that's the one I've been using with my sim in it, but I miss the telephoto.

I love the telephoto for taking and I said it my piece, like, it's great for kids and pets. Like, you, you don't have to move to get to the scene. And that is constantly disrupting shots with kids and pets and I don't know, other things. People who don't have kids and pets, it's not, I'm not nothing, I don't want you to feel like I'm leaving you out of this review. I'm waiting for the mini. And my particular reason for that is I miss having small phones. I like big phones for gaming, but otherwise I don't really need a big phone. I'm happy with a small phone.

So I'm waiting to see about the mini. My own particular thing is I review no phones where sometimes I'm carrying two, so I want one of them to be small. So one thing that both of you do in your reviews that I don't often do is you pick one specific feature to really zero in on explain. And you don't need to worry about all the other, like running down every single other thing because you're there to talk about that one big feature. And Joanna, for you, it was 5G.

And Eli, it was Dolby Vision. We should start with 5G. Joanna went to MetLife Stadium. Yeah, yeah. To test 5G. The fastest of fast 5G service is really only in big public spots, like the $3 billion MetLife Stadium. This whole space is equipped with Verizon Ultra Wideband 5G antennas and radios.

Everyone on Twitter is like Joanna obviously left a lightning cable. on the field because last night Daniel Jones went, almost had an 80-yard touchdown run and tripped at the 20 and it's obviously Joanna's fault. What did you do to that stadium? Well, here's the thing. It actually was not at MetLife Stadium, even though he's on the Giants. I guess it's at what's the Eagle Stadium called? The link. Yeah. Despite new rumors that I'm a stadium reporter, I'm not. But, you know, chances are he was practicing this week at MetLife. And, you know, maybe, maybe that's what tripped him up.

Anyway, carry on, 5G. I mean, it was a no-brainer. I just love, hate 5G so much. Yeah. And the hype from last weeks or two weeks ago's presentation, I sat here, like, very angry at that presentation. And I just felt like I had to let it out someplace, even though my editor was like, nobody cares about 5G, don't focus this review on 5G, don't do so much testing around 5G.

And I was like, nope, I'm just going to test so much 5G in these seven days. And I'm just going to live at the polls. And I just love 5G, but I also hate it. What's interesting about the stadium is it is literally the one millimeter wave use case where I'm like, yep, I get that. That makes sense. You've got a huge number of people. Wi-Fi isn't going to hold up. They've all got a direct light of sight to the towers.

And they're like in a space where like you're guaranteed to like not be walking a block away because you're sitting in a sports stadium. watching a game. I totally agree. I had a couple of ideas of how I wanted to do this, but also I had done the video now twice where I sit at the local 5G tower and just live there because, but truth is, is no one's ever going to do that. No one is ever going to really use that 5G tower that they're putting up near you unless you happen to be walking by that tower or your car connects to that tower at some point off in the future. Like, we still don't really understand why these towers are putting being put up where they're being put up in these cities stadiums i get other types of arenas makes a ton of sense um like just public spaces where you know there are going to be a lot of

people and you know certainly sure like we don't have real uploads yet on millimeter wave or really on any 5g network but actually at met life had a good conversation with the guy who's in charge there and he he talked about how they're trying to enable uploads yeah i mean and also like who doesn't want to be in an empty stadium yeah that part seemed amazing cool. It was so cool. I didn't believe it until I like got there. It was like, oh yeah, this is, this is really happening. Now that we've all used like a 5G iPhone, I've been using 5G Android phones to medium effect. I actually got really deep into 5G on this one and it got into details that I could have gotten into with an earlier Android phone, but I don't know,

it felt like this was the moment because now it's real. I really liked that by the way, Dieter. I was like, yes. I was like Dieter is really going in on 5G. Now Verizon has this millimeter wave network, which is also referred to as ultra wideband, UWB, but you have to literally be on the right street corner to get it. You can actually like tell your readers everything versus me where I'm like, it's all in here, but I'm going to like condense this to 25 words and you will not understand what I'm saying. Well, I mean, because they said it was, we're going to have a metaphysical discussion now on the nature of the real. And then we could have an epistemic discussion about the meaning of 5G because they said that 5G is real now.

So it's my podcast. That's how it's going to go. Sorry. I went up to philosophy talk with Dieter Bone. Other than going to a stadium, did you have a, like, I was actually relatively impressed with even the sub-6-5G because I feel like the networks aren't saturated yet. When you went out to like go look for 5G, did you find it? And were there times when you just had it and you didn't know it?

Like, has it become normal yet? Are you still hunting it down? I know you both have different answers to this. I will go first. So here's my situation with 5G, which is odd. But put aside the fact that I went to MetLife to get all. ultra-wideband millimeter wave 5G because I really wanted to do that for the video. And I actually agree with you. It's like a, it is a real use case. But I live in Jersey City. And in my area,

they are putting up millimeter wave cells everywhere. Okay. I live down the block from a giant, brand new millimeter wave pole from Verizon. Okay. I have to just step outside my door and I can get a thousand down. Okay. When I step back inside my door, that's my stoop, okay? When I go back inside my door, I fall back to LTE. Okay, so I go from like 1,000 to 30. So that's one situation. Then when I like walk around my area, sometimes I'm in 5G territory, right? Especially when I'm moving farther away from that millimeter wave cell.

Like, I don't know, you know, a couple feet down, let me wouldn't say a couple feet, but like maybe 100 feet down the street. And then I get 5G. But those speeds are pretty comparable to Verizon LTE speeds in my area. So I don't necessarily feel like I'm seeing any in between LTE and millimeter wave. Yeah. Then I'm going to one more thing about my week. I went to Princeton, New Jersey to host a conference.

Beautiful Princeton, New Jersey is actually very beautiful there. And I did have the 5G indicator. And I decided to test that 5. It was sub 6mm, sub 6 Verizon 5G. And I was like, okay, let me see what I'm getting on my LTE 11 Pro. and those speeds were pretty comparable too. Yep. So it's a mixed bag.

Neely, you can tell us about the experience in rural America. Yeah, rural brinevad is a real thing. I cared about it before and now I really care about it. So in March, we left New York City. We moved upstate because there's a pandemic on. I have no, I have a horrible service here. So there's no AT&T signal at our house at all. There's two bars of Verizon, LTE.

The phone is fine on LTE. to get nationwide sub-6 Verizon 5G, I have to drive at least 45 minutes. So I did that once. And then obviously I went back into the city to shoot our review and do that day of testing. I found on two of the speed tests and you can't extrapolate this,

which is why it's not in the review. There were times that my AT&T LTE phone would outperform Verizon 5G. Just like straight up, they're sitting next to each other head to head. The LTE is 10 or 15 megabits. faster on the download. Then there were times that Verizon 5G nationwide in New York, in the middle of our office building in Studio B, Deeter, which is like, it's kind of just a big black box in the

middle of the building. Yeah. I'd be like 150 down in a space where 18TLT could just never be. Yeah. So there's just this like huge mixed bag. And there's, this is very funny. Dieter told me that a building across the street had a millimeter wave antenna on it from our office. And It's funny. Like, Joanna, you can, like, see the, you can see them. So I walk across the street. I'm waiting for the ultra-wide indicator to light up. And I'm just, like, waving the phone at the top of the building.

That's me all the time. And then I'm, like, 2,200 down. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, the pole by me at 3,000 down. It's nuts. Yeah.

It's incredible when it works, but it just doesn't seem, there's something about it that does not seem useful or real. Well, useful is the big thing. Yeah, I called it a concept car. Like, it's the thing that makes you. go, ooh, I could totally, I totally want that, but they never actually make the concept car. It's just a concept car. And like only, only very rarely do they, like, is the thing that they actually produce, mass produce as cool as the concept car. And that's how I feel about ultra wideband.

It's not just Verizon. Other carries have got it, but we've mostly been testing it on Verizon. One thing that gratified me about all this inconsistency is I don't think I read a single review. I don't think a single journalist said, oh yeah, you want this because it has. 5G. Literally, everybody that I've read has said, yeah, I mean, if you're going to buy it, buy it for any other reason, but don't buy it just for 5G. Yeah, two things I wanted to talk about there. One is what do you actually do with it? Because I made a big fuss. I think we talked about this on the last podcast when I was on Deeter, but I spent a lot of the summer or the second August testing 5G and trying to figure out what

are we actually going to use this for on a smartphone because the carriers in all my conversations with them have zero answer other than download. Sorry, they have one answer. downloading things fast. Yeah. And we don't really do that that much. So I kept kind of going after, what would we use this for? And that's where I did my 5G RV piece, where I hooked up all these gadgets to, you know, one personal hotspot on a phone.

But even with this one, and I like that you pointed out in your review to the personal hotspot because I had a really good experience with that in the middle of MetLife Stadium where I actually connected my laptop and I was getting like, you know, the phone was probably getting a thousand down right from the field, much faster up in the state. stands, but I connected my laptop to the phone and was able to get like 400 on the laptop, which is much better than I'd seen with other phones. You guys also pointed out FaceTime HD. I'm not really sure that's a huge plus.

But I do think the hotspot thing is an actual use that we would use millimeter wave for. So Apple said they tweaked the Wi-Fi and the phone to make the connection faster when you when you use it as a hotspot. It also will support Wi-Fi 6 as a hotspot. And they were like, and USB, it's faster than USB could ever be, which is very funny. Mm-hmm. Because you can definitely get gigabit USB adapters for your MacBook. I just absolutely can do that.

I think it's faster than lightning. Yeah. Right? I think lightning is actually the cap on this. And they don't want to say it. And they don't want to be like, and we're going to put USB C on the phone because they're trying to get the, and so just that whole conversation was very elliptical where they're like, the Wi-Fi is faster than USB.

and we were all just kind of like, is it? Like, that has like huge implications for every Mac that you sell. And I think that's fun. That was like the end of that conversation. A couple more things before we take a break. Neal, you were really worried about battery life. And I found that battery life as it not affected by 5G unless you're on ultra wideband. And then like it will, if you just bang on ultra wideband, you will definitely have a see it on the battery.

But otherwise, 5G is basically the equivalent of LTE. And most of my testing, if you're on a sub six. Yeah. You know, I put this line in the review because, I feel like we have to say what happened. Yeah. So, yep, the day that I was in New York City with the phone started at a full charge. And by like 2 or 3 p.m.

after all of the testing and shooting and using the phone that we had done, I was at a total of two and a half hours of screen time and 18% battery, which is horrible. Do I think this is representative of anything except hammering the modem and using the camera a ton? I do not. And if you looked at my most used app this day, it was literally like camera safari speed test. Yeah. That's not right. That's not accurate.

At home, when I've just been using the phone, and I've kept it off my Wi-Fi and used what poor Verizon L-T we have, yeah, it's a little less than my 11 Pro, which has a bigger, 11 Pro Max, which has a bigger battery. And I think, Deeter, you were saying that Android phones with 5G chips and them have, like, been fine. It's not like the early days of LTE, where the phones are a brick. They got really hot and they died right away. It's basically fine. But I do have just general concerns that what people are going to do when, you know, when, you're they get a 5G phone is seek out the fastest 5G they can get. That stadium example, millimeter wave is going to be great in the stadium. Do you know often happens to people at stadiums?

Their batteries die. Yeah. Well, did you see me? I went, I had the whole, the whole battery charging area to myself. So there's no problem. Look, the battery charging kiosk vendor is about to have a boom in business. Yeah. But no, totally, the millimeter wave thing kills and hammers the battery. I mean, as someone who has spent a, like better half of days at the millimeter wave pole. I watch it die. I can see it go down. Like, especially doing download tests, downloading two episodes, two seasons of Breaking Bad,

which counts like basically four gigabytes. It was my, I think it was like three and a half minutes, four minutes. That was 15% drop. Yeah. And the phone gets warm and you feel the thing eating the energy of the phone. I mean, it's crazy speeds. It's crazy performance. I agree with you. People will seek this out, but it's not going to be the typical use. Like,

normal days, I'm fine with this phone. I still think my 11 got a little bit more. It could be a mental thing. I keep like trying to like separate. But I think the 11 got a little bit more, like maybe 5 to 10 percent more for me at the end of the day. I think it was greater than 5 to 10 percent on the 11. But I mean, yeah. Yeah. That thing is also a beast. Like that phone is, and then in comparison, like that's the other thing about the lightness of this phone. Like, it's just comparatively to that 11. It just feels so light and nice. And small, yeah.

And small. This is a great place to take a break, and we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about HDR and Double Vision. I'm not coming back for that. Support for the show comes from Framer. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder used by teams at companies like Perplexity and Muro to move faster. With real-time collaboration and a robust CMS,

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That's Grammarly.com. All right, so like I was saying, both of you focus on different things in your reviews, and you tend to focus on the key feature that you really want to describe. And Neli, you decided you really wanted to get into an explainer on Dolby Vision. I feel like it's a tradition for you when you review an iPhone. You find

some topic to go really deep on. I'm going to regret asking you this, but can you in like 30 seconds or less say, just for people that might not be familiar, what is Dolby Vision? Yeah. I'm going to time it. Okay. Well, first I'll just say I knew you two were... It's a luxury.

I knew you two would go deep on 5G. so I could nerd out over here. So that, right, right. So that's, like, I feel very lucky to, to know that you two will do a good job with that stuff. And everyone else. Dolby Vision, high dynamic range in video is a technology that encompasses both the capture, how you capture the video, how you master it, and then literally the displays you wash it on. And what it means is the brightness of the displays can get way brighter than before.

It can have more detail in the brights and the displays show you more colors. So the way I have always been talking about it is a standard video, is a pretty dim light bulb, a 48 box of crayons. Dolby Vision is a very bright light bulb and a 64 box of crayons. Only by 64, I mean one billion. Wow. That was exactly 30 seconds. I was watching the clock.

That's pretty great. For all of our listeners on this podcast, I was holding up the clock to the, we're on Zoom. If you were a computer person like 15 years ago, right, and computers went from having eight colors on their, no colors on their screens to eight to 256. to millions. That was like a meaningful thing that happened to computers over time. I stepped through all of those colors.

We started with a green monochrome Apple II and we went through CGA, VGA, WGGA, like all that stuff. Yeah, and that has more or less stalled. Yeah. Right? I mean, there's like multiple letters now in front of VGA, depending on how big

and curved your screen is. But like that stuff is more of us stalled. Dolby Vision, HDR is like the next generation of that stuff. We're going to show more colors, the displays are going to get brighter, and we're going to be able to talk to every part of the chain from the camera to the screen about that. So I'm excited about it. Yeah, why did you want to focus on this? Because to me, screens are, okay, well, there's like four or five things you can improve. You can improve contrast ratio by making an OLED. You can put more pixels on it, which is what Samsung loves to do. You can make it brighter. You can improve the

color, or you can do the thing that sort of encompasses all of that, and that's still a vision. I think it comes down to the reason it's exciting is all the things you described are ways to improve the content you already had. Right. So you've got a video in 16 by 9 HD. It's got however many pixels, however much resolution, however many colors. And then you're going to monkey with the screen and how you process that picture to make it look better than it did on another screen. But the raw material you're working with is the same. Right.

Okay. And we've come to a long way. OLED screens, higher resolution, pixel density, all that stuff is improved. Pentile, the high water market. If you want to, yeah, if you want to make it even better, you have to change the actual movie. You have to change the video itself to push beyond the capabilities of the display that you have. Got it. And so Dolby Vision, HDR in general represents, okay, we're going to capture higher quality video that demands a higher quality screen. And then I think what's important with the iPhone is that it's on by default.

Right. So now millions of people are going to start generating this higher quality video. that will demand better screens in all these other places. It's not that other phones can do it. Everybody has reminded me that the latest Sony Experia phones can do it, like shoot HDR video. And it's like, well, yeah, that's nice. For the 10 people that buy Sony Xperia phones.

Yeah, like at Apple's scale, it means, you know, it's just true. Apple bends the industry around them because they ship so many phones. So when they turn it on something on by default, the industry tends to bend around them. Sorry, where did you see, like, the biggest difference in this type of capture? There are two places.

One, if you are outside and it's very bright, you will just see more detail. Things will blow out less. The video itself will be brighter if you're out. If you're in the woods, like fall, there's like lots of colors. So like sunsets, you'll see less gradation. Like it's just more rich and vivid and brighter with more detail. That's one place. The other one in it, this is like the classic HDR is like at night with neon stuff.

and it's like very it's like every every hdr demo loop is like a car at sunset and at night with neon stuff yeah and that is and there's a reason for it that stuff looks remarkable like you take an hdr video of a neon sign at night in the city and it's raining and like you know what that feels like and when you capture it our regular cell phone it's like fine you get an hDR video of it it's like bright and vivid right a long time ago when hdr first came out at CES, a TV maker took me into a room, and the person demoing its head, we're going to play an explosion for you. And it's going to be so bright that you will feel heat, even though your brain will trick

you into feeling heat. Did that happen? Yeah, it was crazy. We were watching the fifth element, which is like a ridiculous movie. And like the explosion went off. And I was like, wow. Now, that was like a hundred inch ultra bright display. But that's like the top end of the experience you can get from from HDR.

Okay. So we've talked about the screen technology improving. We've talked about the camera being able to create a better file that actually can take advantage of the best screen technology. The problem is there's a third part of the story, which is how do you get that file to show up on that screen? And it seems to me that's the part where it's complicated. Well, here's what you do. You maintain iron control of your ecosystem and build the walls ever higher. This is like another Apple thing.

Apple makes the phone. Apple makes most of the devices that you might share. it to if you're in a family with a family plan like Joanna said the whole family is going to get new iPhones this year that is a remarkable kind of power for Apple to have they make an Apple TV they make iMessage which in the United States is very popular like they've got a way to not only create the video and show it on their displays but send it to other places right the problem is that everyone else has to come along for that ride too so Dobby vision is a standard but Apple has a new I mean it's a format war underneath this all is a very quiet format war

between who and what? Between Apple and Samsung and Dolby. It's like a multi-part format war. The reason that most people don't experience it is because the only people have been generating this video up until now have been major studios using their own streaming services or going to Netflix. Right.

And all the TV vendors are very motivated to just make that work for you quietly in the background. So there has been a format war. The best example I can give you is, do you remember last Super Bowl? Fox did the Super Bowl in 4K HDR. and like only one device supported it. It was like the Roku supported it.

And then like the Roku sold out that night. Like you just couldn't buy a Roku the night before the Super Bowl. And like the Apple TV didn't, and like that's because Fox chose to broadcast in an HDR format called HLG, which no one else supported. Right. The end. So like it's been a very quiet format war with some explosions.

Apple's built a new format. If you have an Apple TV, it's very wonky. You have to run an Apple TV in what is a suboptimal condition to watch your own HDR photo, from a phone over Airplay. If you have another TV with Airplay 2, flip of the coin. Right.

Most new ones should be able to do it, but I think Deeters won't. Mine won't. Like, I think there's just like a lot of the early adopters of 4K HDR TVs are learning, like, oh, we bought a computer two years too early. Yeah. And it can't do all the stuff that you just expect a TV to be able to do. Well, this is why I'm waiting to buy a TV. This is like the upcoming consoles, the Xbox and the PlayStation.

Like, there's a bunch like, we're PlayStation 5 ready. It's like, are you? Are you really? So I'm going to wait to upgrade my TV until like those consoles shake out. But like another question here is don't take this the wrong way, but how much does it actually matter? It's hard to get this thing on a TV because don't the vast majority of people watch these things on the things that they created it with? Like just watch it on phones. Yeah, I think that's true.

I made that point in the review. And the, you know, iOS 14 is smart. Most of the apps are smart. most of the video you share will be an SDR. And that's because the format that Apple and Dolby have made steps down intelligently. It's like built to step down. So it's built on a standard called HLG, hybrid log gamma. This is the one where we go deep on review stuff.

Hybrid log gamma. What is reality, Deeter? And that was built by the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK so they could send out HDR video and it would play back without any conversion on SDR TVs. So Apple, use that Apple and Dolby, use that format, then they built the rest of Dauby Vision on top of it. That's why it's new. The previous versions of Dolby Vision weren't built in that way.

So yeah, if you send a video off an iPhone, the reason it doesn't have to convert before you send it is because the format is made to be broadly compatible. But that means when you send it to YouTube, when you send it to Instagram, when you send it to TikTok, when you send it to a friend over messages, when you air drop it to a Mac,

when you air drop it to another phone. Like, it'll just be an SDR version. That's the thing that happens to you. And so, yeah, does this one, feature matter at this instant in time? No, because you're mostly going to send SDR video everywhere. But it does because you spend so much time on it. Right. But it's also, it's just like, it's the, it's obviously the beginning of HDR video becoming more prevalent than SDR video, because everyone's going to start making this thing. Well, this is also an example. Joanna, you and I talked about this,

where like you do all the work, you do all the testing, you know all the things, but it doesn't make it to the video or to the written page. For us, we sometimes pick a thing to, like, make it to the written page because this phone not sending out HDR videos you can expect it to. It seems like a big thing, actually. Well, yeah, it's nice to know why, because that helps people understand what the problem is, potentially leads them towards a solution. At the very least, helps everybody understand the scope of the problem and where to apply pressure

to fix it, right? Well, it's also, it's another marketing thing, right? It's something that was marketed that you think you're going to get. But actually, there's a lot of fine print around why you're not actually going to get it. 5G, 5G, 5G, 5G, 5G. And even this. Like, I honestly, Nealai, reading your review, I was like, oh, so like I wasn't even looking at the Dolby HGR video on my Mac. Nope.

Like, that isn't a good thing that I didn't know that as the reviewer of this phone. you know, how can we expect real normal people? Not that we are not real and normal, but people who don't dig into this stuff, they'll think, oh, I just, like, I should have this great new video on my Mac now because I got this new phone and it shoots that. Oh, look how beautiful it is.

I'm getting this beautiful kind of new video, but you're not. Yeah, it's, so like the Mac question is really interesting, right? They're like, any Mac that runs Big Sur will play this video. But I don't have that yet. It's not out yet. we don't know when it's coming out. Also, demanding that everyone with a Mac update their operating system to play your video is, that is an enormous ask. Yeah. At my company, we have to, it's almost mandatory that you run an OS version that's seven years old. Yeah. Well, and look,

I've been running the Big Sur beta. I actually had to, I completely wiped one of my Macs to get off of it because it was so buggy. It used to be that like when a new version of a Mac OS came out or even with Windows, it's still the case. You would say, don't install the first one. Wait. And that absolutely applies this year when the next version of macOS comes out. Do not install it on day one. Just don't do it.

Turn off auto updates. I did the same thing. I had, I mean, it was like the second beta on my Mac. And it just, like, it could not understand an external microphone input. Like, it was so deeply buggy. And I'm like, I just stopped using it. Yeah. Anyway, interesting thing I did not know when I was reviewing.

The zoom out of that, Joanna, is phone makers, all of them, but in particular, Apple, hate admitting that their phones are computers and have extremely well-known computer problems. What are we talking about here? I made a file format that is hard for other computers to read. I might as well be talking about Microsoft Word, right? Like, I might as well be talking about Excel not being open in numbers properly or like whatever. Like, that's all that's happening here. And because we don't talk about the phones like computers all the time, when we acknowledge the computer problems, everyone's like, that's so complicated.

I'm like, is it? Yeah. Like, I just have a newer PDF than you. Like, that's all that I did here. Well, I don't want to turn this into an H-EIC conversation. That's the whole issue. This whole discussion of not treating the iPhone like a computer, Apple really, really doesn't want.

This is why they don't tell us how much RAM is in the phones, right? It's like that once you get it. there. It's an admission that this thing has limitations in the same way that other computers have limitations. I think that's why they didn't give us access to like a real file system until relatively recently. Real. It's really real. What is the nature of real? I told you we were going to go there. As long as we're talking anything else about Dolby Vision, Nilai. No, no, no. Don't give it that. It's the same as 5G. Don't buy it because it has it, but you will like it when you use it. Okay. The cameras were another thing I focused on. And I actually, we haven't really

talked a ton about our process for how we do camera reviews or reviews of the cameras on phones. I took about 400 photos for this review, give or take, and we put them all in a lightroom album, at least I do, because you can look at the XIF data and you can share that album. It's a much more convenient way than just sharing a Google Drive folder. And then everybody looks at it and starts critiquing stuff, and then, you know, we're like, okay, well, we now know how this camera performs and what it does. But the thing that I've been thinking about lately, and it's not just because of this iPhone 12 review, but it's because of the phone I'm reviewing right now, which is the Razor 5G, is that results thing that we do really only tells, at best, half the story of a camera review. Because the other half is the experience of the camera app and whether or not the camera consistently does what you expect it to when you click the shutter button.

The iPhone might lose out, you know, low-light shots to the Pixel 5 in certain cases. It totally does. But what the iPhone does better than most other Android phones, Pixel and maybe Samsung excluded, is I know what it's going to do when I hit the shutter button. I know exactly what's going to happen. I'm not surprised by the result of the photo that I get. And it's weird. You know, we say it every year, and it seems like it's not a big deal, but that's so fundamental to the experience. of an iPhone, of an iPhone camera, is that you know what it's going to do.

Yeah. You know, the one part of reviewing this phone that I thought was particularly made difficult by the pandemic was reviewing the camera. Why? Because I love reviewing phone cameras, as you all know. And, like, part of it is we, like, run around outside with four cameras, four phones. We find cool things take photos of. I get to take photos of a lot of people, which is very hard to do when you're, like, I don't

want to put my family in the review. And they don't want to sit around posing for photos in front of like weird lighting conditions for me. There's not, not interesting. Whereas like a verge report, I'm like, be backlit.

Like, stand over here. And like, if you look at our last few iPhone interviews, uh, our video producer, our video producer, Maria Abdukopf is in them.

And it was like a tradition that Mario and I just like went and had a photo shoot for like the last four phones. So like, you know, I like, you're not in their review this year. So no people. And then we come back to the office and we have big displays and our art

team and our photography team. Like we all just like yell at each other about what what pictures are better and why. Oh yeah. And now it's like a slack room debate. Yeah. It's like, and it's just very. Oh my God. Joanna just brought a skeleton into the room.

Literally a like a Halloween skeleton. Yeah. But I just really missed that this year. I feel like I'm less confident in what I'm saying about the camera this year for those reasons. I took a lot of photos and I looked at them and all of them look like stills from a horror movie. It's all like children's toys alone.

outside in the rain. Yeah. But I just, you know, I feel like there wasn't a lot of change this year, so I'm not that worried about it. Yeah, the temperature changed. That rigor wasn't there for me this year. Yeah. Joanna, tell me about the skeleton.

Okay. So to your point about not having people to take photos of, I feared this when we went to MetLife, that there would be no one to, like, take photos of like portrait, test the portrait mode. So I bought this skeleton to try and get into MetLife. That didn't happen. They rejected the skeleton? We just couldn't carry everything we had.

And the skeleton had to be left behind. Oh, my God. Yeah. And I had this idea because I was testing low light in my neighborhood. And this was like, there are skeletons everywhere because it's going to be Halloween. Yep. And so now I have the skeleton in my house. Amazing.

Yeah. And my son loves it. But he was not used in the video. The things you pick up as a reviewer is just, it's very strange. I have a bunch of just like candles. and little weird, like, fake plants and just, like, stuff to put in the background of photos? Like, did they just, they only exist

so I can put them in the background of a photo of a smartphone? Yeah, but all that said, the camera, the camera this year, the improvements are very minor. Yep. So I feel like we're going to have to figure something out for the Pro Max. Yep.

But for these cameras, you know, Deider your point about Apple's very consistent. Apple's restraint in not making the camera app more complicated, but making it take better photos just by, like, hitting the button. I think it's like pretty commendable. Yeah. So a really dumb example is they added on the pro because it has LIDAR.

You can take a night portrait. And you just like do, it just like does it. I do wish that had like a little bit more of an indicator. Well, no, it does. You have to switch the one X lens. So your choices are between the two X lens and portrait.

And then there's like the night mode icon. You just like click it. And then it's in night mode on the one X lens. That's it. Yeah. That's the only thing you have to do. And you see the little night mode icon pop up. I think I just my overall feeling about night mode

been that I wish that icon was a little bit more in your face and said like night mode. And you were like turning it on. Yeah. Like instead of, like a little sun, you know, it's a little circle. Like that fills in. Yeah. Nothing about it indicates what it is. It's like, it's a yellow circle.

Right. But I just, in comparison to that, the pixel you have to set it. Auto might mode on the pixel seems really fiddly to me. Yeah. Getting it to do auto night mode in portrait mode is like yet one more fiddle. They fixed a lot on the pixel five by the way. It does night mode by default now. you want and it shows up a tiny little icon. You can turn it off, but it's there. Yeah, I just couldn't

get it. I just like, I literally couldn't just like get the pixel to do it. Oh, you know, it's interesting. Not being able to get a phone to take night mode. It was difficult for me to get the iPhone 12 to go into night mode. The iPhone 11 would be like, I don't see shit on it. It would just take a dark picture and go into night mode. Yeah. But the iPhone 12, like that, that brighter aperture, it's not that much, like Dan Seaford will tell you. It's like not that much faster. But it definitely was dropping into night mode less often. And that's some combination of the lens. And I think they're, that's, that's, I do actually give them credit for improved photo processing with their processor and their

algorithms and stuff. Was that not just only on the wide? Because if the, like, I found that the wide, since it's letting in more light, less times it's going to night mode. Yeah. It was going less than the ultra wide. But in general, you know, ultra wide cameras are always a little bit disappointing. I'm happier that they're there than most telephotos.

I use them more than telephoto, but I also don't have kids. So anyway. One last topic before we wrap, because there is one other big new thing that I think might be the most like interesting upgrade for a lot of people's day-to-day experience is magsafe. Oh, yeah. I don't know. It was fun to, you know, go back to testing charge times. Like, that was enjoyable.

But the accessory ecosystem, I'm really curious to see that it looks like. Joanna, you pointed out that the wallet, if you aren't careful, will just pop off when you put the phone in your pocket. It's actually happening to me a lot now. Yeah. Even before this review, I used wallets like this. But I had like, you know, I buy a bunch of them on Amazon and like stick them to the back of a case. But yeah, it just falls off. Like it, you know, it doesn't fall off like that easily,

but I'm not, I shouldn't have to think about it. Right. And so if I slide it into a tighter pair of pants or even last night, I was just, I don't know, my son was just like playing with it and it just fell off. And I love the idea in theory. I would love a great wallet case for the back of this. So I'm hoping maybe some third party makes it with some stronger magnet in the wallet part that might solve it. Because the magsafe charger, as you pointed out, is extremely solid. You still stick that to a fridge and it sticks. This is not as sticky. I mean, it's okay.

I'm putting it on a... I have a filing cabinet that's a magnet. And so I was testing it on here. So I'm just hoping the ecosystem of accessories just makes great things. So I trust that the ecosystem for cases and car mounts and maybe wallet things will be okay. I think they'll figure that out over time. The ecosystem I'm worried about is actually the charging ecosystem. Oh, yeah.

That'd be a nightmare. Third party developers can make chargers that will charge. at the faster 15 watts, but you do have to have magnets to do it, which is, I think, clever because it ensures that there's less efficiency loss, that it will, because if you miss a line while it's charging is radically inefficient. But it means that Apple is in charge. They have the MFI program. And it also means that we now have Samsung doing relatively standard Chi charging for fast charging.

Pixel has its own custom fast charging standard for the pixel stand. One Plus has some kind of weird warp charging that's got all plays with amps and watts in a funny way. Huawei just came out with a phone that has a different kind of fast charging. And now we have the MagSafe type. Wireless fast charging? Wireless, yeah. I'm referring to all these are different standards for wireless fast charging that are they're Chi compatible, but they're not the same thing as Chi.

I don't, Neil, I see a standards war and I come to you. How are you feeling? Yeah, this one's like interesting. We have given Apple a lot of crap because they're bad at ecosystems. And it's because of MFI. So I just come back to the fact that there are no smart connector keyboard for the iPad, the single most obvious accessory in the world for one of the most popular kinds of computers in the world. And no one will use Apple's connector. Logitech makes a couple.

Logitech will, yeah, and I think that's just because like, I don't know, Eddie Q like went over there and it was like, what are you doing? Like, I don't know. Like, I don't know. I truly do not understand why that ecosystem doesn't exist. And we have just heard from vendor after vendor that MFI is like a new surround next in many ways. So yeah, I want to believe I don't necessarily do but the history isn't there. At the same time, it's charging and putting a lot of power into a phone with a battery has inherent safety issues. Yeah.

And like, I kind of want Apple to tell me that the charger isn't going to blow up my phone. Right. And like, I don't think their instincts are to be more controlling. I think that's why you see all these proprietary systems everywhere, not just for speed and margin on accessories, but because if you just let any rando put a charging coil in the back of the phone,

the possibility of the battery will explode is there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have a couple of concerns about the MagSafe Wireless charger. And you guys wrote a great piece about how this could be the signal to like the non-port phone, which I think we are not seeing any good signs here that that is ready. Okay. There's like zero signs.

Not only is it slow, which you pointed out to, it's really not as fast as a regular 15-watt charger that you plug into your phone. Like, there's definitely loss of power. The design of the MagSafe charger, to me, is not good. Like, I tried to put that thing on the nightstand, and it kept falling off the nightstand. Like, I don't want something that's like dang. It's more, it's more similar to the Apple Watch circular magnet, ridiculous thingy, that it is an actual wireless charger.

Yeah. A wireless charger should sit on your desk. It shouldn't be flopping all over the place, falling off. It should sit there. It should have a long cord. and it should be able to charge when I want it. Well, so what you need to do, Joanna, is you need to 3M tape it to a palm touchstone, and then sells all your problems because the palm touchstone sticks to the desk.

Fine. Great idea. Yeah. I shouldn't have to, like, get a magnet to put the magnet on top of to put the other magnet on. Yeah. And the cord length is a really big thing because you don't really have that option. Yeah, that's why I was stringing it across the football field. Like, people are, like, mocking me like, oh, boy, why?

Why do you need it to be longer? Like, you need it to be longer to actually plug into the wall to sit on your desk. It's not like you can even attach a longer cord to it. You can't. And it doesn't come with the actual charger in the box, which is ridiculous. You don't think that it's just made to be plugged into a laptop. That's like kind of what, right? It's like, it's that length where you just like plug in your laptop and like, you know,

it's a very confusing product. It's a very confusing. And it's so much potential. Yeah. Like, I want that product to be great. I don't know that the physics would allow it. My belief that Apple can build an ecosystem is not high, right? Like, they just don't do it a lot.

So do you think that maybe the move here is if the ecosystem around MagSafe doesn't develop, that maybe they don't get rid of the lightning port? They just wait and see? Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. They're hell bent on controlling every dollar that flows in and around the iPhone, right? Yeah.

It's all a continuum from app store policies to everything that connects the iPhone. iPhone needs to pay us a tax that's MFI. That is all just what they do. That's W1 and the headphones, right? Like, that's their business. They sell the iPhone and they take a cut of everything that happens in and around the iPhone. It is a very good business. I'm not even criticizing it. That was smart. Like, I wish I'd done that. But do I have any belief that the big, vibrant, open ecosystem that you would need to get rid of the port from the phone will ever exist? Like that is a huge wait-and-see And basically the same place Joanna is

My hope is if they do it They just decide to go with some kind of smart connector That connects by a magnet again Pogo pins maybe Yeah, poco pins, why not? I tell you what, I used a phone that did that It was called the HPVIR And it worked great

It had to wireless charging And it did not have a USBC port on it It just had some pogo pins And a custom little USB cable Work great That's like the best I mean we all know what I actually want what I actually want a USBC port.

I mean, we all just want a USBC port. Oh, Joanna, are you on team USBC port for the iPhone? Yes. Yeah? Great. What other team would there be? There's many people in my mentions that are not on that team. I mean, yes, that's what we should have now.

I just invested in a ton of USBC to lightning cords. Right. I just bought five and put them in every room in the house. Yep. Yeah. Like, no, I just want a USBC to USBC cords like I can use with everything else I have here. It would be a beautiful future. That's never going to come for us.

By the way, USPC is another ecosystem that they didn't make develop. Well, yeah, that ecosystem's a mess. It got cleaned up a little bit. But yeah, it's still a mess. Well, a mess of bad standards that Apple semi-participates in is an excellent place to end the podcast. Joanna, thanks so much for coming on. Where can people find your work? I'm just going to say Joanna Stern on Instagram and Twitter and the Wall Street Journal.

Nelai, thank you also for coming on. If people want to follow you, how do you recommend they do that? The verge.com is pretty good. Yeah. So you're a good spot for it. Cool. Thanks, you too. Thanks.

All right, friends, that is the end of the show. Thanks so much for Neely and Joanna for coming on. Thanks also to my producers, Andrew Marino and Sophie Erickson. We're going to be back, of course, with the Vergecast chat show on Friday. And I think we're to do one more of these special director's cuts of reviews next Tuesday. So stay tuned for that. And then, coming very soon, Neil Appetel's new show, Decoder. Very excited to hear what he's got in store for us.