Apple iPhone 12 long-term review

Camera

The iPhone XR offered just one camera on the back, though Portrait mode was available. The iPhone 11 added and ultrawide camera, and now the iPhone 12 allows this secondary camera to use Night Mode. In fact, all three cameras, selfie included, can do Night Mode.

We've explored the photo quality in detail as part of our regular iPhone 12 review, and we found it to be, well, okay. The phone does very well in broad daylight, but Apple's processing is a mixed-bag and destroys foliage. At night, the main camera does splendidly with its Auto Night Mode, but the ultrawide shots were mostly useless even with its new exclusive Night Mode for ultrawide.

Apple is adding new features each year. Dolby Vision videos and Night Mode for all cameras were the highlights in 2020 for Series 12. Deep Fusion (a fancy name for multi-stacking) and crop outside of the frame were the novelties in Series 11. Deep Fusion really helped in revealing more intricate detail in areas of high complexity, such as sweaters, faces, pets, flower petals, closeups. It also did well in removing noise but not at the expense of fine detail in more challenging lighting conditions.

Deep Fusion works with the latest Smart HDR, and it indeed captures complex subjects very nicely.

Main camera, 12MP

The iPhone 12 saves photos with balanced dynamic range, impressive contrast, accurate white balance and superb contrast. If you are looking for eye-popping Galaxy-like images, well, the iPhone 12 isn't for you. But if you are after realistic looks, which you can always alter afterwards, you'd be happy with the iPhone 12's camera. At least this reviewer is, despite the smeared grass, people, or bushes.

Main camera, 12MP

The iPhone 12 may be lacking a tele camera, but it still excels when shooting portraits. They are done on the main camera and are brilliant - everything is perfect from separation and blur to detail, colors and contrast.

The low-light photos taken with the main camera are quite good, too. They are balanced, the Night Mode is very conservative (though you can tweak it), and the photos look great. The exposure is well controlled, the colors are not always preserved well, but stay true to life in most cases, and the contrast is high. The main camera is very reliable at nighttime, and it did not fail us once.

Main camera, 12MP

You can use various third-party apps for RAW shooting, manual settings, or slow shutter effects.

Slow Shutter photos

The ultrawide camera is impressively wide, and yet the processing handles the distortion correction very well. The photos are average in detail and don't always impress with dynamic range even with the Smart HDR working behind the scenes, but they are still occasionally good.

Ultrawide camera, 12MP

The ultrawide camera always opts for Night Mode (1s. to 3s.), and the photos look good on the phone's screen. But in reality, they are noisy and poor in detail, though the colors are well preserved, and the contrast is pretty great.

Ultrawide camera, 12MP

We still think of the iPhone 12 as one of the best phones for selfies because of the great image (and video) quality. It saves outstanding selfies that are rich in detail, with excellent colors, contrast and dynamic range. They are quite balanced and natural-looking, and we'd pick those over the ones many high-res Quad-Bayer shooters are snapping on some Android phones.

Selfies, 12MP

The portrait selfies are just as good as the regular photos with very proficient separation and nice blur.

Portrait selfies

Night Mode is available on the selfie camera, as promised. But while it brightens the photo and exposes more detail, it still remains soft and noisy. It's definitely not our favorite.

Selfie • Night Mode Selfie

One of our favorite new modes in Video is the Night-Mode Time-lapse. You just select Time-lapse, mount your iPhone on a tripod, and hit the shutter. The camera app offers no settings whatsoever (in a typical Apple fashion), and the videos are saved in 1080p@30fps format. If you have the right scene, the quality of the video will do it justice.

Camera app

The camera app hasn't changed much over the years, and that's probably our biggest beef with Apple. Yes, you can see outside the frame thanks to the ultrawide camera, and you can now change the video resolution in the viewfinder (wow!), but there are still many settings that are buried within the Settings app itself. And there is still no Manual mode on the default app - you need to download/buy a third-party app for that.

The camera app is in dire need of a complete overhaul, both visually, functionally, and even logically. Let's hope Apple finally brings this dated thing to the new decade. Pretty please!

Camera app