Apple iPhone 12 Pro review

Portrait quality

The Portraits on the iPhone 12 Pro are shot with the telephoto camera by default, but you can switch to the main snapper if you need a wider photo. The LiDAR Scanner is of massive help here as it creates an incredibly detailed depth map for the camera to use, and subject separation is supposed to be class-leading. Also, thanks to the LiDAR being independent of the available light, the iPhone 12 Pro can again do Night Mode portraits.

And before we go any further, one thing should be very clear - the Night Mode portraits work only on the main camera. If you switch to Portrait mode - it always defaults on 2x zoom - and if it's dark, you will see the Night Mode icon appear. But once you tap on that, the camera will switch to the primary one.

So, the portraits shot with the tele camera are good, but not great. While the subject separation is outstanding and the defocused parts are quite appealing, the photos aren't that detailed, and they are even a bit noisy. And once the light becomes less than ideal, the resolved detail drops dramatically (see the last photo in the series below).

Portraits, 12MP

The improved depth map does matter a lot when applying portrait effects, though. For the first time ever, these artsy photos don't look good just on the official samples, but we were also able to shoot some by ourselves, from the first attempt at that. Nice!

The last portrait was taken with the primary camera, and while it is more detailed, the separation isn't as impressive as one would have thought given the promise of the LiDAR tech inside the phone.

Portraits, 12MP

Now, let's look at some Night Mode portraits. As we mentioned, those are shot on the primary camera, and the phone usually chooses 1s or 2s exposure. You can tweak this up to 10s, but we don't think your subject can stay still for that long.

Anyway, first we tried the Night Mode Portrait on non-human subjects, plants in this case. We wanted to test its depth map complexity. And it turned out pretty good - the first three photos are excellent. They may not be super detailed, but they do impress with separation and bokeh.

Portrait mode low-light, 12MP

Now, enter our human subject. When using the Portrait Night Mode mode the way it was intended, the photos turned out great. The separation is very good given the conditions, the contrast is nice, and the colors are very well preserved. Overall, some good portrait shots, indeed.

Night Mode Portraits, 12MP

And here are some more portraits. In the first photo, you can notice the restored highlights in the background, which were then proficiently defocused. The separation is also quite competent, and the iPhone 12 Pro will take great portraits shots with the right background.

The next two photos are taken indoors but with different light sources. The brighter one has an additional light source from the side, while the last one has only the Christmas lights and nothing else. Both are good but don't expect miracles when the light is really scarce.

Night Mode Portraits, 12MP

We were skeptical about the Portrait Night Mode dependence on the LiDAR Scanner. While it indeed uses the scanner, we believed the iPhone 12 and "its A14 computational photography" should be able to do similar photos with the main camera even if Night Mode is not available.

And well, the iPhone 12's Portrait Mode really puts up a good fight. The photos are obviously a bit darker and somewhat desaturated but are mostly on par as far as detail and separation are concerned. Pixel peepers will find holes in the iPhone 12 depth map, but not as large as you would have guessed, and for the average user - they are relatively indistinguishable.

But here is the kicker. Put those default portraits to Photo's Auto Enhance feature, and you'd end up with a pretty similar image to iPhone 12 Pro's Portrait Night Mode. How about that?!

iPhone 12 • iPhone 12 • iPhone 12 (Auto Enhance) • iPhone 12 (Auto Enhance)

Yes, Night Mode for Portraits is a powerful new feature, but it's not enough to sell you the 12 Pro over the iPhone 12. You can get similar photos with the regular iPhone 12, and the only thing you need to add is some Auto Enhance magic in the Gallery app.

Selfie quality

Apple offers two Field-of-View modes on the selfie camera - the slightly zoomed-in 7MP crop that is equivalent to a 30mm field of view and the full 12MP mode, which has a 23mm equivalent FoV.

If you hold the phone in portrait orientation, selfies are cropped to 7MP to provide a tighter framing but rotate the phone horizontally, and you get more of the scene with the phone automatically switching to the wider 12MP mode. You can also switch between those two modes manually.

The 12MP selfies are exemplary - high in detail and contrast, with great colors and well-handled noise. The HDR isn't as aggressive on many of the Android phones, and it does help for the rather natural and balanced look.

These selfies are among the most natural ones we've seen, and we like the iPhone's processing on this camera.

Selfies, 12MP

Portrait mode is present on the front camera helped by the SL 3D snapper, and the subject separation is outstanding with impressive background blur. These are shot in 7MP, meaning the camera crops a part of its available FoV and shows a zoomed-in shot.

Portrait selfies, 12MP

Night Mode is available on the selfie camera, too, and it does brighten the whole photo and exposes more detail. The images are still soft and noisy, yet rather usable.

Selfie • Night Mode Selfie (Auto, 1s) • Night Mode Selfies (Manual, 3s) • Selfies with screen flash

Video quality

The iPhone 12 Pro captures video at various resolutions and framerates with all four cameras, and it can even do it simultaneously if you have the right app.

All videos are digitally (also optically where available) stabilized thanks to the cinematic video stabilization. All modes, including the 4K@60fps, feature expanded dynamic range thanks to the Smart HDR. The slow-mo options max out at 1080p at 240fps.

The iPhone 12 series is the first to allow video capture straight into the Dolby Vision dynamic HDR video format. You can edit these videos on-the-go on your phone, you can upload them on YouTube or any other popular platform, or even send them to your friends. The Dolby Vision information is saved outside of the video stream, so the video will look normal to any non-HDR player/screen and will be color-boosted on any Dolby Vision-compatible player and display. HDR video capturing is available in all resolution at 30fps and 60fps.

Note that if you want to transfer Dolby Vision video file to PC or Mac, your iPhone transfer options should be set to Keep Originals. Otherwise (Most Compatible), you will get a converted non-HDR video for better compatibility. If your display isn't Dolby Vision-capable - Dolby Vision original files will still play, but they would appear with low dynamic range and duller colors if compared to non-HDR or converted files.

The iPhone 12 Pro captures wide stereo audio for the videos at 192kbps. This means spatial sound, just like some HTCs and some old Nokia phones did, as well as the iPhone 11 Pro duo, and you should enjoy richer and deeper sound if compared to just regular stereo.

The 4K videos captured both at 60 and 30 fps with the main and telephoto cameras are virtually identical in daylight quality. The clips are quite vibrant and show excellent contrast, low noise, impressive dynamic range, while colors stay true to life.

Rendering fine detail is once again a challenge, but unlike photos, you don't normally zoom in videos to inspect details, so you are unlikely to notice it. Still, we expect more from a flagship of this caliber.

The 4K footage from the ultrawide snapper is okay, but far from great. The resolved detail is mediocre at best. The dynamic range, colors, and contrast are superb, though.

Cinematic stabilization is available on all cameras, resolutions, and fps options. It works fantastically, as it always has been on the iPhones.

The low-light 4K videos are excellent - they are detailed enough, with good colors and reasonably low noise. They may not be the best of the bunch but are indeed among the better ones.

The low-light 4K footage from the ultrawide camera is of rather poor quality, while the telephoto camera doesn't capture videos at night.

The iPhone 12 phones can all do 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, and the videos are saved in 1080p@30fps format. We shot such time-lapse for 25 minutes (compressed in 25 seconds), and it is indeed stunning. Everything looks great, and we can only imagine such a video shot in the right place and at the right time.

And here is a selfies 4K sample from the front camera. The clip is very good in detail and excels in everything else.

You can also look at our video compare tool and see how the iPhone 12 Pro stacks against other phones.

4K: Apple iPhone 12 Pro vs. Apple iPhone XS and the iPhone 11 Pro in our Video compare tool