The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are here and mark the beginning of a new generation of iPhone. Support for 5G, a new hardware design and camera improvements are a significant step away from the iPhone X generation of devices. This is nothing new. Apple did something similar in 2010 with the iPhone 4 and in 2014 when it released the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
There is one big difference with the iPhone 12 generation, though. It’s the first time there are four new iPhones at once: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max. If you want to go small and reap the benefits of a lower price there’s the Mini. If you want the biggest iPhone with the newest in iPhone cameras, get the Pro Max. But that leaves the 12 and 12 Pro which are similar (like basically-the-same-phone similar). That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The iPhone 12 and 12 Pro are the same size. They both have the same design, the same display, the same insanely fast A14 Bionic chip, the same 5G support, the same selfie, wide and ultrawide cameras. Heck, they both come in blue. (Technically, the 12 Pro is Pacific blue.) This is a departure from the base and pro models from last year. The $699 iPhone 11 and $999 iPhone 11 Pro were similar but had enough differences to distinguish themselves from each other.
The $829 iPhone 12 (or $799 if you activate it on a carrier when you buy it) is $130 more than the iPhone 11 when it was released. An iPhone 12 with 128GB of storage (the same as the baseline 12 Pro) costs $879 (sans carrier discount) which is only $120 less than the $999 iPhone 12 Pro. It’s best to think of the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro as “better” and “best” versions of the same phone.
