iPhone Whoah! Apple iPhone 12 Pro

It has best-in-class cameras, speed, screen quality and design – but you’ll pay for it

If you’ve read our review of the iPhone 12 on page 74, you’ll be aware that this year’s mid-range iPhone has already set a high bar. But with a few extras, the 12 Pro sails over this, offering one of the best designed and most powerful phones available – with an equally premium price.

This is a gorgeous-looking gadget. The gold version, for example, has a solid gold band around the outside, visible from the front, surrounding a sleek black, shiny oblong on the front. It makes this phone look more like a piece of jewellery, an accessory, than other phones. Yet despite these refined looks, it’s hardier than ever: it includes Apple’s new ‘Ceramic Shield’ glass, which the company says is four times more likely to survive a drop.

The iPhone 12 Pro has an OLED display, with a resolution of 1170x2532, which is 460 pixels per inch. That’s exactly the same as the iPhone 12. But with a typical brightness of 800 nits and reported peak HDR brightness of 1,200 nits, the screen is nothing less than stunning.

The big talk around the display in the iPhone 12 Pro is the lack of 90Hz or 120Hz support. We were surprised not to see support here, but aside from gaming, which benefits from faster response times, a higher refresh rate just makes things animate more smoothly, which is very nice, but not essential.