iPhone 12 and 12 Pro review with Joanna Stern and Nilay Patel

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:12Speaker 02

  Greetings, mobile accomplishers. I am Dieter 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 Neelai 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. Wanted to go deep on that. Talked to Neelai, of course, about Dolby Vison. They each picked the technical thing that they really wanted to focus on. And then I tried to focus on a bunch of more general stuff.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  So that was really an interesting conversation. Also, Neelai gets into what it's like to have every photo that he takes 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.

• 2:10Nilay Patel?

  Joanna Stern, welcome back. You are still the Senior Personal Technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal. Hello.

• 2:17Speaker 04

  Two weeks later, still the same job.

• 2:19Nilay Patel?

  That's right.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  It's a big accomplishment in this industry.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  Neelai Patel, 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.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  In our own hands.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  In our own hands. But so the first decision we had to make was, do you review them together or separately? So Neelai and I reviewed them separately. Joanna, you reviewed them together. How did you make that decision?

• 2:52Speaker 04

  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 A/B 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.

• 3:32Nilay Patel?

  Neelai, 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.

• 3:37Speaker 04

  We actually have two as well. We have me and Nicole Huen. And so iPhones together, iPad separately was our decision.

• 3:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think that makes sense. I was joking. Like, there are indeed two of us. But really, it comes down to, there is 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 yeah, 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 of the iPhone 12 from theater.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  So the thing that's frustrating, though, Joe, is like, well, people are really going to be considering A, B, these two devices. I think a lot of people are actually looking at all four.

• 4:29Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  And, you know, like, some people are like, oh, maybe I, maybe I 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 the Pro has a better camera. And the only one that actually does have a truly better camera is probably the Pro Max.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  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.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  Then with my wife, I was sort of 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 telephoto is there, we're just going to go with the Pro.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 5:16Speaker 04

  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, will not know what's different with them.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  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 like, I actually don't know, for me, how many people I want to point at the Pro unless like, you really want a telephoto. Like, Neil, how do you think about, like, when we're actually like, starting to give like, the recommendation of if you need an upgrade, which one to get, given that you haven't even touched or seen two out of the four of these phones?

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think it's really hard. Matt Panzerino at TechCrunch used this word that I kind of wish I had used, but there's, 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 it 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.

• 6:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And as you have pointed out in your review of various Samsung phones, and Marquez has pointed out, those bigger sensors come with a host of assorted problems. Now, Apple's got a LiDAR 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 confidently say the 12 is a compromise. But if I had to bet, I think the 12 is a compromise.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  You mean the 12, not the 12 Pro?

• 7:11Nilay Patel?

  The 12 Pro is a compromise.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:14Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  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.

• 7:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. To me, the only reason to buy the Pro is for the telephoto lens. We should actually list out the things that the Pro has that the regular 12 doesn't, and it is the telephoto 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 RAW image format. It will also support Dolby Vison 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.

• 8:26Nilay Patel?

  We don't know. There's been some teardowns already that suggest they're the same. Yeah. 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, we assume the Pro has more RAM.

• 8:43Speaker 04

  Two gigs more, right?

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Six versus four, I think is, it's hard, like, that's what the numbers tell us, but like, Apple just refuse to tell you.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  And actually, as we're recording this right now, iFixit is doing their iPhone 12 teardown live. So we can't just like, go look at the part yet because they're doing it right now.

• 9:00Nilay Patel?

  But like, what is a limitation because of two gigs more of RAM? Is that Pro raw can't work on four gigs RAM? Is it Dolby Vison can't work at 60 because of four gigs RAM? You need the extra RAM. And what is a software limitation? And I, just over time with these phones, I, I think that line is getting blurrier and we actually don't know. So that the peak brightness thing you mentioned, their actual peak brightness in Dolby Vison is the same number.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yes, correct. Yep. When you're in HDR watching Dolby Vison, they both can hit, I think it's 1,200 nits. But then for typical use, they ramp the 12 down to, I forget the numbers. It was like six.

• 9:36Nilay Patel?

  It's 625.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  625 and like 800 or something, right?

• 9:39Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, is that a software limitation? Is that a hardware? We will never know the answer because you can't just like unlock iOS and find out for yourself.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:47Nilay Patel?

  And also just in your regular day to day life with automatic brightness and true tone and all that stuff on. The goal of all that, that software is to make the screens look the same.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 9:56Nilay Patel?

  So I, I think that's, that's like a, the screen stuff to me is, it's caught in that, that world of what is a software limitation? What is a hardware limitation? And what is the actual experience that you're gonna have?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  So Joanna, because Neil and I reviewed them separately, we, 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?

• 10:21Speaker 04

  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 the better design of the phone. Even though the. 12 Pro feels weightier. Like you definitely feel be like when you go to pick it up, you know which one you've picked up.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  If they're both on the table, like and you and you're not looking at the back of the phone, you know exactly which one you've picked up because of the 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. 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 can 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.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, same.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, I just take out my power washer usually and I just.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  You know what? They have a brand new attachment for power washers, Eli. You need to get it. It's iPhone.

• 11:28Nilay Patel?

  Joe 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.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  I haven't seen the Pro, but I agree. I think it's a better design. The 12 is a better design than the Pro. I think those shiny sides are ostentatious.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:44Nilay Patel?

  I like it. I haven't. I mean, I haven't seen the others, 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.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:55Nilay Patel?

  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'll buy the shiny one. And like, that's fine.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  If you were to buy one, Eli, which one would you go for?

• 12:20Nilay Patel?

  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, I, I wouldn't buy one right now because I'm waiting to see what this other thing can do.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  Right. Joanna, how about you?

• 12:57Speaker 04

  I'm definitely buying my wife the Pro.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:00Speaker 04

  But funny enough, like now that review is, review time is over. My SIM is in the 12.

• 13:06Nilay Patel?

  Wait, why are you buying your wife a Pro?

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Because the size, she, 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 photos she texts the family.

• 13:19Nilay Patel?

  Yes.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  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 in 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, I, it's not, I'm not, nothing, I, I don't want you to feel like I'm leaving you out of this review.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I'm waiting for the mini. Uh, and my particular reason for that is I, I miss having small phones. I like big phones, uh, 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, um, 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, uh, and like, 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. Neelai, it was Dolby Vison. We should start with 5G.

• 14:34Nilay Patel?

  Joanna went to MetLife Stadium.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:36Nilay Patel?

  To test 5G.

• 14:37Speaker 04

  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.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  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?

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Well, here's the thing. It actually was not at MetLife Stadium, even though he's on the Giants. I guess what's the Eagle Stadium called?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  The Link.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. Despite new rumors that I'm a stadium reporter, I'm not.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  But you know, chances are he was practicing this week at MetLife and you know, maybe, maybe that's what tripped him up.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  Anyway, carry on 5G.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  I mean, it was a no brainer. I just, I, I, I just love hate 5G so much.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  And the hype from last week's 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.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  What's interesting about the stadium is it's, it is literally the one millimeter wave use case where I'm like, yep, that I get that. That makes sense. You've got a huge number of people. Wifi 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.

• 16:26Speaker 04

  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. 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.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  Or really on any 5G network. But actually, at MetLife, I had a good conversation with the guy who's in charge there. And 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?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that part seemed amazingly cool.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  It was so cool. It was, I like, didn't believe it till I like, got there. It was like, oh, yeah, this is, this is really happening.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  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 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.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  I really liked that, by the way, Dieter. I was like, yes. I was like, Dieter is really going in on 5G.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Now Verizon has this millimeter wave network, which is also referred to as ultra wideband or UWB, but you have to literally be on the right street corner to get it. We were out shooting.

• 18:00Speaker 04

  You can actually like, tell your readers everything versus me where I'm like, it's all in here, but I'm gonna like, condense this to 25 words and you will not understand what I'm saying.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, because they said it was, we're gonna 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 this is my podcast. That's how it's gonna go. Sorry. Welcome 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 six 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.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  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 ultra wideband millimeter wave 5G because I really wanted to do that for the video. And I actually agree with you. It's like, 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 a thousand to 30. So that's one situation.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  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 of feet down, uh, I mean, I wouldn't say a couple of 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.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 04

  Then, and then 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 5G, it was sub six millimeter, uh, sub six Verizon 5G. And I was like, okay, let me, let me see what I'm getting on my LTE 11 Pro. And those speeds were pretty comparable, too.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  So it's a mixed bag.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Uh, Neel, you can tell us about the experience in rural America.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, rural Brown bad is a real thing. I care. 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 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 six 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 that in like, on two of the speed tests, and like, 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.

• 21:13Nilay Patel?

  Just like straight up, they're sitting next to each other head to head. The LT 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, Dieter, 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 AT&T LT could just never be. Yeah. So there, 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

• 21:56Nilay Patel?

  I'm just like waving the phone at the top of the building.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  That's me all the time.

• 22:00Nilay Patel?

  And then I'm like 2,200 down. Yeah.

• 22:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, the, the pull by me at 3,000 down. It's nuts.

• 22:07Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 22:15Speaker 04

  Well, useful is the big thing.

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I call that 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 carriers 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.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. Two things I wanted to talk about there. One is what do you actually do with it? Cause I made a big fuss, I think we talked about this on the last podcast when I was on Dieter, but I spent a lot of the summer, 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.

• 23:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  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 five GRV piece where I hooked up all these gadgets to 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'm getting like, you know, the phone was probably getting a thousand down right from the field, much faster up in the 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 that the hotspot thing is

• 24:06Speaker 04

  an actual use that we would use millimeter wave for.

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  So Apple said they tweaked the Wi-Fi in the phone to make the connection faster when you use it as a hotspot.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  It also will support Wi-Fi 6 as a hotspot.

• 24:19Nilay Patel?

  And they were like, and USB, it's faster than USB could ever be, which is very funny, because you can definitely get gigabit USB adapters for your MacBook. You just absolutely can do that. I think it's faster than lightning.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  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 alt. And so just that whole conversation was very elliptical where they're like,

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  The Wi-Fi is faster than USB. And we were all just kind of like, is it?

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Like, yeah.

• 24:50Nilay Patel?

  That has like huge implications for every Mac that you sell. And I think that's fun. I was like, yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Couple more things before we take a break. Neil, you were really worried about battery life. And I found that battery life has 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.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, I put this line in the review because I feel like we have to say what happened.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:20Nilay Patel?

  So yep, the day that I was in New York City with the phone started at a full charge. And by like 2:00 or 3:00 PM, after all 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 that day, it was literally like camera safari speed test.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  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 wifi and used what poor Verizon LTE 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 Dieter, you were saying that Android phones with 5G chips in them have like been fine. It's not like the early days of LTE.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:07Nilay Patel?

  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 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 a stadium. Do you know what often happens to people at stadiums? Their batteries die.

• 26:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, did you see me? I went, I had the whole, the whole battery charging area to myself.

• 26:34Speaker 04

  So there's no problem.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  Look, the battery charging kiosk vendor is about to have a boom in business.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  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 is counts like basically four gigabytes. It was my, I think it was like three and a half minutes, four minutes. That, that was 15% drop.

• 27:08Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 27:09Speaker 04

  And the phone gets warm and you feel the thing eating the energy of the phone. I mean, it's, it's crazy speeds. It's crazy performance. I, I, and I agree with you. People will seek this out, but it's not going to be the typical use. Like normal days, I'm, 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, I think the 11 got a little bit more, like maybe five to 10% more for me at the end of the day.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  I think it was greater than five to 10% on the 11, but I mean, yeah.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  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.

• 27:50Nilay Patel?

  And small. Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  And small.

• 27:52Nilay Patel?

  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 W vision.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  I'm not coming back for that.

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• 29:13Speaker 02

  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 Neelai, you decided you really wanted to get into an explainer on Dolby Vison. 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 Vison?

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  I'm going to time it.

• 29:42Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, first I'll just say, I knew you two, it's a luxury. I knew you two would go deep on 5G, so I could nerd out over here. So that, right, so that's, I feel very lucky to know that you two will do a good job with that stuff. And everyone else, Dolby Vison, 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 lightbulb and a 48 box of crayons. Dolby Vison is a very bright lightbulb and a 64 box of crayons. Only by 64, I mean 1 billion.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Wow, that was exactly 30 seconds.

• 30:29Nilay Patel?

  I was watching the clock.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  That's pretty great.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  For all of our listeners on this podcast, I was holding up the clock to the, we're on Zoom.

• 30:36Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  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.

• 31:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and that has more or less stalled.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:06Nilay Patel?

  Right? I mean, there's like multiple letters now in front of VGA, depending on how big and curved your screen is.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:12Nilay Patel?

  But like it's, that stuff is more or less stalled. Dolby Vison 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, to every part of the chain, from the camera to the screen about that. So I'm excited about it.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Why did you want to focus on this? Cause like to me, screens are, okay, well, there's like four or five things you can improve. You can improve contrast ratio by making OLED. You can put more pixels on it, uh, which is what Samsung loves to do. You can make it brighter. Uh, you can improve the color, or you can do the thing that sort of encompasses all of that, and that's Dolby Vison.

• 31:48Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  So you've got a video in 16 by nine 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 a, another screen.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  But the raw material you're working with is the same.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So, and we've come a long way. OLED screens, higher resolution, pixel density, all that stuff is improved.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Pentile, the high watermark.

• 32:24Nilay Patel?

  If you want it, 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.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 32:35Nilay Patel?

  And so Dolby Vison HDR in general represents, okay, we're going to capture higher quality video that demands a higher quality screen. And then we're, I think what's important with the iPhone is that it's on by default.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:49Nilay Patel?

  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't do it. Everybody has reminded me that the latest Sony Xperia phones can do it. Like shoot HDR video. And it's like, well, yeah, that's nice.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  For the 10 people that buy Sony Xperia phones.

• 33:07Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  Sorry, where did you see like the biggest difference in this type of capture?

• 33:25Nilay Patel?

  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, I'm in the woods, like it's fall, there's like lots of colors. So like sunsets, you will see less gradation, like it's just more rich and vivid and brighter with more detail. That's one place. The other one, and this is like the classic HDR is like at night with neon stuff.

• 33:55Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, it's like at every, every HDR demo loop is like a car at sunset and at night with neon stuff.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:03Nilay Patel?

  And that is, I mean, 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 on a regular cell phone, it's like, fine. You get an HDR video of it, it's like bright and vivid.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:21Nilay Patel?

  A long time ago, when HDR first came out, at CES, a TV maker took me into a room. And the person demoing it said, 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.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Did that happen?

• 34:35Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was crazy. It was, 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.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Okay, so you've, we've talked about the screen technology improving. We've talked about the camera being able to create a better file that actually is like, 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, like, it's complicated.

• 35:12Nilay Patel?

  Well, here's what you do. You maintain iron control of your ecosystem and build the walls ever higher. Right, 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 gonna 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.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:41Nilay Patel?

  The problem is that everyone else has to come along for that ride too. So Dolby Vison is a standard, but Apple has a new, I mean, it's a format war. Underneath this all is a very quiet format war.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Between who and what?

• 35:54Nilay Patel?

  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 who've been generating this video up until now have been major studios using their own streaming services or going to Netflix.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  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, 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.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 36:38Nilay Patel?

  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 footage from a phone over AirPlay. If you have another TV with AirPlay too, flip of the coin. Like most new ones should be able to do it, but I think Dieter's won't. Mine, 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."

• 37:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:12Nilay Patel?

  And it can't do all the stuff that you just expect a TV to be able to do.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Well, this is why I'm waiting to buy a TV. This is like the upcoming consoles, uh, the Xbox and PlayStation. Like, there's a bunch like, "We're PlayStation 5 ready?" It was like, "Are you? Are you really?" So I'm gonna wait, uh, 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? Uh, 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?

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, 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 in SDR. And that's because the, the format that Apple and Dolby have made steps down intelligently. Right? 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, right? Hybrid Log Gamma. What is reality, Dieter? Um, and that was built by the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster, NHK, so they could send out HDR video and it would playback without any conversion on SDR TVs. So Apple, use the, Apple and Dolby use that format, then they built the rest Dolby Vison on top of it. That's why it's new. The previous versions Dolby Vison weren't built in that way.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  So yeah, if you send a video off an iPhone, the, 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 airdrop it to a Mac, when you airdrop it to another phone, like, it'll just be an SDR version. That's the thing that happens to you. And so, yeah, does, like, does this one feature matter at this instant in time? No, because you're mostly gonna send SDR video everywhere.

• 38:56Speaker 04

  But it does, because you spent so much time on it.

• 38:59Nilay Patel?

  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 gonna start making this thing.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Well, this is also an example, Joanna, you and I talked about this, where 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 like sometimes pick a thing to like make it to the written page, because this phone not sending out HDR videos you'd expect it to.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  It seems like a big thing, actually.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, it's nice to know why, because that helps people understand what the problem is, potentially leads them towards a solution, and at the very least helps everybody understand the scope of the problem and where to apply pressure to fix it, right?

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Well, it's also, it's another marketing thing, right?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  It's something that was marketed, that you think you're gonna get, but actually there's a lot of fine print around why you're not actually gonna get it.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  5G, 5G, 5G, 5G.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  5G, and even this, like, I honestly, Neil, I'm reading your review, I was like, oh, so like, I wasn't even looking at the Dolby HDR video on my Mac.

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  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, and 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.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  But I don't have that yet.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  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.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, at my company, we have to, it's almost mandatory that you run an OS version that's seven years old.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  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 macOS 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.

• 41:24Speaker 04

  I did the same thing. I had, I think 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. Anyway, interesting thing I did not know when I was reviewing.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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. I just have a newer PDF than you. Like, that's all that I did here.

• 42:21Speaker 04

  Well, I don't want to turn this into an HEIC conversation.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  That's a 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 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.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  It's like 5G.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  What is the nature of real? I told you we were gonna go there. As long as we're talking, anything else about Dolby Vison, Eli? No, no, no, don't give it that.

• 42:58Nilay Patel?

  Don't, it's the same as 5G. Don't buy it because it has it, but you will like it when you use it.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  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 EXIF data and then 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

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Razer 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 can, 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,

• 44:26Speaker 02

  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.

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You know, the one, the one part of reviewing this phone that I thought was particularly made difficult by the pandemic was reviewing the camera.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  Why?

• 44:42Nilay Patel?

  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 to take photos of. I get to take photos of a lot of people, which is very hard to do in here. 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 of board, I'm like, be backlit, like, stand over here. And like, if you look at our last few iPhone reviews, our video producer, our video producer, Maria Abdalka, is in them. And it was like a tradition that Maria and I just like went and had a photo shoot for like the last four phones. So like, you know, I like slacked Maria. I was like, you're not in the review this year. So no people. And then we come back to the office and we have

• 45:26Nilay Patel?

  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. A literally a, like a, like a Halloween skeleton. Yeah. But I just really miss 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, 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, I, you know, I feel like there wasn't a lot of change this year, so I'm not that worried about it. Yeah, the change, the aperture changed. That rigor wasn't there for me this year. Yeah. Yeah.

• 46:11Nilay Patel?

  Joanna, tell me about the skeleton.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  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.

• 46:30Nilay Patel?

  They, wait, they rejected the skeleton?

• 46:32Speaker 04

  We just couldn't carry everything we had. And the skeleton had to be left behind.

• 46:37Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God. Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 04

  And I had this idea because I was testing low light in my neighborhood and like, this was like, there are skeletons everywhere because it's going to be Halloween.

• 46:44Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 46:45Speaker 04

  And so now I have the skeleton in my house.

• 46:47Nilay Patel?

  Amazing.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  And my son loves it, but he was not used in the video.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  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.

• 47:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but all that said, the camera, the camera this year, the improvements are very minor.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:12Nilay Patel?

  So I feel like we, we're gonna have to figure something out for the Pro Max.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:16Nilay Patel?

  But for these cameras, you know, Dieter, 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.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:30Nilay Patel?

  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.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  I do wish that had like a little bit more of an indicator.

• 47:41Nilay Patel?

  Well, no, it does. You have to switch to the 1X lens. So your choices are between the 2X lens and portrait. And then there's like the night mode icon and you just like click it and then it's in night mode on the 1X lens. That's it. That's, that's the only thing you have to do.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  And you see the little night mode icon pop up. I, I think I just, my overall feeling about night mode has been that I wish that icon was a little bit more in your face and said like, night mode.

• 48:02Nilay Patel?

  And you were like turning it on.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, like instead of, what is it? Like a little sun, you know, it's a little circle.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Like the fills in.

• 48:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, nothing about it indicates what it is. It's like, it's a yellow circle, like, okay. But I just, in comparison to that, the Pixel, you have to set it. Auto night mode on the Pixel seems really fiddly to me. Getting it to do auto night mode in portrait mode is like yet one more fiddle.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  They fixed a lot on the Pixel 5, by the way. It does night, it does night mode by default now, if you want. It shows up a tiny little icon. You can turn it off, but it's there.

• 48:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I just couldn't get it. I had a Pixel 5. I just like, I literally couldn't just like get the Pixel to do it.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  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. Take a dark picture and go into night mode. But the iPhone 12, like that, that brighter aperture, it's not that much, like Dan Seifert will tell you, it's like not that much faster. But it definitely was dropping into night mode less often. That's some combination of the lens. And I think there, I do actually give them credit for improved photo processing with their processor and their algorithms and stuff.

• 49:03Speaker 04

  Was that not just only on the wide? Cause if the, like, I found that the wide, since it's letting in more light, less times it's going to night mode.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  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 experiences, MagSafe.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  I don't know. It was fun to, you know, go back to charging, testing charge times. Like that was, that was enjoyable. But the accessory ecosystem, I'm really curious to see what that 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.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  It's actually happening to me a lot now.

• 49:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  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.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  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.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  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. 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 stick that to a fridge and it sticks. This is not as sticky. I mean, it's, I mean, it's okay. I have like a, I'm putting it on a, I have a filing cabinet that's a magnet. And so I was testing it on, on here. So I'm just hoping the ecosystem of accessories just makes great things.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  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.

• 50:51Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, that's gonna be a nightmare.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  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, you know. Efficiency loss that it will, because if you misalign wireless 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 Qi charging for fast charging. Pixel has its own custom fast charging standard for the Pixel Stand. OnePlus has some kind of weird warp charging that's got all plays with Ampson Watson 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 Qi compatible, but they're not the same thing as Qi.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  I don't know, Neil, I see a standards war and I come to you. How are you, how are you feeling?

• 51:41Nilay Patel?

  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 keyboards 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.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Logitech makes a couple.

• 52:04Nilay Patel?

  Logitech, well, yeah, and I think that's just because like, I don't know, Eddie Q like went over there and he 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 noose around their necks in many ways. So, yeah, I want to believe. I don't necessarily do it. 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.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  And like, I kind of want Apple to tell me that the charger isn't going to blow up my phone.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:39Nilay Patel?

  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 that the battery will explode is there. Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I have a, 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, 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 too, it is, it's really not as fast as a regular 15 watt charger that you'd 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, it's, it's more, it's more similar to

• 53:36Speaker 04

  the Apple Watch circular magnet ridiculous thingy than it is an actual wireless charger.

• 53:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  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.

• 53:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, so what you need to do, Joanna, is you need to 3M tape it to a Palm Touchstone and then you, it solves all your problems because Palm Touchstone sticks to the desk.

• 54:04Speaker 04

  Fine. Great idea. I shouldn't have to like get a magnet to put the magnet on top of, to put the other magnet on.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  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, the football field. Like, people were like mocking me, like, oh, 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, the actual charger in the box, which is ridiculous, but.

• 54:35Nilay Patel?

  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, it's, it's a very confusing product.

• 54:45Speaker 04

  It's a very confusing product. And it's so much potential.

• 54:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  Like, I, I want that product to be great.

• 54:51Nilay Patel?

  I, I don't know that the physics will allow it. My belief that Apple can build an ecosystem is not high, right? Like, they just don't do it a lot.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  So do you think that maybe the, the move here is if the ecosystem around MagSafe doesn't develop, that maybe they, they don't get rid of the lightning port? They just wait and see?

• 55:08Nilay Patel?

  Maybe.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 55:09Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. They, they're hell bent on controlling every dollar that flows in and around the iPhone, right?

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:16Nilay Patel?

  It's all a continuum from App Store policies to everything that connects to the iPhone needs to pay us a tax that's MFI. That is all just what they do. That's W1 in 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 had 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 that's basically the same place Joanna is.

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Uh, my hope is if they do it, they just decide to go with some kind of smart connector that connects via magnet again.

• 56:00Nilay Patel?

  Pogo pins, maybe?

• 56:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, pogo pins. Why not? I tell you what, I used a phone that did that. It was called the HP Veer, and it worked great. It had wireless charging, and it did not have a USB-C port on it. It just had some pogo pins and a custom little USB cable. Worked great. That's like the best. I mean, we all know what I actually want. What I actually want is a USB-C port.

• 56:20Speaker 04

  I mean, we all just want a USB-C port.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  Oh, Joanna, are you on Team USB-C port for the iPhone?

• 56:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  Yeah? Great.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  What other team would there be?

• 56:28Speaker 02

  There's many people in my mentions that are not on that team.

• 56:31Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, that's what we should have now. I just invested in a ton of USB-C to Lightning cords.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  I just, like, bought five and put them in every room in the house.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, no, I just want USB-C to USB-C cords, like, I can use with everything else I have here.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  It will be a beautiful future. That's never going to come for us.

• 56:50Nilay Patel?

  By the way, USB-C is another ecosystem that they didn't make develop.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, that ecosystem's a mess, but...

• 56:55Speaker 02

  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?

• 57:08Speaker 04

  I'm just gonna say Joanna Stern on Instagram and Twitter, and The Wall Street Journal.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Uh, Neelai, thank you also for coming on. If people want to follow you, how do you recommend they do that?

• 57:18Nilay Patel?

  Uh, theverge.com is pretty good. It's a good spot for it.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  Cool. Thanks, you too.

• 57:22Nilay Patel?

  Thanks.

• 57:25Speaker 02

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

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Support for the show comes from Jira by Atlassian. Your work lives in scattered places, and it's not only your team searching for context, your AI agents need it too. Jira taps Atlassian's teamwork graph to bring that context together across Jira, Confluence, Slack, GitHub, and more, and makes it easy to share with the agents you already use, like Claude, Purser, and GitHub Copilot. Assign them work directly or connect your agents through MCP. Spend less time hunting for context, less time asking, "Wait, what did we decide?" and more time actually shipping with Jira. Learn more at jira.com. That's J-I-R-A dot com.

• 58:42Speaker 06

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