After intense anticipation from Apple product fans worldwide, the iPhone 12 has finally been announced. 

   On October 16th, Apple released the news and opened pre-orders up, which will last until October 23rd, the official release of the iPhone 12 models.

   The new addition to Apple’s iPhone family comes in four different models, each appealing to different budgets and preferences. Two of the new models, The iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, belong to Apple’s higher-end phones, while the standard iPhone 12 and new iPhone 12 Mini target the everyday consumer.

   All four of the 12 models boast newly designed cameras, body designs, “ceramic shields” (defined later on), and 5G network capability.

   Price-wise, the new phones follow similar trends to the release of last year’s iPhone 11. The iPhone 12 Mini starts at $699 (the same price as the 11 was last year), the 12 Pro starts at $999, and the Pro Max starts at $1,099. The only difference in comparison is that this year, the standard iPhone model (iPhone 12) costs $799, an extra $100 from last year.

   In relation to photography, all four of this year’s forerunners have a new and larger aperture lens (f/1.6) on their main wide-angle camera. Supposedly, this improvement will improve photo and video quality by 27 percent in low-light settings (according to Apple). Apple has also added LiDAR (light detection and ranging) sensors onto all four of the phones. These sensors improve night portrait mode quality and can be used for AR (augmented reality) in the near future. LiDAR works by sending infrared rays out across an area (up to 5 meters) and then recording the time it takes for them to reflect and come back to the sensor.

   The new body design for the 12 models is similar to the design for the iPhone 5, as the edges are more square-cut and it is thicker than the iPhone 11. The standard iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Mini come in 5 colors; blue, green, white, black, and red. The iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max come in 4 colors, including gold, white, black, and the new Pacific Blue, which replaces the iPhone 11’s Midnight Green.

   Apple’s latest screen innovation dubbed the “ceramic shield’ is said to be the toughest glass ever on a smartphone by the company, although the shield is actually a mixture of ceramic and glass. The shield only covers the screen of the iPhones, as the same material used on the backs of last year’s iPhone 11 is used again this go-around.
  If you were looking forward to faster internet speed, then you are in luck this year, as Apple has finally implemented 5G into their new iPhone 12 models. Sadly, the differences in speed are not easily seen because 5G is not available in the majority of places, so the update in capability is more of grabbing a foothold into the future.