This iPhone 12 Mini / 12 Pro Max evaluation is video content, welcome to station B.

The following is the text of the video, and some of the contents are slightly adjusted.

The same outline, the same right angle frame, and even the same processing performance appear on four different sizes of mobile phones.

This is the iPhone 12 lineup this year.

More than half a month ago, we just finished the evaluation of iPhone 12 and 12 pro, and now there are two new protagonists: iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 12 Mini.

To be honest, I prefer to see them as two extremes of the iPhone 12. After all, one of them is a very rare small screen flagship on the market, while the other is a large screen player which has reached a new high in stacking.

What is the difference?

When the smallest meets the largest

I still remember seeing the iPhone 12 Mini taken out of my pocket during the apple launch. It was like lying in the slot on the spot.

In my impression, Apple has never produced such a small iPhone since the generation of iPhone 5 and se.

This is Apple's second-generation iPhone se, and this is the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 12 mini, which is just between the two models.

If you still have no concept of its size, then these things will give you a better reference.

In front, three phones are quite different. Only when you see the full screen design of 12 mini, can you be sure that it is not a retro product like se, but a mobile phone from 2020.

Let's look at the iPhone 12 Pro max. The screen is really big, even a little bigger than last year's iPhone 11 Pro max, reaching 6.7 inches.

Let's compare the 12 minis just now to see the most cute height difference.

I don't know if there is any opinion on the trouser pocket of such a large mobile phone. I only know that dumbbells hit my face, which must be hard.

The 12 Pro Max is also the largest iPhone in history. The 12 Mini that can be held by one hand will have to be opened to the left and right.

But the big screen can also see more and more widely. Whether you see a line of small characters hidden at the bottom when browsing a web page, or when you watch a video, you can only find it on the 12 Pro max.

In addition, we found two hidden details here in 12 Pro max.

The first is the arrangement of the keys on the side. Although the sizes of the 11 Pro max, 12 mini and 12 mobile phones are different, their side mute keys, volume keys and lock screen keys are all in the same position.

The only difference is that the 12 Pro Max has a lower side button, which is easier for people with small hands to press.

The second is lens thickness. We re checked Apple's official CAD data and found that the lens height of both iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini is 1.51mm, while the iPhone 12 Pro is slightly higher, which is 1.72mm.

But on the iPhone 12 Pro max, it's 2.79mm. Don't underestimate the difference of a few millimeters. If you slide your finger across the lens area, you can feel the sudden feeling.

As for why, only 12 Pro Max lenses need to be thicker, we still need to find out from its imaging capabilities.

The biggest gap in imaging ability is still night shooting

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a larger lens bulge because its main camera, the wide-angle lens, is equipped with a larger sensor, and a larger unit pixel area can receive more light.

In line with the principle of crushing people to death at the bottom, we originally had high expectations for the imaging ability of the iPhone 12 Pro max, and invited photographer @ randymu to shoot several groups of blockbusters for us.

However, we are very surprised by the result, because the image quality of 12 Pro Max is not significantly different from that of 12 mini and 12 pro.

The first is a set of super wide-angle and wide-angle photos in normal light. 12 series will be better than 11 Pro max, especially the black building in the upper left corner. The 12 series has better control over purple edge.

In the dark part, the main imaging of 12 Pro Max is not significantly different from that of 12 mini and 12 pro. It's only when you zoom in locally that you can see the edge and dark part of the 12 Pro max, which looks better

In line with the principle of not believing in evil, Randy chose some darker environment, hoping to squeeze out the main performance of 12 Pro max.

We found that the exposure time of 12 Pro Max in night mode is shorter than that of 12 Pro / 12 mini and 11 Pro max. Among them, 11 Pro Max takes 15 seconds, 12 Mini / Pro takes 13 seconds, and 12 Pro Max only takes 7 seconds.

In the case of shorter exposure time, the image quality of 12 Pro Max is similar to that of 12 Pro / 12mini.

If you change to an environment where you can't see your fingers, several models are manually adjusted to night mode for 30 seconds exposure. At this time, the advantage of 12 Pro Max is finally reflected. You can see that the book has more details and less daubing feeling.

With super wide angle and wide angle main camera, let's take a look at the telephoto lens. As a result, the zoom angle of the pro Max is 525.5 times longer than that of the pro Max zoom.

In the bright light environment, we compared the 2.5-fold long focus of the 12 Pro Max and the 2-time long focus of the 12 Pro max. It can be seen that under the same zoom range of 2.5 times, the optical zoom of 12 Pro Max can indeed shoot more abundant architectural details than the digital zoom of 12 pro.

This also means that the telephoto capability of the 12 Pro Max is better. Even if you zoom the digital zoom to 4 or 5 times, with the help of deep fusion, the image quality is still acceptable.

The change of focal length also changes the perspective of portrait mode to a certain extent. It can make the subject bigger and more detailed in the picture. Therefore, compared with 12 pro, using 12 Pro Max to shoot a portrait at the same distance can make the subject closer, and at the same aperture value, the virtual effect of 12 Pro Max will be more obvious.

Of course, not everyone has a target. For those little mages who quietly hide at home to shoot plastic figurines, or those students who are used to letting their mobile phones eat first before eating, they can also enjoy the benefits of 65mm.

You will obviously see that the food and still life taken by 12 Pro Max will be more close-up and more natural.

However, we also notice that the aperture of the long focus lens of 12 Pro Max is only f2.2, which is less than that of 12 Pro max. in actual shooting, the 12 Pro Max handheld shooting is more vulnerable to the impact of jitter. After all, smaller apertures and longer focal length require higher stability.

Even so, 12 pro and 12 Pro Max still show great advantages in shooting people in extremely dark environments. We specially found a very dark place to take portraits. Among them, 11 Pro Max and 12 Mini are difficult to open portrait mode. Only 12 pro and 12 Pro Max have achieved accurate recognition, and noise control and image quality are better.

Thanks to the lidar of 12 pro and 12 Pro max, the night vision device helps us record the amazing pictures that can't be seen by the naked eye when the two mobile phones take pictures.

These dense spots are the infrared laser beams projected by the iPhone 12 Pro lidar. Infrared can see through the objects in the dark, measure the absolute depth of the objects by touching them and then reflecting them back, so as to understand the relationship between the objects and realize the separation of the background and the main body.

Therefore, students who were not satisfied with the edge transition of the main body in 11 Pro Max portrait mode in the past can create with ease this time. The 12 pro and 12 Pro Max processes the hair edge, the transition of the left and right eyes of the side face, and the gap between the chin and the shoulder.

We also tried protake, a video recording application of teacher flyig. With the lidar features of the iPhone 12 Pro Series, it can virtualize the real-time portrait of the video, which is better than the functions of many Android machines.

Another app 3D scanner realizes 3D scanning modeling with the help of lidar. Q: how to turn someone else's home into your own. A: sweep it!

In the future, we are also looking forward to more third-party developers to do something interesting with lidar.

Another difference of 12 Pro Max is reflected in the anti shake technology of the main camera lens, which adopts sensor displacement type anti shake instead of traditional optical image anti shake.

In order to find out the anti shaking effect, we ran several scenes, experienced the painful process of running with hands, tying mobile phones to bicycles, even sticking to the wheelbarrows of sanitation workers, and sloshing on the stone road.

Who knows, after tossing around and feeding the mosquitoes, they only come to the conclusion that "perception is not strong".

One conjecture is that the reason why the 12 Pro Max will use sensor anti shake is that the overall lens module has become larger and heavier. The original OIS design has been difficult to ensure the anti shake effect, but it is replaced by another scheme.

But after this test, we also found that the anti shake performance of the whole iPhone 12 series is really excellent.

Finally, to add a detail, the algorithm becomes more intelligent when taking time-lapse photography in the whole iPhone 12 series. For example, when photographing the traffic flow, notice that the iPhone 12 will automatically lower the shutter to create the effect of light flow dragging. By contrast, the iPhone 11 Pro Max looks flat.

Generally speaking, the image quality of the iPhone 12 Pro Max does not open a gap with that of the iPhone 12 pro. Whether it is normal light, dark light, night scene or video anti shake quality, it is only in a very few bad dark light environment that some improvement can not be distinguished by the naked eye.

The only thing that makes you feel the difference is that the 65mm telephoto changes the field of vision. If you prefer to shoot people, still life, and food, 12 Pro Max should be better.

Since Max doesn't bring Max's image performance, can a bigger fuselage bring better endurance?

Endurance, heat, large screen still has the advantage of large screen

Small size means small battery. Considering the small size of 12 mini, we are always worried about its actual endurance. According to Apple's official data, its overall endurance is about between the second-generation iPhone Se and the iPhone 12, but the specific performance still needs a round of testing.

This endurance comparison is carried out among iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 pro and iPhone 12 Pro max. All three mobile phones are connected to the 5g network of China Unicom, and the screen brightness is limited to 80%, and the external volume is set to 50%.

In terms of the results, the worst performance must be the iPhone 12 Mini. After three hours of heavy use, it directly enters the low-power mode. With regard to this endurance, I will definitely feel guilty when I go out for a day without a power bank.

In contrast, the iPhone 12 Pro Max has finally regained its dignity in the battery life. The remaining power is about 30% more than that of the 12 mini and 10% higher than that of the 12 pro. Therefore, the large battery is still reliable. Switch to moderate and light use, and it's no pressure to last a day.

Another thing we want to say is that the power consumption of the three iPhone 12 models will increase a lot under 5g network.

If you look at the last issue of the iPhone 12 and 12 pro, you can see that at that time, we did the test under WiFi network, and the duration and test items are the same as now. But now we change from WiFi to 5g, the remaining power of 12 Pro is reduced by 20%.

Does 5g make the iPhone 12 hotter? In order to understand this problem, we used the iPhone 12 mini, iPhone 12 Pro Max and the previous generation of iPhone 11 Pro max for a round of heat comparison. The three mobile phones played "original God" for half an hour under WiFi and cellular network respectively, and used thermal imager to monitor the whole process.

We have come to three conclusions.

Second, whether it's WiFi or 5g, there's no difference in the heating status of the iPhone 12 mini and 12 pro. The truth is, they're all very hot, and the 12 Mini also has a small size, which makes it easier for heat to spread to the entire fuselage.

Third, because the motherboard of the iPhone 12 series is placed on the right side of the camera, while the motherboard of the iPhone 11 series is under the camera, the heating zone of the two generations of iPhones is also different.

That's why we think it's "hot" when we're playing games with the iPhone 12. Because our fingers just hit the core heating zone, but the previous iPhone 11 series, it would not be so embarrassing.

How to choose four iPhones 12?

Well, we have talked about the core function points of the iPhone 12 pro and 12 mini, and many people will ask, which of the four iPhone 12 is the most worth buying?

To be honest, I know many people are interested in the 12 Mini. The small one in hand is light and lovely, and it is also the cheapest one. I like it very much.

Another exclamation is that although the 12 Mini is very lightweight, it does not open up a gap with other iPhone 12 models in terms of screen quality and configuration. The difference is only in the size and number of cameras that you can see.

Small cup of body, but has the strength of a large cup, Apple's Mini, in fact, is not a mini.

However, it should also be noted that this year's iPhone 12 Mini does not support dual card dual standby, small size and small battery, and the 5.4-inch screen is still smaller than mainstream Android or the other three iPhone 12. Open a game, two hands a grip, immediately will cover most of the screen, at this time you will miss the good screen.

Who are the 12 Mini for? What I can think of is that some Buddhist users usually just brush up on wechat Weibo and don't play games and watch videos. They can really consider starting small screen computers.

Otherwise, in the choice of main engine, I will still recommend more iPhone 12.

After all, the iPhone 12 has a moderate endurance, perfect size and weight. Compared with the 12 pro, there are fewer telephoto lenses and lower storage, depending on whether you attach importance to taking photos and multitasking.

As for those who don't need money, their trouser pockets are strong enough, and they absolutely can't compromise on the three points of big screen, battery life and taking photos, they can only buy and buy the iPhone 12 Pro max.

It's hard for apple to capture the market with another iPhone

In fact, it's hard for me to imagine that even buying an iPhone has to be tangled up today. If you go back a few years and there was only one iPhone a year, you just need to think about "buy" or "don't buy"

As time goes by, the screen size, computing power and photo taking ability of smart phones are constantly changing. It is difficult to satisfy everyone with a single product.

Most people use smartphones to consume content, which is what the iPhone 12 mini and 12 want to get.

But there are other people who use mobile phones as a tool for creating content. They want to use a larger screen mobile phone to check documents, process e-mail, or create images with different focal lenses. Naturally, they are willing to pay more for more performance. This is obviously why 12 pro and 12 Pro Max appeared.

With more scenes and more subdivision function requirements, iPhone constantly adjusts its boundary to win more users. In fact, there is no difference between today's mobile phone industry and the PCs and computers with various configurations.

Both balance and perfection, but also mainstream and niche. For apple, expanding its product line is the best choice at present, and it is difficult to go back to the past.