iPhone 12 Pro
|
iPhone 12 Pro
It's a leap year.
| |||
| Silver | Graphite | Gold | Pacific Blue |
| iPhone 12 Pro — Technical Specifications (Apple Support) | |||
[ Show / Hide ]
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The iPhone 12 Pro is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, announced on October 13, 2020, and released on October 23, 2020, alongside the iPhone 12; the iPhone 12 Pro Max followed three weeks later. Sharing the generation's flat redesign, OLED display, A14 chip, 5G, and MagSafe with the base model, the Pro differentiated on finish and photography: a polished stainless band and frosted back in Pacific Blue, a telephoto third lens, a LiDAR scanner imported from the iPad Pro, and Apple ProRAW — a computational raw format for photographers who wanted Apple's processing and full editing control at once.
At $999 with 128 GB now standard, the 12 Pro was the closest the Pro and base tiers had yet drawn — same chip, same main sensors, same display size and resolution — leaving reviews to frame it as the nicer rather than the necessary choice, with the Pro Max holding the generation's real camera hardware. It served the customary single year.
1 Design✎
The 12 Pro pairs the flat aerospace-grade stainless frame — polished to the jewelry gloss the Pro tier had claimed since the X — with a frosted matte back in Silver, Graphite, Gold, and the launch-defining Pacific Blue. Same 6.1-inch footprint as the iPhone 12 but 25 grams heavier at 189 g, same Ceramic Shield front, same IP68 at six meters, same MagSafe ring. The camera plateau holds three lenses plus the black LiDAR disc.
2 Hardware✎
| Developer | Apple |
|---|---|
| Generation | 14th |
| Announced | October 13, 2020 |
| Released | October 23, 2020 |
| Discontinued | September 14, 2021 |
| Predecessor | iPhone 11 Pro |
| Related | iPhone 12 · iPhone 12 Pro Max |
| Successor | iPhone 13 Pro |
| Display | 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED 2532 × 1170 (460 ppi) 1,200 nits HDR · Ceramic Shield |
| Chip | Apple A14 Bionic (5 nm · 16-core Neural Engine) |
| RAM | 6 GB |
| Storage | 128 GB · 256 GB · 512 GB |
| Rear cameras | 12 MP ultra-wide, f/2.4 + 12 MP wide, f/1.6, OIS + 12 MP telephoto, f/2.0 (2×) + LiDAR scanner · ProRAW Dolby Vision HDR at 60 fps |
| Front camera | 12 MP TrueDepth · Night mode |
| Battery | 2,815 mAh · MagSafe 15 W · Qi |
| Connectivity | 5G (sub-6; + mmWave in US) Wi-Fi 6 · Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Colors | Silver · Graphite · Gold · Pacific Blue |
| Launch price | $999 (128 GB) · $1,099 (256 GB) · $1,299 (512 GB) |
| OS | iOS 14.1 ~ current |
Two quiet spec bumps separated Pro from base: 6 GB of RAM against 4, and 128 GB finally opening the storage ladder at $999. The A14, display panel, and 5G stack were identical to the iPhone 12 — tier differentiation now lived almost entirely in the camera system and materials.
3 Camera and LiDAR✎
The triple array added the 52 mm f/2.0 telephoto for 2× optical zoom and portraits, while LiDAR — a time-of-flight depth scanner mapping rooms to five meters — enabled instant autofocus in darkness, Night mode portraits, and the AR placement tricks Apple had been seeding since ARKit. Apple ProRAW, delivered in iOS 14.3, wrote 12-bit DNG files that kept Deep Fusion's and Smart HDR's intelligence editable — a genuinely new point on the raw-versus-processed spectrum that photography reviewers embraced. Dolby Vision HDR recording ran at 60 fps here versus 30 on the base models.
4 Software✎
Shipped with iOS 14.1; ProRAW arrived in 14.3 that December. Remains on the current iOS release train.
5 Release and reception✎
Reviews were warm and slightly unsentimental: a superb phone whose base sibling had absorbed most of its reasons to exist, with the telephoto, LiDAR, ProRAW, and steel the remaining arguments — and the iPhone 12 Pro Max's exclusive sensor advantages undercutting it from above three weeks later. Pacific Blue led social-feed launch coverage; supply of both Pros ran constrained into December on 5G-era demand. Discontinued September 14, 2021, at the 13 generation's debut.
6 Legacy✎
The 12 Pro introduced ProRAW and mainstreamed LiDAR — both now Pro-tier fixtures — and its Pacific Blue began the tradition of a signature Pro launch color each fall. Its deeper legacy is structural: the year the Pro premium became about optics and materials rather than silicon, the division of labor the lineup still runs on through the current iPhone 17 Pro.