Apple iPhone 12 Event - October 13, 2020

Lots has been leaked about the iPhone 12 lineup:

Tweaked industrial design, with flat edges like the iPhone 5 and the curren iPad Pro.

Three sizes:

  • iPhone 12 - lower-end, 5.4 and 6.1-inch screens. Smaller of the two might be called “iPhone 12 mini.”
  • iPhone 12 Pro - 6.1-inch screen
  • iPhone 12 Pro Max - 6.7-inch screen

image

New features:

  • 5G support for all models, but only high-end phones get mmWave 5G
  • New camera tech - will likely include LiDAR scanners similar to latest iPad Pro
  • No power adapter or earbuds in box
  • Braided lightning to USB-C cable might be included

Also likely to be announced at this event are:

AirPods Studio - high-end over-ear headphones. Rumored $349 and will have active noise cancellation and some sort of fancy tech that makes it not matter which way they’re facing (headphones can sense which ear is which).

AirTags - long rumored bluetooth trackers.

New, smaller HomePod - just a rumor

I think a rumour with a nice bit of evidence behind it: all competing products (Sonos, Bose, logi) have been pulled from the Apple stores.

Also, surely ARM Macs. (“Surely” as in “I hope so.”)

Yeah, I didn’t include that rumor because I felt like it’s extremely unlikely, but yeah, it’s out there.

I really hope there isn’t a significant camera quality increase that tempts me, because this is not the year to spend money on an upgrade, and I’m a sucker like that.

Yeah I wasn’t planning to upgrade this year, but my wife has trashed the digitizer / screen on her iPhone X so there’s no way to avoid buying SOMETHING.

Was on the verge of buying an SE2 once or twice in the last two months, but seems kind of dumb to sink $400-$600 in a midrange device that will be outdated more quickly anyways. Why not wait it out another few weeks and buy an iPhone 12 & then hand her my “old” iPhone 11.

Diego

I am pretty sure that is the one thing we can fully expect. Although I love the 12 Pro’s camera, hard to believe they could do that much more.

I am upgrading regardless, I am on Apple’s plan, it cost me about $100 out of pocket to upgrade.

The former I can somewhat understand, especially if they were planning to include the useless 5V/1A adapter as previously was SOP. The latter…bastards. If you’re going to do that put the 3.5mm headphone jack back. People do have plenty of those lying around…USB-C headsets, not so much.

[EDIT: or lightning headsets either. Seems like the 12 may be the last iPhone with the lightning connector?]

I certainly hope so, but that’s not a pervasive rumor right now.

One rumor I heard a while back was that Apple was going to skip USB-C all together and go to a portless connector ala the magnetic “magic port” or whatever they call those 3 metal dots on the back of iPads. We had a discussion about this months ago regarding the data transfer speed of those ports. They can do more than just charge, since they’re the only connection to the Magic Keyboard, so we know they can xfer data.

There’s also pressure from the EU to standardize phone chargers. A new port doesn’t help them there.

So it looks like everything has been leaked at this point. Almost everything is known about the phones and we will probably see the HomePod Mini. Macs in November. The tile thing delayed until next year.

The phone doesn’t seem that exciting, but I am not sure what they could do with hardware to make me excited at this point. Maybe when they get into foldables in 10 years? (Half joking.)

I will probably get a HomePod Mini. I have a regular one in my bedroom that is overkill. Will put a mini in there, and then move the full size version out with my other one to make a stereo pair. HomePods have all sorts of issues, but I do like them. They work well with Apple’s stuff and they sound great.

I would be a lot more excited about today if this was for Macs. Phones are boring and everything has been leaked.

Fingers crossed for something interesting.

I predict at some point they will say “this is the best iPhone ever.” Because they always say that. And it’s stupid because of course it is. “It’s the best iPhone ever. Except for the 4s. That one’s probably never going to be beaten.”

I feel like the Homepod Mini is 4-5 years too late to market.

Yeah, my house is full of Sonos and Alexa devices, all of which play more services than Homepod. They need something breakthrough — this is all just parity stuff. Maybe better audio quality than the Alexa devices, but not worth Apple prices for the upgrade. I have real audio equipment in my primarily listening rooms.

I’m kind of fascinated by the diorama Mid-Century Modern style house set that they’re using for the presentation.

This production is something. That does not look like greenscreen/CG to me.

I wonder if that’s a studio anyone can rent out or if they built a whole mini home set.

How come they don’t have to use the trigger phrase that I do? “Hey Siri… Hey Siri? HEY SIRI!”

Until a living, digitally de-aged Steve Jobs wanders through a recreated memory his own childhood home, lamenting his broken relationship with his brilliant inventor father before donning an Iron Man suit, I’m not impressed.