iPhone 12 vs. iPhone 15 Pro Camera Comparison - Is the Upgrade Worth It？

Hello, welcome back to a new video. So

I've been playing around with my brand new

iPhone 15 Pro for a while now, and I can

confidently say it is way better than my

old iPhone 12 Mini in almost every single

way. In today's video, I want to compare

the iPhone 15 Pro to the iPhone 12 Mini.

So I've been using the iPhone 12 Mini for

nearly 3 years now. I bought it in October

or November of 2020, and I bought the

iPhone 15 Pro yesterday, and there's some

massive differences between the camera

systems in these 2 phones. You might be

wondering, is it worth upgrading from the

iPhone 12 to the iPhone 15? And I can

easily say yes, definitely. The main

problems I had with my iPhone 12 Mini

which caused me to upgrade was mostly the

battery and the outdated camera systems.

You can see here on the iPhone 12 Mini

battery health, it says maximum capacity

is only 78%, so it only charges up to 78%,

which is not very much. My iPhone 12 Mini

battery runs out so quickly. It runs out

in about 5 hours of not really using it

much, just browsing the web, maybe a few

photos, watching some YouTube, drains the

battery to almost 20% after about 5 hours.

So if I was actually doing heavy usage on

the phone, it would only last maybe 3 or 4

hours, which is not very good. The next

big problem I had was, as you can see,

this iPhone 12 Mini has seen some tough

times. Look at all the cracks on it. And

also the side, the frame, the steel frame

around the edges is not looking too great.

I don't know why these little marks

started appearing. And all these little

dents and scratches from where I've

dropped it. I dropped it on the corners a

few times, so you can see the corners are

looking pretty battered. And this weird

thing happens where, you know, where I put

my finger on the phone when I'm holding

the phone, where my finger naturally rests

next to the SIM card tray, it started

melting away the steel finish on the

frame, around the frame. So I've got this

big groove that looks really ugly around

the edge of the phone. And I'm hoping the

iPhone 15 doesn't do that since it's made

out of titanium instead of stainless

steel. Usually I hold my phone like this

with my ring finger here, and where my

ring finger rests, it's kind of carved out

a groove where my finger usually goes. So

I don't know if my, my fingers just

secrete like a very acidic sweat or acidic

oil and it's eaten away at the phone. But

yeah, it's pretty ugly and the whole phone

just looks really ugly. Maybe I should

have used the case, but I don't like using

cases because what's the point buying a

nice looking phone if you never get to

touch or feel the nice looking phone and

you can never see it because it's hidden

under a case? Okay, next let's talk about

the camera systems. Obviously the 15 Pro

is massively better than the iPhone 12

Mini cameras in every single way, plus you

get a 3x optical zoom. The iPhone 12 Mini

doesn't even have a zoom, it's got like a

standard lens and a wide angle lens,

0.5x wide angle and the 1x standard

lens. And to zoom, you have to do like a

3x digital zoom, which obviously looks

pretty bad if you look at this, how grainy

it is. So that is the 3x digital zoom.

It's really ugly, and it's, um, it's been

really annoying trying to do vlogs and you

don't have any kind of good zoom. So I'm

really pleased that I now have the 3x

optical zoom. I did want the 5x optical

zoom on the Pro Max, but they didn't have

any Pro Max stock in the shop, and it said

I'd have to wait until like October to get

the Pro Max, and I wanted it now, so I

decided to get the Pro instead. But the

main 2 features of the new phone, of the

new iPhone 15 camera system, that I really

like has to be the macro shooting mode and

also the cinematic shooting mode. So the

macro mode basically uses the wide-angle

lens and lets you do ultra close-ups of

things, which, as someone who has a fish

tank and likes taking pictures and photos

and videos of his shrimp and his fish,

the macro lens is really cool. I'll show

you footage now. Here's macro footage

of my baby cherry shrimp that I took

yesterday, and I have to tell you, the

baby shrimp is extremely small. It's very

tiny. Look at the tiny little rocks. They

look like rocks, but they're actually very

tiny bits of gravel that I have in my fish

tank, and it's barely bigger than one

piece of gravel. And I'm able to zoom in

really closely and actually focus with the

macro ability, and the phone automatically

detects when you're trying to do a macro

photo or a macro video, and it will switch

to the wide-angle lens. And if you turn on

the flashlight or the torch on the back of

the iPhone and have that on whilst you're

filming, you can get some amazing detail

up close. And the iPhone 12 Mini just

cannot do this. It simply cannot focus

this closely. And iPhone lenses— cameras

have been kind of notorious for not being

able to focus very closely. And without

using this macro feature, it is extremely

difficult to film my fish or my shrimp

because it just won't focus. On my Samsung

Flip Z, I can actually focus quite closely

to the shrimp and the fish and it auto

locks pretty good. But I really struggle

to film the same things with my iPhone 12

Mini or even the iPhone 15 Pro on the

standard lens. But with the macro lens, I

am able to get these really close-up

shots. So if you're into macro

photography, then the iPhone 15 Pro camera

is really good for this, and I don't see

this kind of camera options in any other

phone. So as you can see, the software in

the camera of the iPhone Pro 15 can

automatically detect when you're trying to

take a macro photo, and it'll have this

little yellow flower at the bottom, and

that means the macro mode is on. And then

you can crop into the macro mode like

this, 2x or 3x. This is all using the

wide-angle lens, by the way. And then you

can zoom out like this, and 1x is usually

the best. And then if you turn off macro

mode by pressing the yellow button it will

switch back to the standard lens. And as

you can see, the standard lens cannot

focus this closely. If I try, if I try to

focus,

yeah, it just cannot focus that closely.

Even if you zoom in like that or do the 3x

zoom, it cannot focus at all. And even if

I bring the phone back a little bit, it

can start to kind of focus if I bring the

phone back, but then it's kind of far

away. So switching back to the macro

option you can see it's really sharp and

clear, and you can get some great macro

shots, especially if you have the

flashlight turned on. Next, I want to talk

about the Cinematic Video mode, which only

exists on the iPhone 15. I'm not sure if

it only exists on the 15 Pro or if it's

also on the 15, but this isn't available

on the iPhone 12 Mini, and this is so

good. Basically, you can choose different

objects in the viewfinder to focus on,

and then it will blur out everything else

in the background and even in the

foreground, and it looks really good. I

think it's using some kind of software to

blur out the background because I don't

think the sensor on the iPhone is big

enough to actually blur out the background

this well on things far away. But it does

a very good job at blurring stuff out

without it looking artificial, and it

looks like you're filming using some kind

of fancy mirrorless camera or DSLR. If you

tap on the object again, it'll do

autofocus tracking lock, and it will keep

the focus locked on that thing that you

tapped on. It does a very good job at

identifying the objects and drawing this

yellow square around it. For example,

that green box over there, it easily

detects it and chooses it to stand out in

front of everything else. And you can

easily just switch between different

things to focus on. Obviously, if you're

filming a person, it would look a lot

better and have like a cinematic effect

with background blur. This is the video I

filmed on the iPhone 15 Pro using

Cinematic Mode. And as you can see, it

looks so good. It's so stable. The way

it's blurring out the objects that you

choose to blur out looks so convincing and

so artistic. I just really wish I could go

somewhere that looks nice and take some

nice looking videos instead of my bed with

a box on it, but you know, it still looks

pretty good. I mean, look at how it just

shifts between the different focal planes

as if it actually has a big sensor. It

looks really good.

Then I took the same video without using

cinematic mode, just the standard lens,

and it's such a massive difference. It

doesn't blur out the background much.

There's a slight background blur, but it's

very unnoticeable compared to cinematic

mode. So yeah, this was a very unexpected

feature. I had no idea it could do this

because I watched the live event, the

launch, Apple launch event, and I watched

a bunch of reviews and I don't remember

seeing anyone else talk about this

feature. I know iPhone has portrait mode

for photos and it blurs out the background

for that, but I'm not really that into

taking photos. I'm more of a video kind of

guy. So having this feature has been

really unexpected and surprising in a

pleasant way. Now it's not 100% perfect,

and if you look closely, you can see the

top of objects is trying to keep in focus.

The very top does kind of slightly get

blurred out as well by accident, but I

guess that depends on the lighting

situation or the angle. But in general,

in most cases, it looks completely fine

and you don't really notice the mistakes

that the software is making. And in

general, it looks really good. And I had

no idea that this feature even existed.

And if I knew this feature existed, I

would, I would have had zero hesitation

buying this phone because I really feel

like this is a game changer when it comes

to making vlogs for YouTube. And then you

have that amazing 3x optical zoom, which

is really good. And you can notice the

phone sometimes chooses the standard

48-megapixel lens and then crops into 3x,

but then depending on the lighting

situations, it might choose the 3x optical

lens instead. I don't really know what

kind of calculations it's doing, but I did

test by covering the lens using my finger,

and it does switch between the 3x optical

and the main lens, which is cropped into

the 48-megapixel sensor. And you can then

pinch in to zoom up to 9x digital zoom,

which is okay, okay, but it's not as nice

as Samsung's S23 100x Moon Zoom. Won't be

able to do very good moon shots with this

phone. Next, we'll do some Geekbench

hardware tests. For some reason, it says

it's the iPhone 16. I'm pretty sure Apple

didn't accidentally give me next year's

phone, but for some reason it says iPhone

16. This is an iPhone 15 Pro.

Okay, so the results are in.

On the iPhone 15 12 mini, we have

single-core score of 2117 compared to 2920

on the iPhone 15 Pro. And multi-core

score, we got 4743 compared to 7211.

So that is a pretty substantial increase

in single-core and multi-core

performances. But this is where I was

really blown away. So the GPU test has

just finished, and oh my God, the iPhone

15 Pro blows the iPhone 12 Mini out of the

water. On the iPhone 12 Mini, we've got a

paltry 16,544, but then

on the iPhone 15 Pro, you got 27,000.

That's like almost an extra 10,000 over

the 12 Mini. So the GPU on this new A17

Bionic chip is amazing for, I don't know,

gaming, processing 4K videos, exporting 4K

videos when you're editing videos, which

usually takes a very long time. On the

iPhone 12 Mini, but it's blazing fast on

the iPhone 15 Pro. So we scroll down, we

can see the processor on the iPhone 12 is

the A14 Bionic. On the iPhone 15 Pro,

it is the— obviously the A17 Pro GPU.

I don't know if you can see that. Yep,

the A17 Pro GPU, which is the latest

and the greatest in, um, Apple Silicon.

It's a 3-nanometer chip which is supposed

to be very good and very fast. And it can

also play console-like games like Resident

Evil 4. The console version is coming to

iPhone 15, which I'd really like to test

out when it does come out, see if it

actually plays well. And we got 7.5GB of

memory, which is the RAM. And on the

iPhone 12 Mini, it's only— I think it's

less than 4. Yeah,

3.59GB of RAM on the iPhone 12.

On the iPhone 12 Mini. And then you can

see all these other stats which I don't

really understand. But yeah, the GPU is so

much better on the iPhone 15 compared to

iPhone 12. Jesus, 27,000 is absolutely

insane. And then you can actually go to

GPU here and it compares your device

compared to other devices. So for some

reason, the new iPad Pro with the M2 chip

has 44,000

on the GPU benchmark results, which is

absolutely insane. I don't know if that's

accurate or not. Yeah, the new iPad Pros

with the M2s and M1s are faster,

but the iPhone 15 is faster than the

iPhone 14 Pro. So as you can imagine, the

iPhone 15 Pro blows every other iPhone out

of the water, but it loses to the iPad the

new iPads. Even the new iPad Air is a bit

faster with, uh,

31,588. And then finally, I want to

compare the camera lenses and camera bumps

on the 2 phones. And look how big the

camera lenses and the bumps are on the

iPhone 15 Pro compared to the Mini. The

Mini's camera setup is absolutely tiny.

Look how small these little circles are

compared to these massive things. This

camera setup is huge. As you can see from

the side profiles, the camera lenses on

the camera system for the iPhone 15 Pro

protrude and stick out way more than the

iPhone 12 Mini, as, as expected. But

surprisingly, the phone doesn't really

feel much heavier than the iPhone 12 Mini,

and I think that's thanks to the titanium.

I think it's because of the titanium,

it's much lighter, and when I put the

phone in my pocket, it doesn't really feel

that much heavier than the iPhone 12 Mini.

So yeah, I'm really enjoying the iPhone 15

Pro a lot. So far it's been a really good

experience and it's definitely a lot

better than the 12 Mini. I feel like it's

a worthy upgrade from the 12, definitely,

and I can't wait to go somewhere

interesting and take some nice looking

photos and videos. Thanks for watching and