iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro Hit Stores
Apple's iPhone 12 and 12 Pro go on sale alongside the new iPad Air, bringing 5G, all-OLED screens, and MagSafe to the lineup.
The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro are officially on shelves today, a week after preorders opened on October 16. The redesigned fourth-generation iPad Air is landing alongside them, making for a genuinely busy launch day at Apple.
The headline feature, at least in Apple’s own framing, is 5G. That puts Apple roughly a year behind most of the Android world, where flagships from Samsung, OnePlus, and others have been shipping 5G radios since late 2019. Apple doesn’t usually chase first-mover status on connectivity, so the lag isn’t shocking, but it does mean the “iPhone 12 is Apple’s first 5G phone” framing is more about catching up than leading. Whether it matters day-to-day depends entirely on how built-out 5G coverage is where you live — in a lot of places, you’ll be on LTE most of the time anyway.
Honestly, though, the two features generating more real excitement among people I’ve talked to aren’t 5G at all.
OLED for everyone
For the first time, every model in the iPhone 12 line — including the standard iPad Air-adjacent 12 and 12 mini, not just the Pro — gets an OLED display. Previously OLED was a Pro-tier perk (going back to the iPhone X era), while the standard models made do with LCD. Deeper blacks, better contrast, and generally punchier HDR video are now standard across the board. It’s a meaningful upgrade for anyone who was buying the cheaper non-Pro model and wondering what they were giving up.
MagSafe is back, sort of
The other big talking point is MagSafe, resurrected from its old MacBook charging-cable days and reimagined as a ring of magnets embedded around the wireless charging coil on the back of the phone. Apple’s pitch is an ecosystem: snap-on wallets, cases, and a redesigned magnetic charging puck that aligns itself automatically instead of you fumbling to center it on a Qi pad. It’s a small thing, but if it works as advertised it could make wireless charging actually convenient instead of “technically wireless.” Third-party accessory makers are clearly going to have a field day with this over the next year.
The Pro model adds LiDAR for improved AR tracking and low-light autofocus, along with the usual camera and build refinements you’d expect from the higher tier.
It’s worth noting the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 Pro Max aren’t shipping yet — those arrive in November — so today’s launch is really the “middle” of the lineup. Early buyers are the ones who preordered the standard sizes.
Between the design overhaul (flat edges reminiscent of the iPhone 4/5 era), the OLED-everywhere move, and MagSafe, this feels like the most substantial iPhone refresh in a few years, 5G aside. Whether the 5G modem justifies any battery or thermal tradeoffs in daily use is something we’ll only really know once more people are living with these phones day to day.