Kyle Wilkinson
- Oct 13, 2020
- 4 min read

Summary Apple iPhone Event 13.10.20

Apple Special Event 13.10.20

On Tuesday Apple hosted there third pre-recorded special event of the year. Dubbed the “iPhone event” many people were looking forward to what the new iPhones may look like and Apple didn’t disappoint but first they announced a new version of a product originally launched in 2018 [1] and that was the HomePod.

New for 2020 Is the HomePod mini. This is a longer overdue smaller version of the HomePod. Apple quoted promising “Amazing sound” an “Excellent assistant, Smart home” and being “Private and secure”. Powering the HomePod mini is a S5 chip found in the Apple Watch Series 5 and SE.

The Mini has very similar features to the original HomePod, I imagine there will be a little sound difference but won’t know till we here them. They did announce a software update coming to both HomePods called intercom allowing you to send audio messages to all the HomePods via the HomePod or with your other Apple devices including during CarPlay.

The best thing about this new HomePod mini however is the price. The HomePod is currently £279 and was £319 new but the new HomePod mini is £99 / $99. The HomePod is available for preorder on 06.11 and available from 16.11.

Now let’s look at the main event, Starting with the iPhone 12. From the start Tim Cook made one thing clear that the new iPhone range would all be coming with 5G. This was then reminded a lot throughout the presentation, still a good thing to see. The iPhone 12 is 11% thinner, 15% smaller and 16% lighter then the previous iPhone 11 and comes with Super Retina XDR Display the very same as the one in the 11 Pro.

As expected, the device comes with a new A14 Bionic chip making it the fastest chip in an iPhone. The screen features a special Ceramic shield which I’m not going to explain how it works but it makes it 4x less likely to crack or scratch when dropped. The iPhone 12 didn’t stop at this size though it also comes at a Mini size. Named the iPhone 12 mini it has the same specs as the 12 but is smaller with a screen size of 5.4inchs.

The iPhone 12 & 12 Mini is available in 5 colours. Blue, Green, Product RED, White and Black.

You could go all out and get the new iPhone 12 Pro which features all the same new cool features as the 12 plus more. First of it features the LiDAR sensor which was introduced on the iPad Pro earlier this year this makes the camera even better especially in the dark where it can read the depth of the room and see the surfaces and speaking of the camera it’s 87% better at low-light photos, has a 5x optical zoom range and bigger 1.7µm pixels. [2] Apple have a pretty cool tool on their website which explains all the features of each camera.

There’s loads of cool new features to talk about but I’m trying to keep this to a summary so now I’m looking at another new feature Apple are keen to market across their website and that is the introduction of MagSafe to iPhone. It’s an optional accessory which is Apples second attempt at wireless charging. The lead is £39 ($39) and looks similar to the Apple watch charger in my opinion. There is also a new special iPhone leather wallet with MagSafe for $59 (£59) This year like the Apple Watch, Apple have removed the charging adapter and headphones from the box. Making the iPhone packaging less smaller Apple said that people have lots of spare adaptors around by now which is properly true after handing out many for years and years but interestingly it comes with a Lightning to USB-C lead which it never has done before and not many people have. The iPhone 12 comes in 4 colours Graphite, Silver, Gold and Pacific blue.

So, this is now the current line-up of iPhones available:

iPhone SE - £399 ($399)

iPhone XR - £499 ($499)

iPhone 11 - £599 ($599)

iPhone 12 - £799 ($829)

iPhone 12 mini - £699 ($729)

iPhone 12 Pro - £999 ($999)

iPhone 12 Pro Max - £1099 ($1099)

The preorder for the iPhone 12 & 12 Pro opens on Friday at 5.am EST (1pm BST). Available on 23.10 and the 12 mini and Pro Max preorder starts on 6.11 and available on 16.11.

Thanks for reading, stay in touch via Twitter www.twitter.com/kylewilkinson46 and feel free to DM or @ me your questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. I intend to be pre-ordering on Friday, and I’ll be writing a review in the coming weeks following. I’ll also be talking more about this week’s event in my next podcast episode which should be available next week. If you haven’t checked out Episode 2 yet you can do on the links below.

Thanks for reading,

Kyle Wilkinson