This is an ode to the iPhone 12 Pro, which I got when it came out in 2020 and, just last week, replaced with an iPhone 17. This is about three things: me being sentimental about objects (I promise it’s not just about technology), the longevity and durability of the iPhone 12 Pro, and how that has impacted my choice of a replacement.
More for my own personal archives than anything else, here’s a list of the iPhones I’ve owned as my main phone:
- 2008: 3G
- 2010: 4
- 2012: 5 (white)
- 2013: 5s (white)
- 2014: 6 (white)
- 2016: 7 (Jet Black)
- 2018: Xs (Space Gray)
- 2020: 12 Pro (Pacific Blue)
- 2025: 17 (Mist Blue)
There have been others I had as secondary phones, before Apple added the dual SIM, but they were usually previous models or used ones that I’d get for cheap. In 2024 I also used an iPhone 15 for about a week as my main phone—I never intended to keep it, but we were traveling through Alaska and I thought the satellite connectivity would be a good thing to have. Then I came down with covid on day five, and that was the end of it.
My frequent turnover early on was due to Apple innovating like crazy and coming out with genuinely juicy stuff pretty much every year, and also to always having a market of people ready to buy my older models. In more recent years, however, it has largely been iterating on the same concept and any truly new features have been icing on the cake at best, and design misfires at worst (see below).
But also—and here’s where I get sentimental about objects—the 12 Pro was my pandemic phone, and maybe I felt that we had gone through stuff together, starting from delivery day, when UPS didn’t actually deliver and I had to wait in line in the cold at the UPS warehouse later that night with a number of other pissed-off people. All masked and socially distanced, of course.
The main aspect that’s kept me away from post-2020 iPhones has been their weight. Every new iPhone I got was always heavier and bulkier than the previous one. Going from the 5s to the 6 the increase in weight also came with a larger form factor, which tricked my brain into thinking the 6 was lighter. But when I compared the 12 Pro with the 13 Pro I decided that I’d reached my limit—the difference was minimal, but still significant given the similar overall size of the two models.
I could have downgraded to a non-Pro model, but after getting accustomed to the three cameras I didn’t want to go back to two and do away with the optical tele lens. So I was waiting for a Pro phone that would magically have all the things but also be lighter than my 12 Pro—which of course never happened, since Apple keeps making them ever so slightly larger every year and cramming entire Hubbles into them, so no luck there.
The 12 Pro kept chugging along, serving its basic purposes well and not choking on new versions of iOS. In 2024, when the complete nonsense that is Apple Intelligence arrived, I was happy my iPhone didn’t support it, so I wouldn’t be tempted to play with it—I played with it elsewhere, just to know what I was criticizing, but I just didn’t want it on my phone.
My other main problem with the latest models was that I like a phone with a mute switch. Steve Jobs was right (duh) when he said that a phone needs very few buttons, and one of these buttons should be a quick way to mute it. And sure, I know people who never unmute their phones (or, worse, never mute them), or who forget that the mute switch is there and I have to keep explaining it to them, but I like having it. I like knowing that I can reach into my pocket and through the magic of touch alone know whether the phone is muted or not. Likewise, I like that I can just glance at it and know that it’s muted just because of that little orange strip. The action button is a solution in search of a problem. Sure, it opens up possibilities, but at the expense of something that’s been a fundamental feature of all iPhones since 2007.
If I don’t want to take advantage of all those other possible features and stick with the action button’s default behavior—being a mute switch—what I get is something that works, but also makes me do more work to get to the same result: to know if my phone is muted or not when it’s in my pocket I have to long press the action button to activate it and interpret the haptic feedback—long for muted, short for not muted. Which also means that if I want it to be muted and I get a short buzz, I need to mute it again, and vice versa. The action button, which is supposed to be a magic portal into a universe of convenience and automation, suddenly adds undue cognitive burden to an action that for the past seventeen years had become second nature. Someone needs to explain to me how that’s supposed to be innovative.
What would improve this design is:
- Getting feedback from the action button via a short press, which wouldn’t change the action status
- A mute indicator in the Dynamic Island, next to the lock indicator, when the phone is in standby with the screen dimmed. In fairness, short-pressing the action button shows the current status and does’t wake the screen from its dimmed state, but a passive indicator would make even more sense. (Side note: what is even the point of the lock indicator when you know the phone is going to be locked when the screen is dimmed?)
We know how much Apple welcomes user feedback, so I won’t hold my breath.
In 2024 Apple added the camera-control button, which I understand a little more. Getting to the camera from the lock screen is sometimes a bit clunky—I know I don’t have to long-tap the camera shortcut that I and can just swipe left, but I always forget that. So maybe having a physical button that adds more controls and also acts as a shutter button makes some sense. But ultimately I see this as just another way to add hardware complexity that’s not self-explanatory (regular press vs light press?) and that most users won’t bother with, especially because it comes with additional settings that most users won’t ever know exist, because most users are overwhelmed by what the Settings app has become. And I say “most users” based on my very unscientific sample of pretty much everyone I know with an iPhone.
Maybe the action button and the camera control should have been merged into one, but they were released in different years, so they just live parallel lives, like separate attempts to turn the iPhone into the Homer. I realize that a combined action/camera button might add even more complexity, and I’m just saying this without any thought as to the design specifics of such combined functionality—I just really want the mute switch back where it always was.
In spite of all of that, the promise of a truly lighter phone is what made me crack this year. I was sure the iPhone Air would be it: thin, lightweight, awesome—probably expensive, but after five years with the same phone I figured it would be okay. As it turned out, the Air is most of those things, although not as expensive as I’d feared. I went back and forth for a few days, and ultimately I decided in favor of the 17 for reasons similar to why Wirecutter made it its top pick:
- Although it’s heavier than the Air, it’s lighter than the 12 Pro by 12 whole grams, which may not sound like much, but after five years I can feel it pretty obviously
- While it’s larger than previous models, it’s only slightly taller and minimally thicker than the 12 Pro, so it doesn’t add substantial bulk when it’s sitting in my pocket
- It has an always-on display, previously available only on Pro models
- It still has a wide lens, which I enjoy very much, and promises optical-quality 2x zoom. In reality I know that calling the 2x zoom optical on a phone without a 2x tele lens is a marketing stunt, but I can live with that
- I may be an occasional early adopter, but I didn’t feel like shelling an extra $200 plus tax for more limited features, just for the pleasure of having the color of my phone match my MacBook Air. Even I am not that color-coordinated.
It’s been a week, and I’m happy with the choice. To reduce redundancy and reset my muscle memory I decided to replace the camera button on the lock screen with the type-to-Siri button, which is the only functionality I could find that wouldn’t be out of place on the lock screen—and also works without Apple Intelligence, via an accessibility setting (Settings > Accessibility > Type to Siri). The action button is set to its default of a mute-switch replacement. Every time I try to flick it sideways I feel a zap of disappointment, but who knows, maybe in another five years I’ll have become accustomed to it.