Xiaomi Redmi 12

Design and build The redmi 12, we finally have a successor to 2021's redmi 10. redmi took a year off with this series but even after so much time not a lot has changed what's new here is a larger display and a revamped design the camera setup looks a lot more elegant and less cluttered and rather than a plastic back this one is made from glass both the back and the plastic frame are flat and while this phone is a bit heavier than the redmi 10 it feels solid in the hand another new development is ingress protection rated at ip53. 

Screen specs and features Screen specs and features  6.79 inches the LCD display is noticeably larger than the redmi 10s and it has a 1080p resolution and a 90 Hertz refresh rate the display's brightness is okay for the price range maxing out at around 540 nits there's no boost in auto mode and the auto brightness itself isn't very reliable it seems that the phone lacks a light sensor and uses the selfie cam to manage it and besides that, you're also missing a hardware proximity sensor which can cause issues with accidental touches during voice calls back to the display though it has good sharpness looks decent and has plenty of contrast considering it's an LCD, not an OLED the color accuracy is actually not too bad either and you have color options to tweak them with the screen's 90 Hertz refresh rate helps smooth out your swiping and scrolling it's adaptive too dialing down when you stop interacting with the screen to save energy there is actually one notable downgrade on the redmi 12 compared to the previous model instead of stereo speakers you. 

I have just a single bottom-firing speaker and headphone jack here. The loudness is average, and the sound quality is nothing special. If you'd like to hear for yourself and compare, you can check out the provided link. The Redmi 12 has a 3.5-millimeter Jack, too, if you'd rather plug in headphones. 

Side-mounted fingerprint scanner/power button The reliable side-mounted fingerprint reader built into the power button allows you to wake up and unlock the phone. 

Storage options The Redmi 12 comes with either 128 or 256 gigs of storage on board and that's expandable further through microSD. 

Android 13 and UI The interface of the redmi 12 is Xiaomi's MIUI 14 is based on Android 13. it's pretty much the same UI you'd get on any Xiaomi phone Xiaomi does promise support for two years of OS updates and four years of security patches here which is nice to have if you'd like to learn more about the software experience you can check out our dedicated video about MIUI 14. 

MediaTek Helio G88 performance Unfortunately even though a couple of years have passed the redmi 12 brings the same chipset that the previous model did a MediaTek Helio G88 this wasn't a very impressive chipset even back when it was new and nowadays it falls even further behind competitors for about the same price you'll find phones which are both more powerful and more power efficient and there's no support for 5G connectivity here either.

Battery endurance and charging test The Redmi 12's battery life is good but not quite as good as some other phones with a 5,000 milliamp-hour battery with an overall endurance rating of 117 hours and the redmi 12 supports 18-watt charging but doesn't include a charger in the Box we clocked the charging times and we got from 0 to 29 in half an hour that's hardly fast but it is on par with the entry-level competition.

Camera specs now we have the cameras there's a 50-megapixel main cam an 8-megapixel Ultra wide and a 2-megapixel macro cam just like the redmi 10 but this time around you're missing a depth sensor.

Main camera: photo and video quality that's not all that's different xiaomi has done a much better job here when it comes to the camera's processing at least in good lighting the 12.5 megapixel photos from the main cam have plenty of detail and are decently sharp with good contrast Punchy colors and wide dynamic range portraits are okay with decent subject separation however the topics don't seem as sharp or detailed as in the regular photos in low-light conditions the redmi 12 won't automatically use night mode processing the images you get by default are lacking fine detail the dynamic range is limited too with clipped highlights if you turn on night mode it takes some time to take a single photo noise gets even more prominent while the detail is smeared and the dynamic range still isn't that wide the redmi 12 can only shoot videos in 1080P resolution the primary cam footage is just average in quality it's a bit soft and the exposure is on the bright side leading to clipped highlights.

Ultrawide camera: photo and video quality Now let's talk about the ultra-wide cam during the day its photos have good contrast and the Punchy colors of the images are a bit soft and lacking in detail and dynamic range could be better but that's all par for the chorus for a budget Ultra wide in low light conditions the ultra-wide cam struggles to produce usable images and there's no night mode available to help it out video capture from the ultrawide is good for the class with lovely colors now we have the macro camera it's two.

Macro camera photo quality Megapixel photos don't have much detail and the contrast and colors leave more to be desired.

Selfies And finally selfies from the 8-megapixel front-facing cam is sharp enough and decent for the price range so that's the redmi 12. it's pretty much the. 

Conclusion The same phone as the two-year-old redmi 10 and you even lose the stereo speakers so why go for this one well you do get a larger screen a fresh design and updated software Camera processing and even better the redmi 12 is launching with more base storage for cheaper than the redmi 10 was going for two years ago so overall while there are competitors that can offer more powerful hardware than the redmi 12. if you want to save some cash it could be worth considering.

Samsung Galaxy A12

Design and build quality the galaxy a12 is an entry-level device and as you'd expect his features aren't as competitive as most phones we normally review however devices like this do have an audience some people just want the basics and don't want to spend a whole lot on a phone the a12 is built from solid plastic which actually looks and feels pretty good the back is textured with diagonal stripes which add some extra grip rather than having a rear panel and a frame this is more of a unibody sort of construction on the front is a 6.5-inch display with6.5’’ PLS LCD display with 720p resolution a notch for the selfie cam this is a pls lcd not an amoled like most of samsung's phones and the resolution is just 720p it's nice to have a large screen but this combination means that the pixel density is pretty low just 264 ppi look closely at things like text and you'll notice some graininess here it's also a bit noticeable when watching content it's not the end of the world though contrast here is alright as far as lcds go and colors are sort of accurate though there's no way to tweak them manually and brightness is nothing special here we measured 400 nits maximum with the slider and a small boost to around 470 nits in auto mode for audio, the galaxy a12 has a single Single bottom loudspeaker test, headphone jack bottom-firing loudspeaker with this below-average loudness score it's one of the quieter handsets in its class it doesn't stand out with quality either with absent lows and muted treble at least you do have a 3.5 millimeter jack for plugging in traditional headphones with and fm radio support waking up and unlocking the phone is Side-mounted fingerprint scanner done with a side-mounted fingerprint reader which doubles as the power button it works pretty well and storage isStorage options expandable through the dedicated micro sd slot on top of the 32 64 or 128 gigs built in the galaxy a12s interface is Android 10Android 10 and OneUI 2.5 with Samsung's one UI 2.5 on top we don't have the new android 11 for now however, one ui is quite consistent between devices and its features here are quite familiar you can keep your apps in an app drawer and while there are some proprietary Samsung apps like the gallery web browser and file manager most features are handled through google's apps you are missing a couple of things here compared to some other Samsung phones there's no always-on display since this isn't an amoled and you don't get the edge panel shortcuts either Mediatek Helio P35 performance under the hood of the galaxy a12 is a mediatek helio p35 chipset built on a 12-nanometer process it's not very competitive trailing behind in the charts as far as cpu benchmarks go for example, the poco m3 which runs on the snapdragon 662 scores around 70 percent higher in CPU tests the a12 does hold its own in GPU performance though thanks to its lower res display in regular use performance on the a12 isn't terrible but we did experience hiccups from time to time and gaming isn't really a great experience here one area in which this device is quite competitive is battery alive Battery (5000mAh) endurance and charging test the a12 has a sizeable 5000 milliamp hour battery and was able to score an outstanding endurance rating of 123 hours in our proprietary tests this is one of the more attractive features of this phone with a screen on time of around 15hours of video playback or talk time upwards of 30 hours you can use the a12 all day without having to worry about running out of juice once the battery does get low though it will take a while to top back up the phone comes bundled with a 15 watt fast charger and with it we were only able to charge a dead battery to 20 in half an hour now let's go over the Camera specs cameras the a12 has a quad-camera setupfeaturing a 48-megapixel quad bayermain camera a 5-megapixel ultra-wide cam a 2 megapixel macro cam and a depth sensor Daylight photo quality photos from the main camera come out in 12 megapixels and they are sharp with relatively high levels of detail and minimal noise dynamic range is quite wide and colors look true to life the main cam can also snap portraits in live focus mode  these are good with fairly competent separation around the subject the subject's face is well exposed but since there's no hdr take care not to end up with a blown background 5 megapixel shots from the ultra wide camera has a 123-degree field of view and have the wide dynamic range they are quite noisy though and don't have a lot of detail there's also no distortion correction available so objects near the edges of the frame will come out a bit curved the macro camera is used to take close-up photos which are good if you don't look at them too closely the 2-megapixel resolution just doesn't hold all that much detail in low light the main cams performance  Low-light photo quality isn't spectacular you get a decent amount of detail and well preserved colors but the dynamic range is pretty narrow with blown highlights and dark shadows and the images are quite noisy there is no night mode available on the a12 either the ultrawide struggles even more when the light is low the exposure is quite dark and you get plenty of softness and noise and narrow dynamic range selfies are taken with the 8 megapixel Selfies front-facing cam and these aren't too bad if there's enough light you get good detail conservative colors and decent dynamic range with the help of her Video recording options and quality as far as video recording goes the galaxy a12 is quite basic you can only record in up to 1080p at 30fps and there's no stabilization footage from the main cam is about average for a phone in this class there's not much fine detail and there's heavy sharpening but there's hardly any noise either and colors are accurate and dynamic range is decent the ultra wide shoots video that is okay for this budget class it's not super sharp but there's no noise and you get fairly wide dynamic range and likable colors so that's the galaxy a12 Conclusion it's got a snazzy textured design excellent battery life and a decent camera setup with an ultra wide all for a budget price however it's worth considering that other budget champions from realme xiaomi and poco are out there in some cases even cheaper and they improve upon some of the a12 shortcomings like a slow res screen and underpowered chipset so overall unless you're dead set on getting a galaxy phone it's probably worth shopping around to get more bang for your buck

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Realme 8 Pro

Design and build metallic gradient finish and a prominent Dare to Leap logo across the backside the back is made from plastic with a sandblasted texture that is rather grippy but feels soft to the touch the matte plastic frame adds a bit of grip as well overall the phone is quite thin and light and great to handle in one hand one thing missing on the realme 8 pro is water resistant coating on the internals which the realme 7 pro did have it's too bad because accidents can happen something that6.4’’ Super AMOLED, 1080p, 60Hz refresh rate hasn't changed much is the display it's again a 6.4-inch AMOLED panel with a 1080p resolution and a regular 60hz refresh rate there is a small upgrade though in the touch sampling rate now it's 180 hertz so the screen is more responsive something important for gaming the realme 8 pro's display is pretty nice as an AMOLED it offers excellent contrast and content is plenty sharp colors can be made quite accurate if you adjust them in the color settings and brightness is great for this class we measured a maximum of 450 nits with the slider and it boosts up to nearly 630 nits in auto mode when in bright sun Speakers moving on to audio and yeah this is another downgrade from the real me 7 pro rather than a pair of stereo speakers this time around there's a single one at the bottom it's not very loud scoring just average on our charts and audio quality is just average too with decent mids but lackluster highs as an alternative you can also plug in traditional headphones to the 3.5 millimeter jack and another popular feature you get here is expandable storage on top of the 128 gigs built in waking up and unlocking the realme 8 pro can be done with an under display fingerprint scanner it's incredibly fast and accurate the OS Android 11, Realme UI 2.0 interface of the realme 8 pro is real miui 2.0 on top of android 11. it has a few notable features and is quite customizable if you don't like the shapes of the icons the font or the system colors you can change them all within the settings there's a lot of variety even within the dark mode you have a choice between three different styles the traditional black as well as dark gray and light gray like the recent galaxy phones there is a smart sidebar which can hold customizable shortcuts for you and a special feature here is the ability to minimize an app to a mini window or a floating window straight from the task switcher at the heart of the realme 8 pro is a Snapdragon 720G, 6/8GB RAM snapdragon 720 g chipset it's the same that you'd find in last year's model as well as the newly popular Samsung galaxy a52 and as you'd expect performance here is about on par with these devices it isn't too bad it can handle games pretty well and the user interface flows smoothly without any lag however it's worth keeping in mind that in this sort of flagship killer price range the charts are full of competitors with more power under the hood the realme 8 pro has a decent sized 4 Battery (4500mAh) and Charging speed 500 milliamp hour battery the same capacity as the real me 7 pro and as you'd expect from a phone with such similar specs the battery life is basically the same too the 8 pro scored a very good endurance rating of 116 hours in our proprietary tests versus 113 on the 7 pro however charging has been downgraded just a bit here you have support for 50 watt charging versus 65 last year but you get a 65 watt adapter in the box what still that's not to say it isn't incredibly fast here we were able to charge the realme 8 pro from a dead battery to 88 in half an hour now on to the cameras Camera specs and features which are the major upgrade you'll get here over last year's model the main cam has a large 108 megapixel nona cell sensor versus the 64 megapixel quad bayer one on the real me seven pro the rest of the setup is the same though an 8 megapixel ultrawide camera a 2 megapixel macro cam and a depth sensor photos from the main camera come out at Daylight photos image quality 12 megapixels by default and these are good they are detailed enough with excellent contrast lively colors low noise and impressive dynamic range we wouldn't call this flagship worthy though if you zoom in you'll see that fine details and textures like foliage have a sort of smeared oil painting look perhaps due to the noise processing don't get us wrong for a mid-range phone these photos are great but we were just expecting more from this flagship grade sensor one trick this large sensor allows you to do is cropped to produce lossless three times zoomed photos these are prettyawesome they're rich in detail with well-handled noise superb contrast punchy colors and grey dynamic range these photos are hard to distinguish from those taken with a real three times telephoto you can also achieve a five times digital zoom which involves a bit of an upscale but still looks really good portraits taken with the main camera and the depth sensor are impressive the subjects are sharp and detailed with proficient separation from the defocus backgrounds moving on to the 8 megapixel photos from the ultrawide cam these are average looking with mediocre resolve detail ok contrast and dynamic range which leaves more to be desired this is about par for the course for this price range shooting close-ups with a macro camera is pretty difficult because its focus is fixed but even if you get the distance right these are still soft and noisy with dull colors at night the main Low light photos image quality camera takes very balanced and true to life photos with gentle noise reduction plenty of detail lifelike colors and good contrast you may observe some clipped highlights though with night mode on each shot takes from 5 to 10 seconds to process maybe due to a combination of the high resolution sensor and mid-range chipset these are brighter and the noise is eliminated but they're also softer and the problematic highlights are still visible the better solution is ai mode if you switch this on at night the phone produces an hdr photo with the same detail and noise levels as auto mode but gives you a brighter look with restored highlights and these don't take any extra time to process lossless zoom doesn't work at night you just end up with a standard three times digital zoom which doesn't look good low light photos taken with the ultra wide cam are noisy soft and dark ai mode doesn't help a lot just giving a brighter exposure but the night mode does make a difference here you get a cleaner brighter image with more detail and restored highlights now on to selfies which are taken with Selfie camera the 16 megapixel front facing cam lower res than the 32 megapixel sensor of last year the colors contrast and dynamic range are great even if the dtl level is just average the quality is decent here videos can be Video quality captured with the main cam and up to 4k resolution at 30fps the quality here is stellar with rich detail low noise accurate colors and great dynamic range our only complaint is that there's no stabilization available in 4k the ultra wide shoots in 1080p and these are just alright there isn't a lot of resolved detail but the contrast and dynamic range are good so that's the ryomi 8 pro overall is a Conclusion pretty decent package for a mid-ranger with an easy to handle body a nice amoled display great battery life and super fast charging and excellent photos and videos from the main cam at least during the day the problem is well there are actually two problems here first is that someone coming from last year's model will not only get the same features but actually miss out on quite a few and i'm not sure if the trade-off for a better camera is worth it for everyone and the second issue is the pricing you can find flagship killers from poco for around the same amount of money and even if you're just after the high-res camera you can get that together with other upgrades in the redmi note 10 pro so unless you can find the realme 8 pro at a discount it's tough to recommend

Thanks for watching guys.

Asus Zenfone 10

Design and build very often when you see a flagship it comes with a large screen and body to boot Asus zenfones are different though packing a pint-sized yet premium punch Asus isn't breaking the mold with their newest generation looking at the Zenfone 9 and 10 side by side you can hardly tell a difference they have the same size and shape the grippy polycarbonate backing and a metal frame there are again plenty of color options to choose from to fit your style and you get ip68 protection against water and dust as befitting a flagship Screen specs and features the display is similar too you again have a 5.9 inch OLED with a 1080p resolution and victus protection but this time there's a 144hz refresh rate that's meant to be a little bit smoother than the 120 hertz of last year unfortunately when swiping around you're actually still limited to 120 so what's the difference the highest refresh rate setting is actually meant for games and high refresh rate gaming is encouraged here to turn on the 144 Hertz you have to switch a toggle in the gaming overlay the screen itself looks good it has great contrast and support for HDR 10 plus video the color accuracy can be very good too depending on your color settings and when it comes to brightness there isn't a huge difference from last year we measured around 440 mids maximum with the manual slider and this can boost to around 800 nits in auto mode when in bright Sun Stereo speakers, headphone jack for audio Asus has brought back the headphone jack as well as stereo speakers tuned by the rack the speakers have good loudness but we felt that the bass was a bit better on the previous model to hear for yourself and compare you can check out the provided link Software and UI the interface of the Zenfone 10 is asus's Zen UI on top of Android 13. it brings some custom features such as shortcuts you can access through an edge panel you can also launch shortcuts through the fingerprint reader power button you can map functions or apps to a press double press long press or even a slide gesture and the fingerprint reader itself is blazing fast and reliable like last year Asus promises software support for two years of OS updates and four years of security patches and there are plenty of gaming related options you can access through an in-game overlay similar to a gaming phone and there are further options beyond that if you dive into the menus the gaming performance is even better than on last year's model thanks to the new flagship chipset the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 performance Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and on top of the better performance compared to the previous generation you get support for new memory attack ufs 4.0 and lpddr5x RAM as expected in benchmarks the Zenfone 10 does a great job on par with this year's other top Android phones the day-to-day performance is super smooth and gaming and multitasking are a breeze when it comes to Thermal management the Zenfone 10 does an okay job about the same as last year when in the default Dynamic performance mode we saw the phone quickly undergo heavy throttling but from that point on it maintained that level for the rest of the stress test in contrast in the high performance mode the phone maintained a higher performance level but periodically would Throttle Down considerably which could introduce some stutters in game Storage options the Zenfone 10 can come with 128 256 or 512 gigs of storage on board and that's not expandable through microSD Battery endurance and charging tests and like last year the Zenfone 10 has a 4300 milliamp hour battery its screen on results were better but standby times were worse so all together we got a similar overall endurance rating of 109 hours the charging speed is nearly the same too as expected the 30 watt wired charger was able to top up the Zenfone 10 from 0 to 60 percent in half an hour but now there's support for a wireless charging which was missing on the previous model Camera specs now let's talk cameras the Zenfone 10 brings a dual camera setup consisting of a gimbal stabilized 50 megapixel main Cam and a 13 megapixel Ultra wide cam Main camera: photo and video quality during the day photos from the main cam are solid there's plenty of detail with a nice natural looking rendition the dynamic range is very good too and we got well exposed shots with nicely developed tunnel extremes one of the most notable differences from the Zenfone 9's photos is the color rendition at least when Outdoors where the Zenfone 9 is more neutral this Zenfone 10 brings more saturated popping colors especially in the greenery and the skies portrait mode shots look good the separation between the subject and the background is well done even in complex scenes like this one with the wooden wall paneling there is a two times digital Zoom available and the images are very usable though there is plenty of sharpening applied if it's dark enough the Zenfone 10 will automatically apply night mode processing to its photos and they're the same as those you'd get if you toggle night mode on manually these sorts of shots from the main cam look good there's plenty of detail as well as nicely developed shadows and highlightslow noise and saturated colors there is plenty of sharpening too which can lend some details a slightly over processed look the difference in quality compared to the Zenfone 9 isn't big but we'd still give the nod to the new model especially in very dark scenes let's talk about the video capture you can shoot it up to 8K at 24fps with the main cam but will focus on 4K quality here these videos from the main cam are very good with a lot of detail plenty of contrast and wide dynamic range the color rendition is quite pleasant too thanks to the gimbal the video stabilization on the Zenfone 10 is awesome in the regular adaptive mode walking Shake is ironed out proficiently pans are smooth and if you're just pointing the camera in One Direction it looks like it's on a tripod it can even handle movement like running but it isn't perfect in that regard now let's have a look at 4K video quality in low light conditions it's a bit on the noisy side but it's also sharp and detailed Shadows are well developed and highlights are decently contained Ultrawide camera: photo and video quality now let's talk about the ultrawide cam during the day you get good sharpness wide enough dynamic range and again vibrant colors in the foliage and skies for whatever reason though unlike last year there's no autofocus on the ultra wide cam so you can't take close-up shots with it in low light conditions you get automatic night mode processing like on the main cam these photos have bright exposures wide dynamic range and good color saturation however there is an orange color cast to The Lighting in some scenes the ultrawide's 4K video quality is good there's plenty of detail for this sort of camera loss of contrast and wide dynamic range the colors are quite vibrant even a bit over the top and here's a look at the ultra wide's video stabilization it's quite good even without the gimbal New 32MP selfie camera + selfies now on to selfies taken with the Zenfone 10's new 32 megapixel front-facing cam which doesn't have autofocus like the Zenfone 9s did because of pixel binning the Selfies come out at 8 megapixels they have very good detail and wide dynamic range while colors and outdoor scenes look pleasant we did find the white balance in indoor scenes was a bit too cold Conclusion so there you have it the Asus Zenfone 10. it follows quite closely in the footsteps of the Zenfone 9. maybe a bit too closely the only major upgrades over the previous models seem to be the chipset and wireless charging the rest isn't really better the higher refresh rate is only usable in games and while the cameras are still good you actually lose the autofocus on the ultra-wide and selfie cams that's not to say that the Zenfone 10 is a dud is still a great phone one of the best compact flagships on the market but if you already have last year's model you can probably skip on this one

thanks for watching guys