By 2021 I had been using Android since 2016. My phone at the time was a Huawei running HarmonyOS. I spent a lot of time watching hands-on videos on Bilibili and Douyin, and my first choice was the Huawei Mate 40 Pro. I tried it in an official store and at a couple of offline shops. HarmonyOS felt very smooth, but the phone was either sold at a markup or simply out of stock. That got old fast.
The iPhone 12 started to look more reasonable. The price was within what I was willing to pay, and it had 5G, which meant I could probably keep it for three or four years without feeling an urgent need to upgrade. I borrowed a classmate’s iPhone 12 for a while. The system and the exterior were as clean and minimal as expected. The obvious omissions were infrared and fast charging. The 20W charging felt slow next to the 40W I was used to, and those were two features I relied on most. I also looked at the iPhone 11, but it didn’t appeal to me and had no real highlight. It was only a few hundred yuan cheaper than the iPhone 12, so it didn’t make much sense.
The buying part
Once I had a rough idea of the phone, the annoying part began: choosing where to buy it. I looked at JD, Taobao/Tmall, Suning, Pinduoduo (a classmate recommended it), and Xianyu. After browsing for a long time, I settled on Taobao and then waited for the Double 11 promotion. I picked black, which seemed to be the best-selling color. I had originally wanted white, but after seeing it, I thought it looked a little ugly.
When it arrived
What worked and what didn’t
The iPhone 12 was released on October 13, 2020, but in 2021 it still handled games, entertainment, and daily work without trouble. 5G was something I wanted to have even if I didn’t use it much yet. The battery is small, but Apple’s power management is strong enough that one or two charges a day felt the same as my previous phone. Signal performance didn’t seem noticeably different either.
The compromises were the ones I expected: no infrared and slower charging. After using it for a while, I adapted. My old curved-screen phone was similar: I resisted it at first, then ended up liking it.