Our Rating:
4.6
Apple iPhone 12 - Renewed Review
Best Budget Phone
for Apple Users (2025)
Authors: Linh G, Evelyn S, Kevin W, Tommy L
Introduction
The renewed Apple iPhone 12 is the best pick for apple lovers for a budget smartphone in 2025. It delivers a combination of premium design, great performance, and future-proof features that were once the exclusive domain of top-tier, newly released devices!
After integrating this phone into every facet of our daily lives, from morning commutes to after-work media consumption, we can confidently declare that its value is simply unmatched. The iPhone 12 is a strategic investment in a device that feels and performs like a modern flagship, making the "renewed" aspect a gateway to incredible savings without meaningful compromise!
Design & Build Quality
The iPhone 12 presents an industrial design, offering a physical form that feels both timeless and perfectly contemporary.
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Modern Classic: The return to a flat-edged aluminum frame is a triumph of design. It feels wonderfully precise and substantial in the hand, a clear departure from the rounded edges of its predecessor. Our hands-on use confirmed that this "slabular" shape not only looks more elegant but also provides a more secure grip during day-to-day handling. For its price point, the build quality is simply in another league, presenting a premium tactile experience that belies its budget status.
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Ceramic Shield Durability: The front glass is infused with Ceramic Shield, a material that provides four times the drop protection of previous generations. This isn't just a technical specification; it's a tangible layer of peace of mind. Knowing that the screen is significantly more resistant to shattering from accidental fumbles and drops provides a level of confidence that is rare for any smartphone, let alone a budget champion.
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IP68 Water Resistance: This device boasts an impressive IP68 rating, certified to withstand submersion in up to 6 meters of water for 30 minutes. This level of ingress protection is a truly premium feature, offering robust defense against everyday mishaps like being caught in a downpour, accidental spills, or even a drop into a puddle. It’s a practical advantage that ensures the phone is built to survive the unpredictability of real life.
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Renewed Advantage: A key part of this phone’s amazing value comes from the "Renewed Premium" guarantee. The promise of a device with no signs of cosmetic damage visible from a distance of 12 inches is transformative. The unit we tested felt indistinguishable from a brand-new product, with flawless edges and an immaculate screen, delivering that thrilling out-of-the-box experience without the flagship cost.
Display
The screen on the iPhone 12 is its visual centerpiece, a feature that elevates every single interaction with the device.
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Iconic Beautiful Apple OLED: The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display is, without exaggeration, stunning. This is the single greatest upgrade over older budget models. The move to OLED technology means you get perfect, inky blacks instead of the grayish glow of an LCD. Colors are astonishingly vibrant and true-to-life, and the 460-ppi resolution makes text razor-sharp and images incredibly detailed. In our daily use, everything from Browse websites to swiping through photos became a more immersive and visually rich experience.
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HDR for Media: The display’s support for HDR formats like Dolby Vision is a game-changer for media consumption. It can push its brightness to a dazzling 1200 nits when displaying HDR content, making movies and shows on platforms like Netflix and Apple TV+ pop with spectacular highlights and contrast. It turns the phone into a pocket-sized cinema, a canvas for everything from movie watching to photo editing.
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True Tone for Eye Comfort: This is a subtle but brilliant feature that makes a huge difference over time. True Tone technology automatically adjusts the screen's white balance to match the ambient lighting of your environment. The result is a more natural, paper-like viewing experience that significantly reduces eye strain, especially during late-night reading or scrolling.
Performance
At the heart of the iPhone 12 lies a processor and software ecosystem that deliver a practically flawless and enduringly fluid experience.
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A14 Bionic Power: The A14 Bionic chip is the engine that drives this phone’s incredible performance. Years after its debut, it remains a powerhouse, easily handling every task we threw at it. Apps launch instantly, animations are buttery smooth, and even graphically demanding games run without a hitch. Our hands-on testing revealed a device that feels incredibly responsive and snappy, providing a level of performance that is simply unheard of in the budget category. It’s this sustained power that makes the iPhone 12 such a smart long-term buy.
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Software Support: This is perhaps the iPhone 12’s most significant advantage over its budget competitors. Apple’s commitment to long-term software support is legendary. You can expect this device to receive major iOS updates for years to come, ensuring it will stay secure with the latest patches and compatible with new apps and features well into the future. This longevity transforms it from a simple purchase into a lasting investment.
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Clean and Intuitive Experience: The iPhone 12 runs on iOS, an operating system celebrated for its simplicity, polish, and security. There is no bloatware or confusing third-party software to slow things down. The interface is clean, intuitive, and works in perfect harmony with the hardware, creating a seamless user experience that is a joy to interact with every day.
Camera
The iPhone 12’s imaging system is a testament to the power of computational photography, consistently delivering spectacular photos and videos.
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Smarter Photo Experience: The true magic of this camera system isn't just in the lenses, but in the intelligence of the A14 Bionic chip. It processes every photo you take, optimizing for detail, color, and dynamic range in a way that produces consistently stunning results with zero effort.
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Dual-Lens: The rear camera system features a 12MP Wide and a 12MP Ultra-Wide lens. The main Wide camera has a fast ƒ/1.6 aperture that lets in a tremendous amount of light, resulting in brilliant photos even in challenging indoor lighting. The Ultra-Wide lens is perfect for capturing dramatic landscapes, architectural shots, or fitting everyone into a group photo.
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Night Mode on Every Camera: This feature is a monumental advantage. Unlike many other phones, the iPhone 12 offers Night mode on the Wide, Ultra-Wide, and front-facing selfie cameras. In our testing, this was a revelation, allowing us to capture bright, detailed, and usable photos in dimly lit restaurants, on evening walks, and at concerts. It completely removes the anxiety of shooting in the dark.
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Smart HDR 3 & Deep Fusion: These technologies work silently in the background to make your photos better. Smart HDR 3 intelligently recognizes scenes and adjusts the photo to look more natural, while Deep Fusion analyzes textures on a pixel-by-pixel level to maximize detail. This means you get photos with beautiful, balanced lighting and incredible clarity, even in high-contrast situations like a bright sky behind a shaded subject.
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Cinema-Quality 4K Dolby Vision Video: The iPhone 12 was the first phone capable of shooting, editing, and playing back video in 4K Dolby Vision HDR. This is a truly professional-grade feature that allows you to capture video with a staggering range of colors and brightness. The footage is incredibly vibrant and lifelike, giving you the power to create cinema-quality memories right from your pocket.
Battery Life
The iPhone 12 is equipped with the modern essentials that ensure it keeps up with your day and is ready for the future of connectivity.
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Almost All-Day Power: With the "renewed premium" iphone, the battery life is at least at 90% health from the original released date. For our daily use experiment, we were averaging between ~8-14 hours of light-to-moderate use, which did mean we had to carry a battery bank and charging cable with us just in case!
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Future-Proof 5G Connectivity: The inclusion of 5G is a massive benefit that firmly places the iPhone 12 in the modern era. It ensures you have access to the fastest available cellular data speeds, making downloads, streaming, and gaming on the go significantly quicker. As 5G networks continue to expand, this feature will only become more valuable, making this phone a smart choice for the years ahead.
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MagSafe Ecosystem: MagSafe is a quality-of-life feature that you quickly learn to love. The array of magnets on the back allows for perfect alignment with wireless chargers, enabling faster 15W charging speeds. We found the satisfying "snap" of a MagSafe charger or wallet to be a small but delightful daily convenience, representing the thoughtful engineering that defines the Apple experience.
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Unlocked Advantage: Having an unlocked model provides the ultimate freedom. It means you are not tied to any single carrier and can choose the plan and network that best suits your needs and budget. This flexibility is perfect for finding the best deals or for travelers who need to use local SIM cards abroad.
Conclusion: Best Budget Pick!
The renewed iPhone 12 proves that frugality and first-class experience can coexist, fusing a beautiful OLED display, powerhouse A14 Bionic chip, capable dual cameras, future-ready performance, and solid battery stamina into a package that radiates amazing value for its price point. It creates a user experience that feels anything but "budget"!
After living with this handset in every scenario, waking up and scrolling instagram, editing videos, posting on socials, and watching a movie on netflix to end the day, we’re convinced it is the best budget phone you can buy in 2025!
We also listed below other iPhone options that cost more for those on a bigger budget who want a better performing Apple phone! 🎉🎉🎉