Design details of Apple’s new iPhone 12 family include key updates to the internal architecture alongside a refreshing new gemstone-inspired color palette.
When the iPhone 12 debuted on 13 October it offered up a number of firsts for Apple. Not only was the new flagship based around an all-new chipset, A14, but it also appeared as a complete family right out of the box, with all sizes, accessories and colours catered for from day one.
With the ‘regular’ iPhone 12 joined by the 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max, along with a new iPhone 12 mini, there’s a size for everyone… This ‘instant family’ approach is a significant departure for the Cupertino-based company. It reflects a growing desire to create an all-encompassing ecosystem that reflects how their phones are used in day to day life, usage that embraces charging, protecting and even the ability to put your screen out of sight, out of mind. The 20-strong Industrial Design Group is at the core of Apple’s creative process and typically works at least two years out. This suite of products revealed in October were still at prototype stage back in 2018, long before Chief Design Officer Jony Ive stepped back from the company after 27 years. This level of foresight is essential, allowing time for the vast global mechanism of mass production, assembly and distribution to gear up for the next generation.
The range of colours, which embraces blues, oranges, browns and reds, amongst others, tone perfectly with one another, emphasising the fact that an iPhone can be snapped into a MagSafe case with a wallet attached to the back, all in different but complimentary colours. ‘We’ve always gone extremely wide in our colour choices,’ says Evans Hankey, the company’s VP of Industrial Design, ‘this palette was an exploration that started around gemstones – we loved the depth of colour and the way the colours appeared through the cases.’
MacDailyNews Take: While we gravitate toward dark neutral “colors,” we’ve already had more than one family member choose the iPhone 12 in Green. What’s your favorite color this year?
Mine is my series 6 Apple Watch in blue. So awesome.
The idealist deities at Apple are now getting their inspiration from Mother Earth gemstones for new colors. How nice.
Unfortunately, exiled Jony Ives drew his inspiration for FLAT iOS 7 icons from the abstract confusion design of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC that repulses many to this day.
Just sayin’…