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  iPhone 12 Pro.

Today, Apple announced the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max, all with 5G wireless capability. All the phones are a metal and glass sandwich with flat sides are that very reminiscent of the iPhone 4. The iPhone 12 and 12 Mini are aluminum, while the Pro line is stainless steel.

The iPhone 12 has a 6.1-inch display, but it’s the same size as the iPhone 11, so it’s 15 percent smaller, and 11 percent thinner than last year’s iPhone 11. The screen is an OLED display, and Apple has teamed up with Corning to make a new display cover material called a “Ceramic Shield.” Apple claims it is tougher than any other smartphone glass.

One of the headlines additions to the new iPhone is the addition of 5G connectivity, which has been hyped up by the carriers as the next big thing in smartphones. The quick primer is that there are two kinds of 5G: a potentially very fast “mmWave” network (Verizon calls this “Ultra Wideband”) that is short-range, has poor signal characteristics, and is hard to roll out, and a “sub 6GHz” 5G, which is closer to an iterative step of 4G, with better signal characteristics, and a better shot of a world-wide rollout but with less of a revolutionary speed increase.