Apple iPhone 12: Awfully Tempting

Anechoic chamber: a long way from the garage

Finance classes teach the power of compound interest. A 15% rate of return may not seem like much to someone who wants to get rich quickly, but after five years the investor's money is doubled:

Year 0   $100.00
Year 1   $115.00
Year 2   $132.25
Year 3   $152.09
Year 4   $174.90
Year 5   $201.14

Warren Buffett, by the way, is a ceaseless advocate of compound interest as one of the keys to wealth.

Which brings us to today's Apple iPhone 12 event. Already some reviewers are saying that the "incremental upgrades" to the iPhone 11 are disappointing. Maybe so, but upgrades, like interest earnings, compound, and for those of us who own phones that are more than two years old, the 12's features look pretty good.

The focus of the event was 5G’s ultrafast network speeds, available on all the new iPhones. But that shouldn’t be your sole reason to upgrade, or necessarily your biggest reason.

Some of the more significant highlights of this year’s Apple handsets: cameras better suited for lowlight photography, tougher display glass, a faster chip and built-in magnets to align the phone with a wireless charger. The most expensive models, the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, include additional camera capabilities—although those are mostly aimed at actual pros, or at least hard-core enthusiasts. As with every year, there’s a faster processor inside, and this year it’s the A14 Bionic Chip.

I'm very tempted to order a 12, but I still haven't come down from the high of buying an XS Max in 2018 and discovering how much better that phone was than the then-four-year-old iPhone 6. The right decision is to hold on to the XS Max for another year. The greater the patience, the greater the pleasure.