Last week we learned that the iPhone 12 could launch at a surprisingly low price of $649, $50 less than the iPhone 11. How could Apple achieve this price while offering 5G connectivity and an OLED panel?

We now have a better idea of how Apple could pull this off - and you may not like the answer. The regular iPhone 12 seems to have a big trade-off compared to the iPhone 12 Pro.

According to Jon Prosser of Front Page Tech, the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 and 6.1-inch iPhone 12 will not support mmWave 5G. This means that they will not enjoy speeds above 1 GBps on Verizon's 5G network or other carriers that have deployed this technology.

Instead, the iPhone 12 models are said to work only on sub-6GHz 5G networks. As Prosser puts it, "The base model is said to not be millimeter wave 5G, but it is still 5G, so Apple can say it is 5G."

It's not all bad news. For those who want the best of both worlds, the 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max should support both flavors of 5G.

This means that on 4G LTE networks, the regular iPhone 12 will enjoy faster downloads than the iPhone 11, but it will not be able to download an entire Netflix movie or TV season in seconds like it can with mmWave 5G. It won't be.

How fast is sub-6GHz here, as T-Mobile has experienced 5G speeds in the 150 Mbps range with the OnePlus 8 Pro, and Sprint has downloads in the 200-300 Mbps range. (Moreover, both Verizon and AT&T have deployed 5G networks in the sub-6GHz band and are not troubled by the lack of mmWave support; AT&T says its low-band network has reached 190 markets and should be nationwide by mid-year.

As for Verizon, it plans to roll out mid-band 5G using dynamic spectrum sharing, which splits existing frequency bands with 4G, probably during the third quarter of this year. This is according to a PCMag report.

The good news is that mmWave 5G is not that popular and requires a line of sight to the node to enjoy the fastest speeds.

Still, if you want a truly future-proof iPhone 12, we recommend choosing the iPhone 12 Pro this fall.