iPhone 12 Pro Minimum Focus Distance?

Well, I did the obvious thing and measured it for myself. With the iPhone 12 Pro camera in normal ("PHOTO") mode at 1x the minimum focus distance is approximately 8 cm / 3.15 in. The attached photo was made with the iPhone attached to a tripod. The photo is cropped vertically to eliminate distracting background details, but is not cropped horizontally, i.e., the full 4032 pixels of width are preserved without enlargement or reduction. The subject, a somewhat tarnished sterling silver elephant box made by Royal Silversmith to the late King Norodom Sihanouk of Kampuchea, is 8 cm in length, tip of tusks to tip of tail. This looks like a grayscale photo, but it is a color photo of a scene in shades of gray! Lighting was a simple LED desk lamp.

Thanks for taking time to reply. It boggles my mind that a company could design a camera and I can’t find anyone in the company who knows what the camera’s minimum focusing distance is, or even what “minimum focusing distance” means. Here’s an example of some published specifications for a certain camera lens:

There is an assumption the reader is familiar with photography terminology...

I am quite certain that the meaning of the phrase minimum focus distance was self evident when first I encountered it. Terms like high-speed sync, rolling shutter, mirror slap, pentaprism, depth-of-field, were not so obvious to me. But minimum focus distance, definitely. I'd bet I'm not the only person for whom this is true.

Or, less confusingly, the minimum distance that an object can be from the lens* and still be in focus.

*Sometimes from the focal plane.