What you should expect from the iPhone 13 — A Review
Apple released the iPhone 13 on 24th September 2021, just around a week after it got announced. I’ve owned the phone since its launch and had some thoughts that I’ll be sharing with you on what you should expect from the new iPhone, from the perspective of an actual buyer of this phone and someone who has been using it daily for a bit more than 2 weeks.
Tl;dr review — the new iPhone is another amazing piece of technology created by Apple. They’ve kept most things the same from the iPhone 12 which isn't a bad thing considering how amazing it was, while also adding new quality of life improvements to the Notch, Cameras, Battery, and overall performance.
Not to forget about the battery that’ll last you an entire day, this phone is an easy recommendation to anyone planning to upgrade from any phone released before 2018 since this phone is more of a small foot toward progress than the leap the iPhone 6 and X had made at their respective launches. The phone is incredible from the perspective of someone who used an android before this but if you already used an iPhone 12 the improvements aren't worth upgrading for.
So now that you know my basic overall thoughts, keep reading for the full review and my in-depth experience using this phone for more than two weeks.
Topics I’ll be discussing:
- Screen
- Battery
- Camera — Cinematic Mode
- Performance
- My Overall Experience and why I switched from an Android
Screen — 9/10
In technical terms, its OLED panel usually gets up to 800 nits in normal use, and up to 1200 nits when it's displaying HDR content, or in Apple’s terms it's a Super Retina XDR display, or even further, in my terms, it's just simply beautiful. I’ve been watching shows like Breaking Bad, Squid Game, along with channels that use more deep colors like MKBHD, and this panel compliments every media I've tried out.
In non-technical vocabulary, the terms I used mean the colors on this screen are bright and beautiful, since it is an OLED panel it means that the black parts on its screen are as dark as they would be if the screen was turned off. HDR means the colors the phone shows are rich and I cant reinstate just how beautiful it looks.
When you look at the display you’ll notice an obvious improvement from last year’s model which will be on the Notch. Apples made it 20% smaller than last years and for that matter every other iPhone model by shifting the speaker to the top of the screen (which makes applying screen guards easier and way more seamless). Although they've made the length shorter, the height has slightly increased which is difficult to notice in regular usage but if you're watching 18:9 content like MKBHD or LinusTechTips you’ll notice the notch slightly poking into the video, although its very minute and non-disturbing, your annoyance may vary.
An obvious downside to the phone's screen is that it's still just a 1080p panel compared to the 4k screens we see on flagship Android phones. Speaking from personal experience I haven't found a difference between higher resolution screens on phones due to their size but if you’re someone who enjoys watching high-resolution content on their phone and can tell the difference, it can be frustrating not having a higher resolution screen especially considering how much you’re paying for this phone.
The iPhone 13 comes with the same 60hz refresh rate screen as previous models, and only the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max have 120hz capable screens. For those who don't know, the refresh rate of a screen is how many times it refreshes to load a new page, so on a 60hz screen the screen is refreshing and showing new images 60 times every second, and so on a 120hz panel, it's doing it 120 times in a second, giving a more fluid feeling. Refresh Rate on phones is a very subjective matter even though higher refresh rates always seem better but a test conducted by Youtuber Joshua Chang tells us more about this.
In his test, he gave the new phone, with the higher refresh rate, to a bunch of people who weren't up to date with what's new, and he told them to find out what's different in the iPhone Pro versus the older iPhone 12 or any other iPhone for that matter. The test concluded with the fact that none of the average users that actually would use an iPhone would be able to tell the difference, although they would confirm they'd feel more comfortable with the screen once they’d find out the difference.
So it's safe to say buying the iPhone 13 with the standard refresh rate would be perfectly fine for most consumers considering an average user would not use it, but with the option for something more available for people that enjoy higher-end hardware. In an episode from MKBHD’s studio channel, you can see him immediately realize the difference and talk about how smooth it is, so how to interpret it is completely subjective and I’d recommend a tour around both phones at the shop before you plan to buy either.
The screen also is very bright, although I find myself keeping it at 30% brightness so I don't strain my eyes, the brightness helps during tasks like watching Youtube and Netflix as it helps display great dynamic colors. The brightness also helps in using your phone in the sun, although there was more room for improvement.
Since the 800 nits mean the screen can get bright at its highest level it also means that it would drain more battery than last year's models, but they’ve marketed how the battery of the new phone is much better and longer-lasting than last year which you'll hear more about in the next topic.
In the end, I gave this screen a 9/10 because while watching HDR and the high resolution looks crisp on this OLED panel, blocking higher refresh rates behind a significant paywall where even the cheapest phones have it, and also simultaneously eliminating a higher resolution screen was enough for me to make it lose a point. That being said it's still on the high end of the scale because of how effortlessly it displays rich colors without impacting user experience.
Battery — 10/10
In short, all you need to know about the battery is that, It. Is. A. Tank.
The iPhone 13 is easily going to last you an entire day, I find myself skipping charging it at night because I know I can just charge it for an hour and be fine for the day. Oh yeah, it supports up to 20W charging just like last year's model, so it'll go from 0% to 50% in just 30 minutes but what makes the difference is the 15% increase in battery size, which was enough to make an impact.
In Mrwhosetheboss’s video, he put the new phones in a battle of battery against other iPhones that are still available to buy from Apple, the iPhone 13 Pro Max, ranked higher than any other smartphone he’s tested, and yes, that includes Android phones such as Samsungs Galaxy s21.
Apple promises up to 17 hours of video playback on the standard iPhone, but do note that this means playback of a video that's already downloaded on your phone, it doesn't mean streaming from youtube, streamed content has a promised 13 hours but in real life considering the usage of 5G, the brightness and how many notifications you're getting can influence this number.
I don't need a lot of words to tell you this may be one of the best batteries on a smartphone and that’s why I decided to give it a 10/10.
Camera — 9/10
The camera array on the new iPhones is completely different, with it having the iconic, often mocked, diagonal layout due to its newly increased sensor.
The increased sensor is due to their focus on making Night Mode even better. Night Modes focused task is to make pictures taken in areas without a lot of light, look better. And the new sensors help it absorb even more light and accomplish this task even better.
Smartphone cameras are getting better each year but they’ve gotten to a point where, to the average joe, they're somewhat indistinguishable from professional DSLR cameras. This makes reviewing cameras difficult because the difference in camera is extremely minute.
I’d say if your main focus was to get the highest camera quality in well-lit situations, last year's iPhone 12 Pro Max would perform the same as this one but if you wanted the best of the best, an iPhone 13 Pro Max would guarantee exactly that. This makes the iPhone 13 an awkward placeholder where it has the best qualities of both those phones.
If you do want the highest pixel count a camera can take, Samsung S21 would probably be your preferred choice, since this phone's highlight isn't its raw performance, it is the software that ties into the hardware. Its common knowledge that social media platforms like Instagram, and Snapchat simply work better on iPhone and that's because of how well optimized the software is built to be. Pictures taken on the native camera app of an Android and iPhone don't have many distinguishable features but pictures taken through Instagram do show a large difference and I’d recommend watching another Mrwhosetheboss video where he delves deep into the differences.
The new phones do have a feature called cinematic mode that's supposed to make it unique against the rest. The feature is simple in which it has an artificial focus on the main character of the video, using AI to choose who to focus on. This is another feature that's extremely hard to explain so I’d recommend watching the creators themselves, i.e. Apple, show it off.
The cinematic mode in personal experience is just not that great. It's a good feature but for how much they advertised it, it doesn't work that well and makes the blur sometimes overlap with the subject.
One of my top features of the new camera is the ProRes format available for videos taken on the 256gb+ iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max and specifically. In layman terms, this means that the videos taken using this feature allow editors to have more control over the colors and export it without compressing the video a lot. compressing is an act of reducing the quality of a video to lower the size, without impacting the overall quality a whole lot.
I gave it a 9/10 because it is an amazing camera that has very slight improvements over last years, but the improvements are taken with a warm welcome because of the new features of prores and cinematic mode. It lost a point because of the underdeveloped cinematic mode, which most probably can be fixed in future updates. Another reason it lost a point was because of how they locked the ProRes feature behind two paywalls, one of the requirements being that it's only available on the Pro and Pro Max, the other being that its only for those specific models if you get the 256GB or more storage option. So even if you have an iPhone 13 Pro, if it only has 126GB you're out of luck.
Notable Mentions
5G
This is a feature that's been on the iPhone 12 too but is one that deserves to be mentioned on this as well. In one line, 5G allows me to get 600mbps wirelessly inside my school, which is pretty distant from cell phone towers.
iOS 15
A phone is only good as its software and the phone along with the new update truly go hand in hand. The new redesign gives the phone, which looks really similar to last year's model, a new fresh paint of coat.
Overall Experience — 9.5
As you could see I've been extremely positive about this phone and it's mostly because it truly is an amazing phone. I can say with my whole heart that anyone who would use this phone would not be disappointed by it.
The battery lasts all day, 5G delivers perfect content on your amazing screen, and every feature compliments the other so there's nothing more I’d wish from a smartphone that I'm gonna use for several hours every day.
