Last year’s iPhone 12 series was a bit complicated to review: In addition to the expected differences between the Pro and non-Pro models, there were subtle deviations between the Pro Max and the Pro models too. Compounding matters even further was the fact that the Pro models were released weeks apart. This year, the iPhone 13 series is easier to evaluate together. All four phones are available on the same day (September 24th in most parts of the world), and the differences split only the iPhone 13 Pro and non-Pro phones.
I have been testing all four models in the iPhone 13 series for the past five days. This hands-on preview focuses on the two phones in the Pro series (ie. the iPhone 13 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro Max); if you are interested in the non-Pro models, check out my iPhone 13/iPhone 13 Mini Hands-on.
iPhone 13 Pro in Sierra Blue color and iPhone 13 Pro Max in Graphite color (the Pro Max appears smaller due to perspective).
- You can pre-order the iPhone series directly from Apple’s website and have it shipped to your door.
Click to expand: Apple iPhone 13 Series Specifications
| Specifications | Apple iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini | Apple iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max |
|---|---|---|
| Build |
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| Dimensions & Weight |
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| Display |
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| SoC | Apple A15 Bionic | Apple A15 Bionic |
| RAM & Storage |
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| Battery & Charging |
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| Security | Face ID | Face ID |
| Rear Camera(s) |
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| Front Camera(s) | 12MP TrueDepth camera system | 12MP TrueDepth camera system |
| Port(s) | Lightning | Lightning |
| Audio | Stereo speakers | Stereo speakers |
| Connectivity |
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| Software | iOS 15 | iOS 15 |
| Other Features | Dual physical SIM or Dual eSIM support | Dual physical SIM or Dual eSIM support |
About this review: Apple loaned me all four models of the iPhone 13 series to test and review. Apple did not have any input in this article.
Apple iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Hardware and Design
iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13, and iPhone Mini.
Other than new colors, the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max look almost identical to their preceding iPhone 12 counterparts at first glance. Examine closer, however, and two noticeable differences emerge: The notches are smaller and the camera modules larger.
These cameras behave fundamentally the same as last year — the rear triple-lens array covers the ultra-wide, wide, and telephoto focal lengths, with the LiDAR scanner providing extra depth information. But according to Apple, they all use new sensors: The main (wide) lens has a larger image sensor size compared to last year, the ultra-wide lens has a lower f-stop (faster aperture), and the telephoto lens has been upgraded to 3x optical zoom. Last year’s iPhone 12 Pro Max offered a 2.5x optical zoom, while the Pro used a 2x optical zoom. I’ll elaborate on the cameras in detail in later sections.
The smaller notch doesn’t change much. Apple still uses the area to the left and right of the notch to display the time, battery, and connectivity status, but nothing more. The only cases in which you actually see more screen is when watching videos zoomed in to fill the entire screen or when playing certain games. The difference is negligible and not something that stands out.
iPhone 13 Pro Max (left) and iPhone 13 Pro (right).
The new iPhone 13 Pro series is thicker and heavier too: The Pro Max measures 7.65mm in thickness and weighs 240g compared to the 12 Pro Max’s 7.4mm and 228g. The iPhone 13 Pro has the same thickness and weighs 204g. The extra heft is due to the larger batteries.
I adore the new Sierra Blue color.
Just like last year, the iPhone 13 Pro models feature a matte glass back but a glossy stainless-steel frame that attracts fingerprints and smudges easily. The Pro Max is still quite unwieldy for most people, as the 6.7-inch flat screen of the iPhone 13 Pro Max measures 2.53-inches horizontally. As I’ve written before, Apple’s 6.7-inch screen is harder to use one-handed than a similarly-sized Android flagship screen due to iOS quirks and the fact that Android phones use curvy panels with a more elongated aspect ratio. I think the iPhone 13 Pro’s 6.1-inch screen is just the right size for most people.
Both Pro models finally upgraded their display refresh rate to 120Hz this year (Apple calls it ProMotion), and they have a variable refresh rate panel that can get as low as 10Hz. Under the hood, the iPhone 13 series got the expected bump to Apple’s A15 Bionic SoC, and the storage can be maxed out to a whopping 1TB. Perhaps more importantly, the base model starts at 128GB now instead of 64GB — without a price increase over last year.
Overall, if you’ve held or seen up close an iPhone 12 Pro Max or iPhone 12 Pro, you will know how the iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPhone 13 Pro look and feel. I do adore the new “Sierra Blue” colorway of my Pro model. I think this is a better-looking color than anything on offer last year.
How do the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max differ from the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini?
The iPhone 13 Pro, at 204g, is 30g heavier than the standard iPhone 13 despite sharing the same screen size and dimensions. This is due to the extra camera and stainless steel frame.
The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, obviously, have a better camera system than the iPhone 13 and Mini — and it’s not just the addition of a dedicated zoom lens and LiDAR scanner. While all four phones in the new iPhone 13 series saw an image sensor size increase over the iPhone 12 series, the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max got a bigger bump up. The ultra-wide cameras in the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max also have a much faster aperture at f/1.8, while the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini’s ultra-wide shooters are stuck on the same f/2.4 as the iPhone 12 series.
The iPhone 13 Pro has an extra zoom lens that’s missing in the standard iPhone 13.
The non-Pro iPhone 13 models also did not get the ProMotion upgrade — their panels are still refreshing at the ancient 60Hz. However, the difference in animation fluidity/zippiness between a 120Hz iPhone 13 Pro/Pro Max and a 60Hz iPhone 13/Mini does not feel as noticeable to my eyes as 120Hz versus 60Hz on Android. I’m not saying the ProMotion upgrade is pointless — animations are indeed more fluid, but they are improved in a subtle manner. The difference is not as jarring as when comparing a Samsung Galaxy S20 (120Hz) to a Galaxy S10 (60Hz).
I think this is a combination of Apple’s animations being more restrained and less flashy than the likes of Samsung, OnePlus, or Xiaomi, and also the fact that Apple’s 60Hz screens were pretty well-optimized already.
Finally, while all four iPhone 13 models run on Apple’s A15 Bionic, the Pro phones have an extra GPU core. Unless you’re a heavy gamer or you’re editing 4K videos on the phones, I don’t think the difference is noticeable. The Apple A15 Bionic is a beast as expected.
Here are Geekbench numbers for the iPhone 13 Pro Max, iPhone 13, iPhone 12 Pro, and a Snapdragon 888+ Android device for reference.
iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Cameras
Before we begin, I want to remind readers that the cameras of the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max are exactly the same, so whether the sample image comes from the Pro or Pro Max shouldn’t matter (this is also true for the iPhone 13 and Mini, as those two also share the same setups).
The iPhone 13 Pro Max and iPhone 13 Mini.
I am of the belief that, while Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei’s best cameras tend to produce superior night and zoom photos, the iPhone still leads in video recording, basic point-and-shoot photos during the day, and overall color accuracy/consistency between lenses. After five days of heavy camera testing, I’ve found that the iPhone 13 Pro continues this trend, and has widened Apple’s lead in video recording. In fact, let’s talk about the iPhone 13 series’ video capabilities first, as I personally think it’s the single biggest upgrade this year.
Cinematic mode is groundbreaking
The new feature this year is Cinematic mode, which is essentially Portrait mode for videos. With this mode, the iPhone 13s (all of them, not just the Pro models) can add artificial bokeh to the background for a professional, cinematic depth-of-field effect.
Other brands like Samsung and Huawei have tried to offer video bokeh before, but their edge detection was poor and the effect looked fake. The iPhone 13 is the first to get it right, likely because Apple has that all-powerful A15 Bionic and hardware-software synergy to pull off such a heavy computational photography task.
Here’s a series of Cinematic mode footage I shot over the past few days.
I’m sure a trained eye can tell the bokeh in the footage above is artificial, and camera snobs would likely complain about the occasional edge detection error, but I bet the above footage can likely trick a good deal of people into thinking they were shot with a “real” camera. The extra depth-of-field add a cinematic quality to footage that previously wasn’t possible from smartphone videos (which tend to appear flat).
The iPhone 13 Pro has widened Apple's lead in video recording supremacy.
And best of all? Everything, from the strength of the background blur to focus points, can be adjusted in real-time mid-shoot or after the recording has finished. You likely won’t have to change focus points much because Apple built a very intelligent face tracking algorithm. Not only does it know to keep focus on the face closest to the camera, but also if that face makes a sudden head movement and looks somewhere, the focus shifts to that point.
Cinematic mode also works with animals and inanimate objects too, not just human faces.
I know several YouTubers, including some with seven-digit subscriber counts, already shoot B-roll footage with an iPhone because of its superior stabilization and dynamic range. Now that the iPhone 13 series can add somewhat convincing bokeh, it’s going to be an even more capable camera for content creators and influencers. A lot of social media apps, like Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok, are optimized better for the iPhones than they are for specific Android phones. Coupled with this bokeh effect, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max seem destined to be the top choice for influencers across social media platforms.
Photography on the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: The larger sensor makes a difference
The iPhone 13 Pro cameras are strong across the board
Examining further, we can see that the improved image sensor has better light intake, and certain shots now have a slightly shallower depth-of-field than the iPhone 12 Pro.
The shallower depth-of-field is subtle, but notice the buildings and city lights behind the subject’s head have creamier bokeh.
iPhone 13 Pro (left); iPhone 12 Pro (right)
In really dark scenes, the iPhone 13 Pro series will automatically turn on night mode just like last year’s models, but often the wait is shorter. For the sake of testing camera hardware prowess, I turned off night mode and took some shots in extremely low light conditions.
It’s hard to see on a mobile screen, but if you blow these shots up, the ones from the iPhone 13 are a bit brighter and have more details — particularly the bottom half of the last set.
iPhone 13 Pro (left); iPhone 12 Pro (right).
The improvements over last year widen when shooting ultra-wide or zoom shots with the iPhone 13 Pro. The iPhone 12 Pro’s ultra-wide lens, curiously, consistently produces a “brighter” image than the iPhone 13’s ultra-wide, but this is software compensation to perhaps hide the fact the iPhone 12 Pro’s ultra-wide sensor produces very soft details.
Crop in, and you’ll see the iPhone 13 Pro’s ultra-wide is noticeably sharper.
iPhone 13 Pro (left); iPhone 12 Pro (right).
The iPhone 13 Pro’s 3x optical zoom lens can now max out at 15x digital zoom (compared to the 10x of the 12 Pro and 12x of the 12 Pro Max).
10x zoom shots with iPhone 13 Pro (middle) and iPhone 12 Pro (right).
The ultra-wide sensor can double as a macro lens this year — a feature exclusive to the Pro phones because they use a newer sensor than the non-Pro iPhone 13s.
Here are more zoom shot samples with the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Software
All four iPhone 13s ship with iOS 15 out of the box, and my feelings about iOS remain mostly unchanged. I respect Apple’s emphasis on user privacy — I love the “Ask app not to track” option that pops up anytime I use an app for the first time, something has annoyed several big tech companies. I also love that Apple can generate a random/fake email address for me to sign in to sites that require email addresses. With the exception of Google apps, seemingly all other major apps work better on an iPhone than Android. My Hong Kong banking app, for example, lets me log in and make digital payments with Face ID; on an Android phone, I must input a password every single time.
I find the synergy between Apple devices ingenious. I record a voice memo on my Apple Watch, and that memo shows up on all my iPhones and iPads within seconds. And because I have an iCloud subscription, I can access my MacBook desktop files from the Files app of any iOS device.
But all of my previous gripes about iOS are still here. The home screen grid is still too restrictive — I must place apps in a top-down, left-to-right order; Apple’s notification management system still sucks compared to Android’s; and the iPhone 13 Pro Max still doesn’t take advantage of the larger screen. For example, the home screen grid on the iPhone 13 Pro Max is exactly the same as the iPhone 13 Mini. The Pro Max screen doesn’t show you more information, just larger versions of the same information. And for a device that’s almost the size of a small tablet, why won’t Apple give us split-screen multitasking?
Apple also has this habit of giving users something but with limited customization or control. iOS has a beautiful native photo widget, for example, but the widget will only show you photos randomly. You can’t choose which photos to show. The much-hyped App Library introduced with iOS 14, too, still doesn’t let you choose which apps to group together — you must let Apple’s AI do it for you. The hand-holding may seem necessary for some users, but Pro users should definitely have more choice and control.
iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Performance and Battery life
The Apple A15 Bionic is a beast of a SoC, so performance obviously is of no concern. It doesn’t matter what app or game you run, the iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max can run it to its full capabilities. I am someone who often shoots 4K video throughout the day, and I’d do a quick crop or trim and post to Instagram. The exporting process is insanely fast on an iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max. If I’m exporting, say, a 15-second video, it renders in like one or two seconds. I have used enough Android flagships to confidently say the same exporting action would take 7-8 seconds on a Snapdragon 888 device.
Elsewhere, the stereo speakers on the iPhone 13 series seem to have improved across the board over the 12 series, and the haptic engine is as great as ever. I can’t confidently say it’s better haptics than what I experience on a Samsung or Xiaomi flagship, but the iPhone 13 haptics are among the best for sure.
And perhaps the biggest weakness of the iPhone 12 series — their underwhelming battery life — has been fixed. The iPhone 13 Pro Max is a battery beast. On Sunday, I took the phone out all day and used it heavily, including shooting most of the Cinematic mode footage shown earlier. and after 14 hours away from a charger, it still had 30% battery life left. I have not used the smaller iPhone 13 Pro in such a heavy way yet, but on lighter usage weekdays, it still finished a typical 14-hour day with a quarter of battery left. I think both phones should be able to last a full day for most people.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is a battery beast.
iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max: Early impressions
It seems most of my peers in tech media, along with many fans I’ve come across on social media, were disappointed by the iPhone 13 series. However, I think the game-changing Cinematic mode and significantly better battery life, and ultra-wide lens bring enough improvements. I’m not sure existing iPhone 12 users should be rushing to upgrade (unless they shoot a lot of mobile videos), but anyone else considering an upgrade from iPhone 11 or older won’t be disappointed.
iPhone 13 Pro Max.
- You can pre-order the iPhone series directly from Apple’s website and have it shipped to your door.
I haven’t done much gaming on the iPhone 13 phones, nor have I tested the smaller Pro model’s battery extensively so I can’t say this is a final conclusion — that will come in the full review. But so far, I am impressed.
The post Hands on with the Apple iPhone 13 Pro & 13 Pro Max: Cinematic mode is a game changer appeared first on xda-developers.
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