Here’s what you need to know about the all-new iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro
Today at its “California Streaming” event, Apple unveiled this Fall’s new iPhone models. In my preview piece I had mused about whether they’d go with the name “iPhone 13” due to Western superstitions around that number. Turns out Apple was undeterred by that and iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro these new models are. Here’s what I wrote about what I expected from these new iPhones:
“With regard to specific features, smartphones are a pretty mature product category, so broadly speaking you should always expect faster hardware and better cameras with form factor changes coming every two-to-four years. I don’t expect a major form factor change since we just got one last year. I expect new iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, and iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max models. (Sticking with the “13” name for the sake of discussion.) Rumors do suggestion the new iPhones could have a smaller “notch” at the top of the screen where the cameras and other sensors live.”
That really turned out to be a correct prediction, right down to the (slightly) smaller notch. After the event, I saw someone on Twitter say the following: “It kind of feels like Apple has been in a rut since iPhone X. Nothing must-have since then.” I’m sure that sums up how a lot of casual observers assess the situation. People yearn for Apple to release something that takes us completely by surprise and changes the industry overnight. I do too, but I also think it’s best to have the right expectations. Most years, the iPhone is going to make modest, iterative, year-over-year improvements. This is one of those years.
I was watching the event with colleagues, and as Apple began discussing the iPhone 13, I turned to a friend and joked, “That’s a nice iPhone 12S they got there.” Apple’s iPhone naming schemes aren’t arbitrary. They do have purpose, but they haven’t always followed a consistent convention. We had iPhone 5 and then 5S the next year. Likewise 6 and 6S, and X and XS. But we also went straight from 7 to 8 and now 11 to 12 to 13. My guess is that Apple decided at some point that giving a new iPhone the same number as last year’s model and merely tacking on the “S” to the end, didn’t move units as much as giving the name a whole new number. At the end of the day this is all just interesting conjecture about Apple’s marketing strategy that really shouldn’t have much impact on your decision to buy or not to buy the iPhone 13.
What will move the needle for many buyers are the color choices. The new iPhone 13 comes in five colors: Pink, Blue, Midnight, Starlight, and (PRODUCT)RED. I really need to see these in person to develop an informed opinion. From the photos and videos, Blue is my favorite. I’m really curious about Midnight because I can’t tell from the photos if it’s just this year’s name for black, or if it has some blue mixed in. I’m also really curious to see Starlight in person. In photos it appears to almost be a light champaign color. It’s also clever that they moved the lens arrangement from being stacked top-to-bottom to this new diagonal positioning. It likely provides no impact to functionality whatsoever, but it’ll make it easy for someone to tell at a glance that it’s an iPhone 13 and not an iPhone 12.
The biggest surprise feature this year was a new video mode called Cinematic. This simulates the kind of manual rack focusing you see in movies where the camera operator shifts the focus from a character or object in the foreground, to one in the background. iPhone 13’s Cinematic video mode does this automatically, and it actually looks neat. It senses when someone is coming into the frame and shifts the focus to their face automatically. If the person in the foreground turns away from the camera to look at a person in the background, Cinematic mode will shift the focus from foreground to background automatically. This is all pretty remarkable, but you can even adjust the focus point yourself after you shoot the video, or manually select where you want the focus to be as you’re shooting.
The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max likewise got modest, but welcome updates. First, these models now have a version of Apple’s Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion that first debuted on the iPad Pro. That’s a lot of marketing jargon, but what it means is that the response rate is so excellent that if you’re doing any kind of creative/artistic work on your iPhone 13 Pro, there should be no lag between what you do with your finger on the canvas and what you see on the screen. Even basic things like swiping through the iOS interface should be noticeably smoother.
The iPhone 13 Pro models also come in an array of new colors including Graphite, Silver, Gold, and Sierra Blue. I really like the look of the Sierra Blue edition, and apparently it was quite a challenge for Apple to get that hue right.
I think there’s a few reasons why a person would choose to buy the 13 Pro over the 13. One is, frankly, status. These are the top of the line models and they look positively like luxury products. And that is important for a significant number of iPhone buyers. They really could almost call these “iPhone 13 Deluxe.”
Another might be screen size. While the 13 and 13 Pro have the same display sizes, if you want something smaller you have to choose the iPhone 13 mini, and if you want something larger, you have to choose the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
And finally, there’s the cameras. If you want the best cameras you can get on an iPhone, you have to choose a 13 Pro or 13 Pro Max. Theses models have new lenses and sensors, so you’re going to get the best possible pictures, particularly in low-light photos. And while the iPhone 13 has wide and ultra-wide lenses, only the Pro models have a telephoto lens. For video, the Pro models can now shoot in ProRes, one of the main codecs used in Hollywood films. That probably doesn’t mean much to most consumers, but we’ve arrived at a place where an iPhone can legitimately be used in a professional video shoot, and might be the ideal camera in many scenarios. Apple even brought in a Hollywood director and cinematographer to shoot a short film to demonstrate just what kind of serious work you can do with one of these.
These days one thing to keep in mind though is that computational photography is a big part of what goes into getting you a great shot on a smartphone camera. In the film days, the bigger the lens you had, the more light you could bring in, and the better your photo would be. But you can only make a smartphone camera’s lens so big, so the phone’s system-on-a-chip does a lot of the work of taking in the image data from the lens/sensor system and building the best looking image possible. And here the good news is that both the Pro and non-Pro models have Apple’s new A15 Bionic processor, so while the Pro models will still get you the absolute best photos you can get on an iPhone in 2021, you’re still going to get really amazing photo quality on the standard 13.
“Ok, fine,” you say. “But which one should I buy?” If you want the best all-around value, but the iPhone 13. If you want the bleeding edge best quality display and camera system, but the iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max. If you want a small iPhone or a jumbo iPhone, that’s going to steer you pretty clearly in one direction or the other. If you’re an aspiring filmmaker, get the Pro. If you bought an iPhone 12 last year, you probably don’t need an iPhone 13. If you’re still holding on to an iPhone 7, buy any one of these new models.
Battery life is better on all iPhone 13 models, which is always welcome news, and the iPhone 13 now comes standard with 128 GB of storage, up from 64 GB. Pre-orders start September 17, units go on sale September 24.
The new iPhone models announced at this week’s event may not be industry-changers, but they are solid year-over-year improvements to the iPhone lineup. The iPhone got meaningfully better in several areas, and is still sold at the same prices as last year’s model. And isn’t that what we want from Apple each year?