Rumors about the iPhone 14 are heating up. So why did I just choose an iPhone 13?
Plus, some thoughts on what I like most about the current iPhones, and the iPhone 13 Pro features I miss the most.
First, my apologies for not getting you any new content for the last couple of weeks. We just went though a nightmare experience working with a flooring company to get new carpet installed at our home. That left me with little time or emotional bandwidth for writing. I’m sure unfortunately several of you can relate. One bright spot in the middle of an otherwise pretty miserable couple of weeks is that I upgraded my iPhone 11 to an iPhone 13. (No, not the pink one in Apple’s official photo above.)
Why Now?
After all, we’re only about seven months from the release of the iPhone 14 which, among other things, may bring an end to the “notch” in favor a punch-out area for the camera and Face ID tech. Well, for one thing I was due for an upgrade, but honestly I don’t feel like I need to chase the absolute newest iPhone. I might feel differently if we were three or four months away from the iPhone 14’s launch. But there’s always going to be a newer, better iPhone just around the corner, and the iPhone 13’s honestly pretty great.
Color Choices Are Hard
I gotta be honest, I don’t love the color options for the iPhone 13. Red’s a bit bold, and I just never feel comfortable with knowing “where the money is going” with the (PRODUCT)RED charity. I could have gone with Midnight, as it’s the closest to black, which is what I typically get in an iPhone, but I wanted something different this time. I genuinely considered going with Starlight for a while. That makes this iPhone the latest in a long line where I’ve been tempted by the white model, but I just can never make myself go there. Pink was never under consideration. That left Blue. Now blue is my favorite color, but… I just don’t love the shade of blue they picked for the iPhone 13. The iPhone 13 Pro’s Sierra Blue is absolutely gorgeous, but unfortunately it’s not available on the iPhone 13. At the end of the day, I went with Blue. I think it’ll grow on me, and honestly I’m mostly looking at the front of the iPhone anyway.
Cases Are Easy
If picking a color was hard, picking a case was pretty easy. Number one, it had to be MagSafe compatible. MagSafe was maybe the main thing I was looking forward to getting to experience, so the case had to work with it. I went with Apple’s “iPhone 13 Clear Case with MagSafe.” I figured if I was going to pick a color that wasn’t neutral, the case shouldn’t cover it up. The visible magnets are unfortunately a necessity for MagSafe, but I don’t think it’s a big deal. The case feels a bit slick in hand, but not so much that I’m really worried about dropping it.
Car Mount
One of the things I most wanted to get out of the MagSafe experience was a compatible car mount. I did a bit of research and settled on the ESR HaloLock Magnetic Wireless Car Charger which I ordered from Amazon. So far I’m liking it a lot. It’s not an official MagSafe accessory, which you can tell because you don’t get the cool on-screen animation when you connect it, but it’s clearly designed to work with Apple’s magnet configuration. I was a bit nervous that the phone might fall off if I encounter a rough patch of road, but its holds it incredibly well, and it’s not difficult to lift it off of the charger either. It didn’t help that the marketing pictures for this product showed a variant of the exact car model I own! The packaging it arrived in was quite nice for something in its price range too.
First Impressions
The battery life is noticeably better than my iPhone 11’s was. If Apple had done nothing but improve the battery life significantly year-over-year that would have been a good update. The OLED display is noticeably better too. It’s really pleasing to look at. Night Mode photography is quite a bit better than on my 11 too. It’s much cleaner and without all of the “digital smudge” I’d often get before. I’m also really digging Photographic Styles, which lets you lock in a preset look for your photos. These aren’t filters, but rather a collection of preset ways that the phone renders photographic data to meet a certain set of preference criteria. I plan to do a lot of playing around with this.
Features The iPhone 13 Pro Has That I Wish I Had
It’s mostly two things: First LIDAR. Thanks to the LIDAR sensor, the iPhone 13 Pro lets you point your camera at a person and get their height immediately. As a dad of growing children, I wish I had this feature. Second is ProMotion, Apple’s variable refresh rate display technology that allows the display to get up to 120Hz when needed, or cycle down to an incredibly small refresh rate when possible to save battery. Any time I get to play with an iPhone 13 Pro, the smoothness of the scrolling is so good it’s brain-breaking. ProMotion isn’t a must-have feature for me, but it’s very, very nice.
I’m still eagerly looking forward to what Apple is going to do with the iPhone 14 this Fall (and also this Spring with the next generation iPhone SE, but I’m quite happy with my new iPhone 13.