This is the iPhone 13 Pro and you want to know if you should upgrade. After using the
newest iPhone over the last week I have some thoughts.
Sponsored by ESR
Hey, Im Jerry and right on schedule this year Apple announced 4 new iPhones including the
iPhone 13 mini, iphone 13, iphone 13 pro and iphone 13 pro max. I have been using the 13
mini and 13 pro over the last week to test them out, see how they perform, try all the
new features and see if it makes sense to upgrade from a previous iphone.
Now, this video is going to focus on the iPhone 13 Pro and not going to be a comparison against
the iPhone 13 mini. At this point you already know if you are a Pro iphone person or a regular,
or mini person. Though, I am planning a separate video on the iphone 13 mini so be sure to
hit subscribe so that you don’t miss it. And everything I say about the iphone 13 pro
should translate to the pro max with the exception of battery and screen, which we will get to.
So just focusing on the iPhone 13 Pro, it seems very similar to the iPhone 12 pro at
first glance. This 6.1” iphone starts with 128gb of storage for $999 and comes in this
new Sierra blue color, along with silver gold and graphite.
From the front it looks just like the iPhone 12 pro with the same size display, stainless
steel sides and around back a big ol’ camera bump...although there are a number of changes
to the screen and cameras in this year's iphone.
And I just have to say that this design still looks amazing! I love the flat edge design
that was carried forward from last year. The flat stainless sides that are sandwiched between
the front and back glass make the iphone feel more grippable and premium in my hand.
The notch on the front has the same true-depth faceID camera but is 20% smaller and the back
glass has a nice frosted look that almost has a soft touch to it.
The iPhone 13 pro is truly a beautiful piece of technology…..well it's beautiful no matter
what it is, and the fact that it’s a pocket computer is all the more inspiring.
But, because this phone is so nice….looks so nice….you may want to protect it with
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The first big change I want to talk about on the iPhone 13 pro is the display and there
are 2 main changes to that. First, the display gets even brighter in normal conditions bringing
it from 800 nits in normal use up to 1000 nits. Last year, the iPhone 12 Pro was more
than enough bright when viewing outdoors, for me. Now that the screen is 25% brighter
I have had zero issues reading outdoor in the bright Texas sun.
And second, Pro motion!!!! The “Pro” feature that everyone has been waiting for Apple to
add to their “Pro” iPhone.
This new display can dynamically adjust the refresh rate from 10hz to 120hz leading to
a much smoother experience, especially when scrolling or swiping…….Scwiping?!
This has been made out to be the killer feature of the iPhone Pro and something that changes
the way you use your phone and how you see every other phone that does not have it…………I
will say….its nice! Things are clearer when scrolling, you can actually read text in motion
without a bunch of blur. Transitions look slightly better. If games get updated you
can get up to 120hz which will totally make you a better gamer. Oh, and every other App
does need to get updated.
But…..It’s not as life changing as I thought it would be….and even hoped it would be.
Sure it IS better when you compare side by side with another phone. If you are looking
for it, you will see the difference and be happy that you have it. But when I go back
to the 12 Pro or the 13 mini, I don’t even think about it anymore. If you are someone
who is super sensitive to high refresh rate it may be the best thing ever but I don’t
think it will affect the average user; however, every iphone 13 pro user will benefit from
the better battery life due to the adaptive refresh rate which brings the refresh down
to just 10hz when sitting on a static display. …..Which I do like!
Speaking of Battery, Apple says the iPhone 13 pro gets another 1.5 hour of battery life
over last year’s 12 pro. Of course that is from some generic information that apple
uses to compute the average phone users using-ness.
For me that has translated very well with ending the day around 25% battery leftover
and screen-on time between 6 and 7 hours. This has been without charging at all during
the day running all my usual apps, twitter, safari, some benchmarks, camera, photos youtube.
Any battery anxiety I still had with my 12 Pro is gone with the 13 pro and if you go
Pro Max you can expect even more.
This doesn’t even take into account my pre-pandemic commute when I plug in for CarPlay and get
a recharge to and from work. Even this week I have made short errand runs with maps running
but not connected to carplay and still ended the day with room to spare.
Between a slightly bigger battery, a more efficient display and performance improvements
with the A15, I think that Apple has edged over the point where people no longer need
to worry about battery life on normal days.
And Now, Cameras, which are bigger and better in every way……..And I mean bigger, like
look at these guys! They are so much bigger that cases now need a bump around the cameras
to protect them and the whole idea of phone sitting flat and not wobbling on a table is
out the window.
I am not a professional photographer and I do not spend any time editing my photos in
lightroom. And I don’t need to go over all of the specs of the new cameras which have
larger sensors, lenses, and faster aperture just to tell you that the photos look great.
Not just phone great, but great! In bright conditions the telephoto and ultra wide lenses
give you more options for framing your shot in different ways. You now get a 3x zoom lens
that bring things even closer and the ultrawide is much sharper and cleaner than last year’s
ultra-wide.
The wide angle lens now has sensor-shift stabilization on the 13 pro bringing sharper images in any
lighting condition.
The 13 Pro also gets the new Macro mode as part of the new ultra wide camera and this
is actually pretty awesome. You can get as close as 2cm away from an object for some
incredible shots!
The camera will automatically switch to macro mode as you get close to an object and I know
people have been complaining about the way it switches but honestly I don’t care about
that. Apple says a button is coming to manually enable and disable macro mode so keep your
pants on for that.
The shots you get from macro mode are just crazy and its FUN. I think this will be the
number 1 feature of the iPhone 13 pro this year and I can already see my twitter feed
filling up with iphone macro shots
Photographic styles are new this year which is like creating your own photo look that
applies to all photos as they are taken rather than applying a filter after which can have
negative affects on things like the sky or skintones.
I have played with this for a while and it’s great that you have the option to do it and
I know a lot of people will like having the choice of how their photos look but I still
just like the default iphone style and plan to keep using it.
So, for cameras, that just leaves Cinematic mode!
If you are watching this I know you have heard what it is and probably seen a bunch of demos
on other videos already. Essentially Cinematic mode uses AI to automatically adjust the focus
by tracking multiple items in the frame and selectively blurring out different parts.
Cinematic mode runs at 1080p and does an OK job deciding which items should be in focus.
And although the iPhone has issues with edges around objects you do have the option to make
changes in the photo editor after shooting the video. You can change the amount of blur
by adjusting the aperture, or change which object is in focus...which….technically
speaking is pretty nuts!
This is the first generation of this new way to take videos and you can expect it to get
better with each iteration but, I have been trying it out over the last week and I am
having trouble figuring out who this is for…..Beyond the initial testing and playing with it to
see how it works I think there is a big ask for regular users to shoot and edit these
Cinematic videos.
Most users want to take the iphone out of their pocket and quickly shoot a photo or
video of something happening without thinking about it at all and quickly share it or tuck
it away in the photo library……. And this is a good thing because Apple has spent so
many years making the iPhone the best point and shoot camera that is always available
in your pocket. Anyone with an iphone can just run and gun a video and be pretty happy
with the regular video results. When you start asking a user to try and frame
the shot for something more than a quick video of a kid being silly, and then go back and
edit that video to make sure everything you want in focus is correct you will just run
into human laziness. This will end with a bunch of 1080p videos with fuzzy hair and
ears that will never get looked at again instead of just using regular 4k video which will
be higher quality and not have the fuzziness caused by the fake bokeh blur.
Again, the technology will get better with each iteration and there will be certain use
cases for cinematic mode like making little mini movies AND I am excited to see those,
but for the regular person it will probably be something you try a couple of times then
just go back to regular video mode.
OK, that’s it for the big changes in the iphone 13 pro. Inside the Familiar design
there are great camera updates, a big battery boost, and a display that is more crisp, clear,
and brighter than before. There is also the brand new 6-core A15 System on chip inside
the new iphone that has 2 high performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, and a 5-core GPU.
And if you are wondering if it is fast, it is. But the iPhone 12 Pro was also fast…….and
the iPhone 11 Pro.
According my Geekbench tests, the single core speed of the iPhone 13 mini was 1732 compared
to the 1592 of the iphone 12 pro and just under the 1747 of my M1 iMac. For Multicore
it reached 4635 compared to the 3990 on the 12 Pro or between 9 and 16% better than the
12 Pro.
For graphics performance you are looking at more than a 50% jump of 14146 on the 13 pro
over the 12 Pro’s 9172. This has more to do with the 13 Pro having 5 GPU cores over
4 on the 13 mini and 12 pro.
With all that extra power that translates to……Well…..Not a lot right now. Most
Apps don’t open faster on the 13 pro over 12 pro, pages don’t load faster, and I still
spend the same amount of time in twitter and email……Certain high performance apps may
see an increase in speed. Exporting my lumafusion test file on the 13 pro takes 4:57 seconds
vs 6:11 seconds on the 12 pro and 6:47 seconds on the 11 Pro so it IS fast. But this processor
is not just built for apps we have today and the iOS of today. This processor is built
for the longevity of this iphone which keeps getting longer over time. Right now iOS 15
supports the iPhone 6S which came out 6 years ago so you can expect that this year's iPhone
13 will be supported until at least 2027.
So ya, its fast and it will run any iOS app you can throw at it without breaking a sweat.
Now, with all of that said, should you upgrade? Yes, year over year this is an incremental
update and the update is exponentially bigger for each year older an iphone is. When it
comes to the things that really matter in a smartphone like the camera, battery life,
and display, This iphone 13 pro checks all the boxes. Each of those updates are meaningful
updates which affects the daily usage of the device. The screen that you look at is now
brighter, even in the sun. The pictures and videos you take are higher quality so that
your memories look even better when you look at them in the future. And the battery keeps
you going all day.
For these reasons alone, especially for capturing the best photos and videos you can from a
device in your pocket, I absolutely recommend you upgrade…..from any previous iphone.
All the other features like Cinematic mode, pro-motion, and upcoming features like pro-res
raw are all just icing on the cake.
So, what do you think? Are you upgrading or holding on to your old phone, let me know
in the comments below. You can Hit me up on twitter to show me some of those amazing new
macro or cinematic shots. Ill be working on an iPhone 13 mini video if interested, so
subs and thumbs and ill see you next time.