- Sometimes phone reviews are hard.
(upbeat music)
There are new features to explore,
new hardware technologies to explain,
entirely new camera systems
and new designs to talk about.
Yeah, I don't think this is gonna be that kind of review.
This review should be pretty easy.
This is the iPhone 13 and this is the iPhone 13 Mini
and there are only three things you need to know.
Okay, four, maybe five,
will this be easy?
This might not be quite as simple as I thought.
I figured it would be pretty simple
'cause when I review an iPad,
I get to say, "It's just an iPad."
But now when I review a phone,
I gotta talking about this camera and that camera,
and there's a third camera there
and I compare it to other cameras.
(upbeat techno music)
(Dieter sighs)
Okay, let's just start going over the things.
And I wanna do it in order from the most important thing
to the least important stuff.
I think the most important parts
of a phone are the fundamental things
that make your life easier.
And that means that we're going to start with battery.
(techno music)
Apple made the batteries bigger.
Apple says that the iPhone 13 lasts 2 1/2 hours longer
for most people and that the iPhone 13 Mini goes
for 1 1/2 hours longer.
Those are apples estimates based on aggregated data.
So it's hard to know exactly what they mean
in the real world for you.
So I'm just gonna tell you what I got,
the regular iPhone 13 made it from 7:00 AM
to midnight before it tuckered out
with about five hours of screen on time.
That was with some camera testing,
watching some video and the usual doomscrolling
and emails and work, and really bad chess,
which I'm really bad at.
So that's impressive but it's not magic.
When we had a day
where we had to shoot a lot more 4K video testing,
I was looking for a charger by 7 or 8:00 PM.
Now the iPhone 13 Mini is going to be a different story.
I just have to admit that I haven't had a chance
to fully test it yet.
We don't do just video rundown tests here at The Verge,
we'd like to have real world use.
And there are only so many phones I can actually use
in the real world at a time.
I am gonna be doing a full longer-term battery test
on the iPhone 13 Mini over the next couple of weeks
and I will publish a full rundown on the verge.com.
But I do have an early impression
and it's that Apple's 1 1/2 hour longer claim
does seem reasonable.
However, that's kind of faint praise.
I use the iPhone 12 Mini a lot over the last year.
And what I said
when I first reviewed it has turned out to be true.
If you use a little tiny smartphone,
like it's a very big smartphone,
you're gonna end up training the battery
by early afternoon or even lunch.
So my takeaway for the iPhone 13 Mini is unfortunately
wait and see.
My takeaway for the regular iPhone 13 is
that we are back to having a really good battery life
on an iPhone after an off year, last year,
because again, the batteries are bigger.
Now, the second thing I wanna talk about is
also a smartphone fundamental, cameras.
(upbeat electronic music)
Apple made the main wide angle camera sensor bigger too.
And bigger is better when it comes to camera sensors.
The sensor is so big,
they had to switch the camera layout
to diagonal to fit it all.
They also had to make the whole thing a little bit thicker,
so cases from the iPhone 12 aren't gonna fit
around this new, bigger camera bump.
This new, bigger sensor is the same one
that came on the iPhone 12 Pro Max last year.
And that camera held onto the crown
for best photo and video quality since it was released.
And in my testing,
that results from this main camera are as good or better,
thanks to a software improvements,
than the top-tier 12 Pro Max from last year,
which is to say the only better camera
than the iPhone 13 on the market today is the iPhone 13 Pro.
Details out of this camera are sharp and accurate.
Colors are rich without being over-saturated,
focusing is fast and reliable.
Portrait mode is really good enough to use day-to-day
and low light and night sight are both exceptional.
Video quality is also great.
The main camera has sensor stabilization,
which helps when you're walking around.
It can do all of the modes
that matter most in terms of 4K and slow-mo,
and it handles them all really well.
The only way to be unhappy with this camera is
if you compare photos taken in difficult situations
on a big screen, head-to-head with the 13 Pro.
The ultra-wide sensor was also updated
for better low-light performance but it's fairly minor.
What I mostly see is improved white balance and color
when it's a night mode.
If I could have one wish for this camera system,
it's that the selfie camera would have been updated.
It does have software improvements,
just like all of the other cameras.
And it is inside a smaller notch on the screen now,
but the selfie cameras just too important
for Apple to have left the same
for this many years in a row.
(upbeat music)
So after battery and camera,
my third most important thing to know is a curveball,
it's last year's iPhone 12.
The iPhone 12 has come up a lot already in this video
because, well, it's natural to compare this phone to the one
that came last year,
and it would be totally fair to call this iPhone 13
and iPhone 12S, it's basically the same idea but better.
But the reality is many people looking to upgrade
to the iPhone 13 are gonna be coming
from older phones than last year's 12.
And if that's you, I have very good news,
nearly everything the iPhone 13 is inheriting
from last year's iPhone 12 is excellent and a big upgrade.
All new design is beautiful and modern.
The OLED screen has deep blacks and bright brights.
It's got the MagSafe system for wireless charging.
That ecosystem still needs work but it's convenient.
You're getting everything that's good about this phone
and everything that was good from the phone
that came before it.
(upbeat music)
The fourth thing is just answering this question.
Should you get the iPhone 13 or the 13 Pro?
I have a full review of the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pro Max,
which I encourage you to go watch
if you're thinking about getting the Pro.
What you get
with the 13 Pro is a better camera system overall,
and a telephoto camera.
The 13 Pro Max has the biggest screen
and the biggest battery.
And both of those phones have a fast refresh display,
which makes animation and scrolling look and feel smoother.
Are those things worth the extra money?
Well, they are to me but I love phones.
And I use them enough
that every little detail makes a difference
in my experience.
If you have to have the nicest things,
get the one with the nice to haves.
For me, the camera improvements on the Pro are good enough
to justify the extra costs.
Plus, I'm a sucker for the extra screen.
All right, how many things are we at?
A five?
Okay, five means, we're gonna go back to the camera
to talk about some features that are fun
but they're not reasons to go out and buy this phone.
The first of those features is photographic profiles.
It's a new option in the camera
that changes the default look of the pictures you're taking.
Apple says that these are not filters
but instead they change
how the computational photography system makes decisions
about things like contrast and white balance and color.
You know how Samsung takes super vivid photos.
And if you like that look,
then you can make the iPhone take super vivid photos
and have that be your new default
or a Pixels are really contrasty and blue,
same sort of deal, you could make the iPhone do that.
Profiles are a toggle that sticks,
so every time you open the camera, you get that look,
they're there all the time by default.
But of course, you could turn them off
if you don't wanna use them.
Here's some examples.
This is the iPhone shot with a standard profile next
to a Samsung Z Flip 3
and now, the iPhone's vibrant profile.
Now, here is the iPhone shot in standard next
to a Pixel 5 and now, the iPhones rich contrast profile.
Apple's photos are better across the board
but in these profiles, they are tuned in a way
that makes them look a little bit more like
what those other phones do.
One thing these profiles don't do is apply these tone
and warm settings to the entire picture.
The iPhone knows when it sees grass or faces or sky.
And so it adjusts how it applies
these color preferences accordingly,
so you don't get weird looking skin tones
or purple skies or whatever.
You also can't change these in the edit
after the fact, profiles are baked into the file.
I get more into the weeds on how all this stuff works
in the iPhone 13 Pro video if you're interested.
Okay, thing 5.5.
There's another camera thing,
it's a new feature called cinematic mode.
Think of it like portrait mode but for video.
So this is cinematic mode
and what you're seeing here is that lock on my face
and use software to make the background blurry.
And then I could, if I wanted to,
choose it to focus on Vjeran over there,
now it's locked on him.
I could lock it on me,
but it's interesting as I look at him.
Now, it sees his face and not my face.
And so when it sees a face,
it wants to lock on the biggest face in the frame
and that's what it does.
You can edit this after the fact.
And so what you're gonna see here is it's gonna shift
over to Vjeran but I did that in edit.
I didn't do it while we were just sitting here,
so that's kind of fun.
There are a few more notes about
what it's like to use cinematic mode.
It locks onto faces or human shaped bodies,
so just looking away on your own isn't necessarily enough
to trigger a depth change.
Also, it is very aggressive at wanting
to shift focus to the biggest face
but you can double tap on something else
to lock the focus elsewhere if you need to.
Finally, it can only shoot at 1080P and 30 FPS.
Now, cinematic mode is a software blur,
just looks for human faces and blurs everything else.
And that means it's the equivalent of portrait mode
but for video.
And that means it can have the same portrait mode problems,
and can't work very well in low light.
And it can have weird or bad cutouts around hair,
for example.
That's a little bit less noticeable
because it's a video and not a still photo
but it's still there.
All that said,
I think that cinematic mode generally looks pretty okay
for casual video.
And just so you know,
it is light years ahead of what Samsung was trying to do
with portrait mode video.
You can go in afterwards and edit cinematic mode,
including changing the amounts of blur for the entire video.
And then also going through and picking moments
when you want the focus to shift
between different parts of the scene.
It's actually really intuitive to do it
in the Apple photos app.
But if you wanna get even more pro
and do it in desktop software,
you have to do it in Apple software, on macOS Monterey,
like Final Cut or Apple photos again.
This format isn't something
that can be edited in other apps.
I think of cinematic mode
in the same way I thought of portrait mode
when it first came out.
It's fun but don't use it for anything super important.
At most, it's maybe good for some corny TikToks.
I know, I'm very cringe.
I just have to embrace it at this point.
(upbeat music)
All right, is there a six thing?
I mean, there's lots of little things.
This has an A15 processor and it's fast
because all new iPhones have fast processors.
The base storage has been increased
to 128 gigs, and that is great, thank you.
The best color of the five iPhone 13 colors
that are available is pink, it just is.
iOS 15 has a lot of neat features
but to me, it's starting to feel a little bit complicated.
Chaim Gartenberg has a full review
and he did find a lot to like.
Here, I'm just gonna say
that the iPhone's camera interface is getting super crowded
and hard to understand,
what with all of the disparate settings
and strange on labeled icons,
all that stuff is small potatoes though.
Here's the important thing to remember with the iPhone 13.
Just think back to those first three fundamentals,
better battery life, better cameras,
and you get all of the improvements
from last year's iPhone 12.
It turns out the cliche is true,
if you improve the fundamentals, the whole game gets better.
Hey, everybody, thanks so much for watching.
We've got the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max video
right over there, and then write down in the comments.
You're all gonna talk about
whether this is the iPhone for you,
or if you're gonna get the Pro or neither.
Probably not both though, that'd be weird.