The iPhone 13 Pro is Apple’s top of the line iPhone for those who want the same size
as the regular iPhone 13 Unlike last year’s 12 Pro, the 13 Pro gets Apple’s latest cameras,
a new 120 hz display and better battery life.
I've had my iPhone 13 Pro for over the past month now, so I'm gonna walk you through the
top features that really stand out and some of my favorites, how this phone's camera system
compares to the competition, any downsides I've encountered while using it, and then
ultimately, I'll walk you through who I think should upgrade or buy this phone.
First up, let's talk cameras.
The camera system on the 13 Pro is basically entirely new.
You get a telephoto camera with a 2.8 aperture, a wide camera with an excellent 1.5 aperture
and new sensor with larger pixels, increasing the main camera’s low light performance
considerably over previous the previous generation and then a 1.8 aperture ultra wide.
All cameras now have night mode which is used in conjunction with the 13 Pro’s lidar sensor
on the back which unfortunately still has limited use cases, but we’ll get to the
measure app in a sec.
So that's everything new with the camera hardware on this phone.
Now, there's also new software to talk about as well.
The 13 Pro features Apple's latest photo processing software the company has branded Smart HDR4.
it basically takes bunch of different photos when you press the shutter button and combines
them all in a way to give you the best looking result.
And Smart HDR 4 combined with the new camera tech has led to some of the best photos I’ve
ever taken on an iPhone.
Like this photo I took up at my family’s farm.
The camera system was able to perfectly reproduce how deep blue the sky was that day.
Or this stunning sunset, notice how well the camera system retains the shape of the sun
and how well it was able to capture the warm glow of the setting sun in the surrounding
clouds.
Now, when you're deciding between getting the 13 or the 13 Pro with the cameras, yes,
the Pro does have that extra telephoto camera that gets you a 3x optical zoom, but keep
in mind that there are other differences between the two phones camera systems as well that
you would want to consider The wide angle camera with it’s larger sensor on the Pro
will give you better low light performance and depth of field.
And, the 13 Pro also has a new macro mode.
By default, when you bring the camera close up to a subject, the camera system will switch
to the ultra-wide camera for a macro shot, though you can change this automatic switching
in settings.
I've never been able to take this good of a macro shot with an iPhone before and the
distance to focus on a subject in macro mode with this iPhone is just insane.
Now, one other new feature that has made the 13 Pro’s camera system feel even better
is photographic styles.
This feature allows you to adjust how the iPhone's camera will process a photo before
you take it.
so different things in your photo like the sky and skin tones are processed differently
from each other.
Now, usually, every year for the past few years, I've said something like this: the
iPhone takes great photos, but I prefer the look of the photos from the Google Pixel,
just slightly more.
Well, Apple basically with this feature was like, oh you want a richer contrast look to
your photos, here you go, here’s a rich contrast mode, or you want your photos to
look a bit more punchy and vibrant like Samsung’s look?
Here you go, use the vibrant style.
And best of all, you can actually adjust each photographic style to your liking, adjusting
how much contrast you want to have in your images, or how cool or warm you want your
photos to look, giving the photos you take their own unique look,
So even if someone is standing next to you at a party and you have the same exact iPhone
and you're both taking a photo of the same group, the images you both take are going
to look slightly different and unique when you use a customized photographic style, which
is pretty cool.
But do these photographic styles really produce images that look like they could have come
from an S21 Ultra or Pixel 6 Pro?
And in general, how good are Apple's photos and videos compared to the competition?
In general, all 3 phones produce around the same level of quality of photos with corner
cases where one phone will clearly produce a better image, but the main differentiation
with them to me has been with their HDR processing and overall look to when on auto mode.
Like in previous years, this year I find Apple’s iPhone 13 Pro camera system produces images
that are vibrant, with a warm tone and often look very bright, pushing up the highlights
maybe a tad too much for my taste compared to the more contrasty and sometimes a bit
more muted look of the Pixel 6 Pro’s camera and S21 Ultra’s camera will often look even
more vibrant.
So back to photographic styles for a second, can this mode actually produce photos that
look like they were taken on an S21 ultra or Pixel 6 Pro?
Not quite.
While I do prefer a lot of the photos I get with rich contrast turned on, it doesn’t
necessarily match the images I get from the Pixel 6 Pro.
This mode doesn’t reduce every instance of the iPhone’s camera pushing highlights
a bit too far.
And this mode will also not fix some choices the iPhone’s selfie camera makes which occasionally
can still look bad and way too bright compared to the Pixel 6 Pro.
These two images were taken in the same exact lighting conditions at sunset and the difference
could not be more stark.
I've also noticed that on occasion photographic styles can make skin tones look slightly off.
Like this photo where the coloring of the person’s skin a bit off from what it does
in real life and also different from Apple’s normal photo processing with no rich contrast,
photographic style turned on.
Now, this doesn't happen too often in my experience but when it does, it is noticeable.
So it is something to watch out for when you use photographic styles.
Next, let's talk video.
and as always the iPhone’s video really shines, especially with the new camera system
and the wide camera’s low-light performance.
Now one new feature Apple has been marketing quiet heavily with its new phones is cinematic
mode, which basically allows you to switch your focusing subject from the foreground
to the background of an image and then the camera with smoothly transition to focus on
the new subject.
This feature is a cool tech demo, but the way Apple has been marketing, it is just overkill.
Like, I don't think everyone's just gonna drop their cameras and use their iPhone to
make movies tomorrow.
There may be some uses for it on TikTok or social, but it's not really going to replace
focus poles that you can get on our traditional lens.
And that's because, when you use this mode and you focus in on something in the background,
and then you want to pull your focus to a subject in the foreground, when you do that,
the focus pull just looks slightly uneven and slightly off to the train eye compared
to what you would be used to with a traditional lens.When comparing to the competition, the
iPhone 13 Pro’s video is top notch, and while I’d consider the S21 and even the
Pixel 6 Pro in most of the lighting conditions I’ve tested it in so far to be comparable,
there hasn’t really been a scenario where I thought the iPhone’s video was worse than
the other two phones.
It typically comes out as looking either as good or better, you can’t really go wrong
with choosing an iPhone for video quality, And with the new phone this year, you can
shoot Apple ProRes which records with less compression and faster, decoding and encoding,
giving you more flexibility when editing footage and doing color correction.
However, keep in mind, that you'll need at least 256 gigs of storage on your iPhone to
get this feature.
Another area where I'm impressed with the iPhone's camera system is with video mic quality,
here's an example.
All right, and this is what the front facing camera of the iPhone 13 Pro looks like being
backlit by a sunset and this is what that footage looks like for something like a vlog
or just talking to your phone does.
Notice it also did a superb job of keeping that sunset in the background exposed, as
well as keeping my face lit, and that's all due to Apple's great video processing technology.
Now, another thing I really like on this phone, that surprised me a bit is its speakers.
As far as phone speakers go, these are very, very good.
And that's because you can hear quite a bit of detail in whatever you're listening to
through these speakers.
Now, obviously bass is going to be lacking, but it's not really expected here.
And these speakers can also get very loud with no noticeable level of distortion, which
is impressive.
Next up, let's talk battery life.
The battery life on my iPhone, 13 Pro has been great and much improved over the battery
life I was experiencing on my iPhone 12.
Well, both were able to get me through the day, I've been seeing a battery of about 50%
towards the end of the day, with my iPhone 13 Pro, compared to the 25 to 30% battery
I was seeing at the end of the day with my and 12.
And for context, an average day of phone use for me is activities like reading the news
on my phone for an hour or two, checking messages from social, chat apps like snap, taking photos
on occasion and my biggest battery hog apps are audio apps like Apple Music, Audible,
and Google Podcasts which I use about every day for a few hours.
Now, another new feature that came with the 13 Pro, as well as the 13 Pro Max that has
improved almost everything I do on this phone within every single app, is Apple's ProMotion
display technology.
Pro Motion makes scrolling and animations feel faster and smoother, and more pleasant
to use thanks to the display’s ability to go up to a 120 hz refresh rate.
It's one of those technologies that once you get it on one device, like on my iPad Pro,
you want it on all of your other devices because it's so good.
Now one other slight difference with the 13 Pro vs. the 12 and even 12 Pro from last year
last is Apple made the 13 Pro heavier, weighing 204 g compared to 189 g for the 12 Pro and
163 g for the 12.
Apple used to be a company obsessed with making tech products, thinner and lighter.
But over the past couple of years, they haven't been afraid to make something heavier or thicker
in order to put a larger battery in it.
And that is the case with this year's iPhone 13 Pro.
Now if you upgrade from the 12 or a previous iPhone that isn't large, you will notice the
weight difference.
But it's something I've gotten used to over the past month and it's not as big of a deal
as I made it out to be last year.
I did an entire video on the weight difference between the 12 Pro and the 12.
And honestly it is something you do get used to with these pro models at least in my experience.
Now the last thing that has made a huge impact on my use of the 13 Pro is, of course iOS
15 which isn’t exclusive to the new Phones, but makes them feel a bit newer none the less.One,
surprise right out of the box was the magnifier app.
This feature allows you to zoom on things up close using the cameras and does take advantage
of the 13 Pro’s macro mode very well.
Apparently iPhones have had this mode for a bit, but it was just buried in iOS settings.
Now, another really cool thing that I've enjoyed playing around with, with the 13 pros, lidar
sensor is in the measure app.
You can actually take a person and it'll draw the height marker like, you know, people used
to do like next to the door frame, You can actually do that now virtually in AR in the
measure app, thanks to the 13 Pro’s lidar sensor.
Focus modes are another new part of iOS15 that I’ve used a lot with this phone.
What they do is block notifications and access to certain apps when you’re doing certain
activities like going to bed, driving, working, etc.
You can also create your own custom focus modes as well and the best part is, they all
sync across all of your apple devices, which to me has been my favorite thing about this
feature and it fixes an annoyance I had were you would put on do not disturb on your iPhone,
only to get a barrage of text messages on your Mac or iPad.
Spatial Audio is also supported on this phone and now through more apps,, I remember listening
to a video on Twitter or Reddit with my AirPods Max on, which are great by the way.
And we've done a review of those on the channel as well.
I put my iPhone down on a table as the video was still playing and then I turned my head
with AirPods Max still on to go look at something.
And as I turned my head, the sound from the video shifted back towards the iPhone on the
table.
thanks to Spatial Audio’s head tracking feature which works really well and now with
the newly released AirPods 3rd generation, even more people can use this feature with
their iPhone 13 Pro.
Now the last thing to briefly touch on with this device is the slight design tweaks Apple
made to the hardware.
First, the new Sierra Blue color is less saturated than a true baby blue and it looks very classy
and elegant to me in person.
Flipping the phone to the front display, Apple decreased the size of the FaceID cutout a
bit,, which helps separate the new iPhones from the old ones visually.
But other than that, it doesn't make a huge difference.
and then when you look at the back of the phone, the camera bump cutout is much larger
on the 13 Pro vs the iPhone 12 I upgraded from, and not just in its larger size, but
how much more the cameras stick out from the phone, giving the phone a slight tilt when
lying flat on a table, but you should be fine to still use the phone on a table, unless
you go out of your way to hit the top left corner for some reason.
Now, the last thing I'd say in general, that has really positively impacted me with using
the iPhone 13 Pro is the Apple ecosystem of devices iOS 15 like previous iOS releases
helps you integrate your iPhone with other Apple devices like like AirPods, iPads, Macs,
HomePod Minis, the Apple TV, AirTags and the Apple Watch, all of, which I've now found
myself an owner of.
The iPhone serves as a gateway, as well as a backbone to a lot of the integrations between
Apple devices, allowing you to answer texts on your iPad, Mac or Watch, seamlessly switch
your audio from your mac, to your iPad, to you iPhone, and copy text on your iPhone and
command v on a mac or iPad to paste.
Many of the Apple Ecosystem integration features are just hard to replicate in any other tech
product ecosystem and even if you can replicate them, you're likely doing a lot of work to
do that.
Whereas within the Apple ecosystem, everything just works seamlessly.
It's easy and reliable most of the time.
Heck even upgrading to the 13 Pro, this year was just a downright easy and simple experience.
Apple has one of the best set up processes for devices I’ve experienced because all
you have to do is bring your old device close to your new one to start and transfer over
your data and even migrating my Apple Watch from my iPhone 12 to my 13 Pro was also easy
and seamless this year, which in years past has not always been the case.
Next let's talk about downsides.
Here are a couple of downsides I found when using the iPhone 13 Pro on.
The first one is the Apple ecosystem, and you're gonna be like, wait a minute.
You just said, that was a good thing.
Yes, true, the ecosystem in general is great when all of Apple's devices work seamlessly
together.
But the more you get into Apple's ecosystem, the harder it is to switch out of and the
more locked in you are as well, because you can't download apps outside of Apple's App
Store on the iPhone.
Fortnite is a pretty popular app and as of this recording due to legal disputes, Apple
removed it from the App Store just like Google removed it from its Play Store, however, on
any Android phone, you can still download Fortnite because Android is a more open OS,
where on iOS you absolutely cannot do that unless you try and successfully jailbreak
your iPhone.
The other major downside with my iPhone 13 Pro that I’ve experienced is around phone
call and text or iMessage spam messages.
Apple, just hasn't really done anything in recent years to innovate on solutions that
address these problems.
especially when you compare the iPhone to phones like the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro which
can use the Google Assistant to screen potential spam calls before ringing your phone, stay
on hold for you when contacting customer service, they can now even show the best times to call
a customer service number and have advanced text message spam detection with their Verified
SMS feature.
Apple just looks asleep at the wheel here and the best they can do to make sure a spam
caller is a setting toggle you can enable that will silence any call not coming from
someone in your contacts to send the call to voicemail.
You can block numbers that repeatedly call you without leaving a voicemail or numbers
or email addresses that send you a spam text or iMessage, but that’s about it., It's
certainly better than nothing, but it's an area I think Apple could put a lot more resources
into.
So those are all the downsides that I've encountered using my iPhone 13 Pro.
Next, let's go through who I think this iPhone is actually for.
To me, the iPhone 13 Pro is the iPhone to get this year unless you want a larger or
smaller phone, then you’d go for the 13 Pro Max or the 13 Mini.
Otherwise with it’s better camera system, better battery life, and higher screen refresh
rate display, I do think it’s worth picking up the 13 Pro over the 13.
Now if you have an iPhone from last year, shelling out a thousand bucks for the iPhone
13 Pro isn't necessary unless cost just really isn’t a factor for you or you get a really
good trade-in deal on your current iPhone .For anyone with an iPhone 11 or older, I
think the 13 Pros, display and camera upgrades plus the new design and battery battery life
will definitely make the iPhone experience feel fresh for you and a decent upgrade.
Now, if you're an Android user, and you've been tempted to switch to an iPhone for a
while, this is one of the best generations of iPhones Apple has made, it comes with very
little compromises,
And if you're interested, we have an upcoming video on the channel about switching from
Android to iOS one year later.
So if you want to see that video, make sure you subscribe to the channel.The iPhone 13
Pro starts at $999 US dollars with 128 GB of storage and comes in several colors including
Sierra Blue, Silver, Gold, and Graphite.
I’ve left purchase links on the side of the video and in the description below if
you’re interested in purchasing.
And if you have any remaining questions about the 13 Pro, or want to share your experience
with this iPhone or other Apple products, leave a comment below, hit that thumbs up
button.
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For 6 Months Later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.