This is the iPhone 13 Pro, and unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months,
you've almost certainly heard about this phone, and you might even know a lot about it already.
It launched on the 24th September 2021, which is the day that I got mine, and as I make this
review that's almost 3 months ago. I've been using this phone, as we do with our phones nowadays,
every single day ever since, and so I feel like I'm in a pretty good position to talk about it.
So in this video, I'm going to give you my 3 month review of the iPhone 13 Pro. What I'm
enjoying about it, what I'm not so keen on, and what I'm totally indifferent about. That way,
if you've not already bought one, you can start to decide whether this new iPhone is right for you,
whether you should opt for the regular iPhone 13, whether you should wait until next year to
see what Apple do next, or whether you should consider a different phone altogether. I'm not
going to list every single feature of the phone, there are plenty of videos out there
already doing that, I'm going to instead just try and focus on the areas that I care the most about.
**Design**
The design of the iPhone 13 Pro is distinctly iPhone, very little has changed since the 12,
and I think it's only going to be if you're someone like me,
who upgraded from an older model, that you're going to notice a big difference.
I upgraded from the XS, which was the last of Apple's more rounded iPhone designs,
this one is very square and almost industrial looking in comparison. It's very much in-keeping
with Apple's overall design language right now, and it matches my other Apple devices
really nicely. I've actually got a case on this right now, this is the Mag EZ Case 2 by Pitaka,
a case I reviewed a month or two ago, I'll include a link to it in the description.
I'll be honest, I'm indifferent about the design, not in a bad way, it's just
all very familiar at this point. My fiancé, who has just upgraded from an iPhone 11 Pro,
did comment on how heavy she thought the 13 Pro was, and that's how I felt too when upgrading
from the XS, it's a noticeably bigger and bulkier device, but like any lifestyle tech these days,
I think you get used to it, and pretty quickly. The only thing that I'm really not keen on with
regard to the design, is the size of the buttons on the side, they're massive! The
power button in particular, it's now creeping down to almost the halfway point of the phone,
which isn't a massive issue, but you definitely notice it when you try to put this in a clamp or
a holder of some description. If you use yours in a tripod, or a holder for your car for example,
you now need to grip the phone lower down, to avoid pushing those buttons.
**Screen**
Again, it's a very similar story with regard to the display, not much has changed, at least not
in a hugely noticeable way. The screen this time around is a Super Retina XDR display, Apple
managing to cram the term 'XDR' into pretty much every device they launch now, and it does make
me wonder what's going to come next after 'Super Retina', that does sound about as good as it can
possibly get. The screen is excellent, regardless of what it's called, it's extremely bright,
displays colours beautifully and looks incredible when you start to watch stuff like HDR content on
it. I still tend to watch most of my HDR content on TV or on my Pro Display, but when I'm on a
train or a plane and I want to watch something in Dolby Vision, or if I'm watching something late
at night in bed, you really do start to realise just how good Apple's display game is right now.
The notch somehow feels like more of a talking point than it should this year, for me at least,
because I've now got a notch on my MacBook Pro, but the one on the new iPhone 13 Pro
this year is smaller than last year's. Again, if you've got an iPhone with a notch already,
you'll notice the size difference for all of 5 minutes before it just becomes the norm. What
is new, is the inclusion of Pro Motion, again a welcome addition that Apple are slowly but surely
rolling out to all of their more premium devices. If you're not aware, Pro Motion is essentially a
variable refresh rate that goes up to 120hz. In other words, your display can 'refresh', or show
a different image, up to 120 times each second. This was previously capped at 60hz on the previous
iPhones, and a faster refresh rate essentially means smoother animations. So for example,
when you're scrolling through Safari, or opening or closing an app, the animations for doing this
will look and feel smoother than on previous phones. The variable element of the refresh rate
is designed to reduce power consumption, the phone will intelligently switch refresh rates from very
low to very high, depending on what you're doing, and honestly you'll never know this is happening,
everything just works. It's all very clever, and whilst it's the kind of technology that
a lot of people are, I think, going to shrug their shoulders about, if you're like me and
you geek out about things like refresh rates, it's a welcome addition. It also looks great.
**Performance**
The performance of the iPhone 13 Pro is fantastic, but then, the performance of
iPhones has been very, very good for a long time now, with even older iPhones still running well,
several years later. I made a video about my iPhone XS, which I'd had for 3 years when I
finally got rid of it in favour of this phone, and I said at the time, that I still felt like
that phone ran really well, considering it's age. And I stand by that, even after using this.
Does the iPhone 13 Pro run faster? Yes, definitely, but I'd expect that. But it's
testament to Apple's OS division that older phones can still run very, very well, even after a few
years. Face ID is fundamentally immediate on this phone, apps open mere split-seconds after
you touch the icon. The only exception I've found is older apps where they're not being
supported very well anymore, and that's not really Apple's fault to be fair. It's all powered by the
A15 Bionic chip, with a 6 core CPU, a 5 core GPU and a 16 core Neural Engine. Essentially,
it's a very, very fast phone that can handle any app that you decide to install on it, along with
more advanced tasks like multitasking, video editing, image processing, all that good stuff.
And in case you're interested, the only difference between the processor on the 13 Pro and the 13,
is a single GPU core, the 13 Pro has 5 versus the 4 of the 13, other than that, they're identical.
Again, I'm not ragging on Apple by playing down the phone here. It's just, these are
all incremental, quality of life improvements so far, nothing that really stands out. It's a better
phone, in the same way that this year's Ford Focus is probably a better car than last year's
Ford Focus, but you're not likely to notice a night and day difference between the two.
The same goes for battery life, and I'm not gonna talk much about it, other than to say that I did
notice a huge difference coming from my XS, but that was a three year old phone with a battery at
about 80% health. I charge this phone overnight, I get up at around 7 each morning, go to bed at
about 11 each night, and at that time the battery is running at 50%, maybe dropping to 30% if I've
been using it more than usual throughout the day. And during the day, my phone is always with me,
I check it frequently, I do some filming with it, I control our smart home with it,
I reply to emails, texts and comments with it, I take photos when I'm out, all the usual.
So yeah, no complaints from me whatsoever with regard to that battery.
In terms of connectivity, Wifi is as good as you'd expect, and the addition of 5G is great,
although this is going to be dependent on both your carrier and region. I'm with Three here in
the UK, and enjoy excellent 5G coverage when I'm in a supported area, I was in an IKEA a
couple of months back and got 600mb download speed on cellular, which is not only INSANE,
it's faster than our home fibre internet. So again, no connectivity complaints from me.
**Cameras**
OK, so I finally feel like I'm getting to the part of this review where I can get excited
about something. The cameras on the iPhone 13 Pro are exceptional, and for me in particular,
coming from a XS, this is the most significant part of the upgrade by a country mile.
For a start, you've got 3 cameras on the 13 Pro versus the two cameras I've been used to,
you've got a wide camera, which is the 'standard' camera that you'll use most of the time, but then
an ultra wide and a telephoto. That ultra wide is phenomenal for things like landscape photography,
with the telephoto great for getting in on things that are a bit further away,
or for more personal framing of things like portraits, without using portrait mode,
which I still find a bit ropey, even years after it was first introduced.
But it's not just about having more cameras, it's about how incredibly good these cameras are,
in a point and shoot capacity. Because that's what I think you have to remember about iPhone cameras.
I've just made a huge investment in photo and video for the channel, in the form of the Sony
A7IV, content coming on that in the new year, but that's a really expensive camera that's also very
large and cumbersome, and to get the most out of it, you have to really learn how to use it.
I will commit to bringing that camera with me on any kind of significant occasion,
but there will be times where I want a photo, and that camera is back at home in my studio. My
iPhone is always with me, it's as much a part of my every day carry gear as my wallet and my keys,
and you don't have to learn the iPhone's cameras. Yes, you can be more creative than a lot of people
are, but in general, you just grab it, point it, push the button, and the iPhone takes care of the
rest. It literally is the definition of a point and shoot camera. In bright, sunny conditions,
the camera takes effortlessly good photos, but even at night, in handheld mode, this camera
can take amazing photos, which is remarkable if you know anything about how photography works.
And the good news continues with video, this camera is an extremely adept video shooter,
capable of shooting 4K 60fps video, in both regular colour and Dolby Vision HDR.
That Dolby Vision HDR looks really good, and if you'd like to see an example of it,
my Dyson V15 review and LG G1 review videos were shot in this mode. I now
tend to shoot using Filmic, which allows me to shot in 10 bit Log V3.
Cinematic mode is the major new addition here, which is essentially portrait mode for video.
I mentioned earlier that I felt like portrait mode was still a bit gimmicky, years later,
and I have a feeling I'm going to be feeling the same way about Cinematic mode, although I
really do like the concept. The idea here is that your iPhone will use software to create
a shallow depth of field effect in video, that you can even edit later on in post production.
So for example, switching focus from one person at the front of the frame to a person at the rear of
the frame. And it can even do this automatically by identifying who's looking at the camera,
and switch to them, or switch back away from them at the right time. It's known in cinema as
Rack Focus, and on cinematic cameras, a second person operates the focus manually, at exactly
the right moment, so the fact that your iPhone can now do this at all is mighty impressive.
But, it does come with the same halo effect that portrait mode comes with,
and it's limited to 1080p, and honestly, beyond trying it out once, and saying "oh
that's kind of cool", I don't know if I'd ever actually use this feature in real life.
Another really excellent addition to the 13 Pro is lens stabilisation on all 3 of the cameras,
which is huge. Trying to hold your iPhone steady when taking photos or videos
can be extremely difficult, and whilst we're not talking gimbal smooth here,
it's a noticeable improvement, and helps in the creation of smooth photos and videos.
What this all results in is a camera and a video camera that you can literally pull out
of your pocket, point and shoot. We were our with friends a couple of weeks ago at Hever castle,
and they took their 18 month old baby on the carousel there.
I'm not going to share the photo, I'll share a couple of more generic pictures I took on the day,
but we got this amazing picture of the 3 of them, mid-carousel while it was moving really
fast in poor light conditions, and it's brilliant, it captures all 3 of them perfectly. And all I did
was take the phone out of my pocket, point and hit the button at the right moment. That's the beauty
of a good smartphone camera, and the iPhone 13 Pro very definitely is a good smartphone camera.
**Should you buy?**
So, who should buy this phone? Because, let's not forget, this is still an expensive phone,
the version I bought, the 256gb phone, cost £1049, you can get a 128gb version for £949,
or you can spend almost £1500 and max out that storage all the way up to 1TB. I'll be honest,
I still find the notion of referring to a phone as 'Pro' a bit silly, this isn't the business
iPhone or the iPhone that graphic designers need to buy or anything like that, it's just, 'a bit
more' than the iPhone 13. The iPhone 13 doesn't have a telephoto camera, it doesn't have LIDAR,
it has one less GPU core, it doesn't have Pro Motion, it has a slightly dimmer display and it
doesn't come in a 1TB model. The Pro model, over the 13 or the 13 mini at least, is for the person
who wants the best possible iPhone available, and is willing to pay a premium to have it.
In terms of whether you should wait until next year or not... that's a trickier question to
answer, in the absence of a crystal ball. Next year's iPhone will almost certainly be
the iPhone 14. Speculation is that it won't have a notch, that it could have under-screen Touch ID
as well as Face ID and yada yada yada... Rumour and speculation is just that,
rumour and speculation, and if a killer feature that you want on this phone,
like a foldable display, doesn't come in the next iPhone, you're going to still be disappointed in a
year's time. If an Android device offers you what you want right now, go and buy that. But if you're
invested in getting an iPhone, and you've got the cash to buy one right now, the Pro is a phenomenal
phone in almost every way possible, without a doubt, the best iPhone Apple has ever made,
until September 2022. If that sounds good to you, then maybe now is a good time to pick one up.
So there you go, my thoughts on the iPhone 13 Pro, at the 3 month point, a phone I'm really
happy with. What about you? Have you bought one? If you have, how are you getting on
with it? If not, what have you got instead? Drop me a comment, and let's talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like,
and subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.