Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “iPhone 13 Pro Series Review”.
We’Ve all seen it a flashy new iphone that apple claims is its greatest iphone yet and with the recent release of the new iphone 13 pro series, i was pretty curious as to what hidden tricks apple had up its sleeve, but, as i got around to using These devices, i’m not so sure what latest and greatest innovations apple was referring to to me, both the iphone 13 pro and the 13 pro max feel like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been last year. With that in mind, i’m luke pock with android authority and let’s talk about whether or not the iphone 13 pro series is worth the upgrade. [ Applause ] right off the bat. There isn’t a whole lot of difference, design wise from the iphone 12 pro series. The square design is still here, they’re still a notch, and the phone is still incredibly thick.
Admittedly, apple did reduce the size of the notch by about 20 percent, but in the day to day, you’re not really going to notice that, in order to make this light, change apple moved the speaker from the middle of the notch to the very top of the Device it’s a small change, but a change. Nonetheless, no. The most noticeable difference here is the larger camera module and the new 120hz display. Let’S talk about that display first, while there are not many upgrades over last year’s model, the 120 hertz pro motion panel is a welcome addition. Still it’s difficult to get excited about a feature that android devices have had for literal years.
That said, apple’s implementation of the feature here is fairly polished and using a 120 hertz screen in tandem with ios’s already fluid animations makes for one of the smoothest experiences on a smartphone that i’ve ever had. In fact, my first reaction to booting up the phone was just pure surprise and, apart from the ipad pro, i had never seen ios running on 120hz display. Now.
It should be noted that, as of right now, apple has not given out any documentation for third-party apps to make use of this feature which might affect battery life in the future. According to apple, this is a bug and it’s working on enabling third-party support in a future update. But the whole thing feels a little bit suspect to me, even when apple enables support it’s going to take a little bit of time for developers to catch up to the new standard and as a result, on some web pages and apps. There are some strange graphical artifacts that occur: it’s fine for the most part, but again we’re going to have to wait for apple, for an update that aside, the 120 hertz screen is not the only addition to the iphone display. In fact, these new displays are much much brighter than the iphone 12 pro series. The iphone 13 pro and 13 pro max can hit a thousand nits of typical peak brightness versus the iphone 12 pro and pro max’s 800 nits on paper. This doesn’t seem like a significant difference, but in real life it’s very noticeable, and, lastly, something that i haven’t seen. Anyone else mention is that these displays don’t seem to suffer from the same color, shifting or green tint that previous iphones have dealt with.
In fact, compared to my iphone 12 pro max, the colors on the 13 pro series have no tint at all from there. Let’S talk battery life, both the iphone 13 pro and pro max have some of the greatest battery life performance that i’ve ever seen. But there is a significant difference between the two on the iphone 13 pro max. I consistently averaged about 9 to 10 to sometimes even 11 hours of screen on time, which is honestly insane.
On the other hand, with the 13 pro, i only averaged around 6 to 8 hours of screen on time. Don’T get me wrong performance on the regular 13. Pro is still really good, but the 13 pro max shines when it comes to battery life. Still apple is sticking with the outdated, lightning connector, and i would have liked to see usbc this year that might change in the coming years with a new eu law that forces manufacturers to adopt the usb-c standard. But whether or not that will trickle down to the us markets remains to be seen. Something that doesn’t remain to be seen is performance, okay, terrible transition aside, the new a15 bionic chip is really fast.
This comes as no surprise, considering that the iphone performance has been very good in the past few years. I’Ll put up some benchmarks for you all, but the short of it is that this processor is only slightly faster than the a14 bionic. That said, we’re starting to reach a point where the processor gains year over year matter less and less yes, this phone can and will handle any top tier aaa title on ios and yes, there is a five core gpu instead of a four core one, but again The performance gains here aren’t anything to write home about. The big question you have to ask yourself is: will the pro series last a few years, given apple’s great track record for software support? The simple answer is yes, i expect the a15 bionic chip to be relevant for at least a few years, and especially considering how well optimized ios is.
I don’t expect any major issues in performance in the years to come. As expected, my experience with the devices were more than enjoyable. Apart from some graphical glitches. Due to the new 120hz panel, i didn’t come across any lag or stuttering again performance on the iphone 13. Pro series is top notch hanging easily with the latest offerings from samsung and oneplus.
I’M not going to go too in depth here, but, aside from the pro motion display, the only other big upgrade in these new phones is the camera system. So this year, the iphone 13 pro and pro max ship with a triple 12 megapixel lens system. This consists of a made wide lens, a 77 millimeter telephoto lens and an ultra wide lens capable of capturing 120 degrees field of view.
The main sensor now features a lens with an aperture of f 1.5 over the 12 pro max’s f 1.7. In theory. This change should make for better low light images and i’m happy to report that low light images are indeed sharper and brighter. It also means that the natural depth of field on this lens will be a bit more shallow. That said, in the day to day, i didn’t really recognize a huge bump over last year’s iphone 12 pro max images from the main lens are still just as sharp producing good color representation and contrast, in fact, comparing the two side by side proved to be a Pretty futile experiment in full lit scenarios apple did say that there is a new autofocus system in the ultra wide camera that should allow for better light gathering. I’M not entirely sure how this plays into photos, but i can say that the ultra wide camera is wicked. Sharp in almost every image, i was impressed with the sharpness and detail in each photo in most instances, it’s just as sharp as the main sensor and beats out the iphone 12 pro max as ultra wide in most scenarios, also apple added, a new macro mode to The iphone 13 pro series, this new mode, makes use of the ultra wide camera and produces some pretty impressive results. That said, i would have liked to see an option to select or lock macro mode, because as of right now, the macro mode will automatically kick in when you get super close to a subject, regardless of what lens you’re on. Unfortunately, this limits your ability to get close with even the main sensor, because it will auto switch to the ultra wide. It’S not a big issue, but something, i hope, apple resolves in the near future. The telephoto lens is now a three times optical zoom. Instead of last year’s 2.5 again just like last year, images produced are good and match the other two cameras in terms of sharpness and color accuracy.
There isn’t a whole lot to say about this lens other than it’s now easier to get close to far away subjects. Now, on all three of these lenses, hdr is pretty great apple, stated in its keynote that the iphone 13 series would ship with a new hdr algorithm that should make for more natural, looking smart hdr images for the most part, it’s hard to tell the difference, but I did recognize that most hdr images don’t lift the shadows as much as the 12 pro series did. That said, there does seem to be a bug with the hdr and in a fair amount of scenarios. I had to tap the screen to get hdr to kick in i’ll, put up a video clip showcasing this, but it doesn’t happen every time, but it’s still something to be made aware of, and i’m hoping apple will fix this in the near future. Lastly, let’s talk about the new cinematic mode, i’ll be upfront with you all. I have a few issues with this new feature at face value.
The new mode lets user shoot video that feels more like it was shot on. A dslr cinematic mode creates a fake shallow depth of field that is pretty impressive in certain situations. Essentially, this new mode uses the larger sensor size of the cameras to track subjects or objects within the frame and blur out the background. I’Ll be honest, it’s a pretty cool feature, but it doesn’t work all the time and it doesn’t work reliably at the moment and that’s where i have the biggest problem in apple’s marketing.
It was pushing this cinematic mode to mobile filmmakers. But the issue here is that apple gives you no control over the parameters of this new feature. You’Re locked at shooting in 1080p at 30fps. If this truly was aimed at filmmakers apple, would have enabled an option for different frame rates and resolutions.
Now, i’m not sure if there are some sort of hardware limitations at play here or what but again the absence of some control means that this new feature feels more like a cool party trick, rather than a reliable tool in the day-to-day videos can and will look Pretty cool the autofocus system is pretty good when it works, and the depth of field effect is pleasing to the eye. That said, the blur doesn’t work all the time and the autofocus tends to hunt when there are multiple people or objects in the frame. Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not trying to diminish what apple has done here. Cinematic mode is cool and i’m glad it’s a new feature.
Personally, i was in cape cod this past weekend and i had a blast running around and shooting different scenes with this mode, but for apple to say it’s for filmmakers rubbed me the wrong way again. The feature is great and it’s much better than the current offerings from samsung, but as of right now, cinematic mode is just a glorified portrait. Video mode and apple needs to develop it further for it to become a reliable tool.
Now that i’ve covered the basics, i wanted to briefly talk about the differences between the two sizes. I’Ve been testing, both phones for the past week, and i’ve been pretty torn on which device i’m going to keep. On the one hand, the iphone 13 pro is lighter. Smaller and easier to use one-handed, it has a 6.1 inch display and has a much smaller footprint. On the other hand, the iphone 13 pro max has a bigger 6.7 inch display much better battery life and slightly better speakers.
Speaking of speakers, both the iphone 13 pro and the pro max on the speakers are significantly better than last year’s iphones. The audio produced is fuller, with more detail on the high end, and the speakers get louder, but the iphone 13 pro max produces fuller audio compared to the regular 13 pro i just figured. I mentioned this anyways as a result. The tech enthusiast inside me wants the iphone 13 pro max, but i really wish the size wasn’t as large. If for it up to me, i would want a phone in between the iphone 13 pro and the iphone 13 pro max. So after a week of testing, i’ve decided to go with larger 13 pro max as much as i’ve enjoyed my time and experience with the regular 13 pro. I can’t ignore its obvious shortcomings. Still, this won’t be the case for everyone. The iphone 13 pro still has some of the greatest battery life, some great speakers and the same cameras and it’s smaller, which will be a pro for a lot of people which one is for. You depends on your priorities.
If you care about the absolute maximum performance in both battery life and display, then the iphone 13 pro max is the phone for you. But if you don’t need the insane battery life and want a smaller iphone with the highest end features, then the iphone 13 pro makes more sense, and that brings us back to the final question. Should you upgrade to the iphone 13 pro series? To be honest, if you’re coming from an iphone 12 or 12 pro, there isn’t a whole lot here to make the upgrade worth it.
Unless you need the bleeding edge on an iphone, then i’d personally wait for the iphone 14.. Yes, the new 120hz display is great and finally iphones compete with android offerings. But if you really don’t care, then the cinematic mode and updated cameras shouldn’t persuade you otherwise.
But if you’re coming from an older iphone such as an iphone 10 or even an iphone 11 series, then the upgrade here is a lot more tempting the cameras are much better. The battery life is incredible and the new screens are bright and smooth. If you’re coming from an older iphone, then you will definitely notice a difference again. This is why, for me, the iphone 13 pro series feels like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been.
Last year, so i’m gon na throw the question over to you guys. What do you guys think about the iphone 13 pro and pro max? Do you think it’s worth the upgrade? Why or why not? Just let me know down below alright guys. Well, this is actually going to be my last video here at android authority. I’Ve just decided that moving away from tech is going to be the best for me as of right now, i’ve really enjoyed getting to know this community and you guys and working with the great folks that work here at authority media if you want to keep up With me, you can find me any and all places on social media and i’m still going to produce some videos over on my personal channel. If you want to follow there, anyways that’s going to wrap it up, i’m luke pock with android authority and i’ll catch you over on the internet. You .