We are going to unbox the iPhone 13 lineup, which means we're gonna unbox every
phone in the new lineup and I'm gonna start with the standard iPhone 13 in this new blue color that I think is actually my favorite of the new phones. And it's this thin box again, as you can see, because there's no power brick included in the box. But as you may have noticed, there's also no plastic shrink wrap this year. And so I guess it's time to give Apple a little bit of credit for their use of recycled materials to offset their environmental impact.
So recycled box cardboard, recycled aluminum, recycled phone design. But here we can see the phone in all its glory. And I can just fire it up real quick before looking at the accessories, but the rest of the stuff in the box is pretty much the same. You get a Lightning to USB-C cable and you get some paperwork, a SIM card tool, and an Apple sticker that is not colored, just a white Apple sticker.
But yeah, that's the iPhone 13 in the hand for the first time. Let's grab the 13 mini next. So this is actually a new darker color. It's called Midnight. It's not quite black but it is a very, very, very dark blue. But I think the camera bump might actually also be close to black on this Midnight iPhone.
Then the Pro iPhones here. The Pro iPhones come in black boxes again. So this is the Gold 13 Pro. A lot of the same stuff. Again, white Apple sticker, normal accessories. And then the Sierra Blue 13 Pro Max. Big phone with aBig camera bump, which I'll get to in a second. And just had to make sure, but yes, they do in fact all come with white Apple stickers. But that is the unboxing and that is your iPhone 13 lineup.
First impressions
But yeah, from the outside, it looks almost identical to last year's phone, and in the hand, it feels almost the same too. Although, it is a quarter of a millimeter thicker, which I don't notice at all, but then also about 20 grams heavier, which I do notice, not by much, but I did notice because I'm so calibrated to the 12. Now, most of this extra heft is from a slightly larger battery capacity. And the more I use these phones, this is starting to be interesting, the more I'm starting to think that this may be the most underrated new change on these iPhones. I have been very impressed
with the battery here, especially on the larger phones. So I had a day with the 13 Pro where I had nearly five hours of screen on time with half battery left, which is crazy good. And that's not even the Pro Max. So we'll see if this continues to hold up, but that's definitely something to keep an eye on this year that I wasn't expecting as much. You know, obviously it's a pretty minor update, but in the grand scheme of things, even if Apple didn't add crazy fast charging or ultra-fast wireless charging, the fact that they did make the phone a little thicker and a little heavier for a little bit of a bigger battery, a big thumbs up.
But really the only other two updates to evaluate are the cameras and the screen.
But overall, my impression so far is still a great set of cameras, especially in broad daylight, of course. And the bigger improvements will be seen in more edge cases, like low light, fast moving subjects, etc. Definitely gonna shoot some more of that type of stuff. But the star of the show really is all the sensors are bigger and better and there's still 12 megapixels each but that ultra wide in particular looks much better with the sharpness across the whole frame. And I'm pumped that the new telephoto on the Pro is 3x, slightly better than the 2.5x on the Pro Max last year, and, again, a larger sensor. But that's why all these cameras are so massive on the back of the phones too. It's of course an aesthetic change between this year's phone and last year. The cameras are also now diagonal on the 13 and 13 mini, not just to look different, but to fit that new hardware. And it's just an overall bigger camera bump that's super-duper thick.
I do already have a couple quirks, things that I've noticed about these cameras, though. One, ProRes.
So these Pro cameras, the 13 Pro, 13 Pro Max, were supposed to have ProRes video. Super high quality codec that's used all the time in the video world. It's not here. It's not here yet, anyway. This is a coming soon feature that will apparently be pushed sometime with a software update. Again, I can't evaluate it. It's supposed to be here but it's not and Apple's usually pretty good about eventually delivering things they promise, especially in software. But it's not here yet. But then number two, the new macro capability on the iPhone Pro's ultra wides. So when you get close enough to an object, within about 14 centimeters or something, the cameras automatically switch to the ultra wide and that's because it has the super close-up capability. So you can keep going in and get as close as two centimeters from something and it'll still be in focus, which is great. It's better than some dinky two megapixel macro camera. It's super high quality. It's taking a crop from a higher quality sensor instead. It's been fun to play with. But, but this all happens automatically with no manual override at all.
Not a huge deal to some people, but, like, you can see the switch when it happens in the viewfinder, but there is no indication that it has switched cameras at all. So you walk in closer to something, it switches to the crop of the ultra wide, but it still says 1x on the right side like it's still coming from the main camera when it isn't.
That's the thing. I can hit the 1x all I want, nothing happens. And that's the difference between getting this and moving one inch closer, auto switching, and getting this. It just looks worse. Now, maybe they do that automatically to prevent some of the fringing that can come up with close-up subjects from these larger primary sensors. But on a Pro phone, I would like at least to be able to hit the 1x button and switch back to the primary sensor. Just give me the button for the control. Small complaint, though.
But then, also, there is the new Cinematic mode, which is on all of the phones, and it is such a new, it is a software feature, but it is so processor intensive that it's only going to be on iPhone 13 and later. It's not coming to older iPhones. But this was described on stage as focus rocking and AI-based face tracking for shooting more cinematic videos. I think this is going to look like, to regular people, like video Portrait mode. So first of all, in the camera modes, it's got it's own dedicated swipe over panel. So there's Portrait photos, then regular photos, then regular videos, then Cinematic mode, which immediately applies the fake extra depth of field. Now, there is way more manual controls, so I'm thinking maybe I'll try to shoot a whole video or something with this to see if it's worth your time for people trying to make videos on the iPhone. But for now, for normal people getting this phone, yeah, that background blur is gonna get the most attention. It's like video Portrait mode. So I've got a lot of camera testing to do.
But you know what didn't take me very long to evaluate is the new screens. So they're all the same size as last year but they are brighter. They've got a slightly a 20% smaller notch thanks to the movement of that earpiece up top and the Pro versions now have 120 hertz ProMotion. So the smaller notch, it's all right, I guess. To my eye, honestly, it makes almost no difference because you don't actually get much screen real estate back. Apple didn't even the courtesy to add an option to see the battery percentage up there in the status bar or do anything with the extra screen real estate. The 120 hertz ProMotion, though, it's legit. It's amazing. It's very nice looking. And it's about damn time. And I'm gonna probably say the same thing again when it finally comes to the Pixel 6, also, this year. But yeah, it's about time.
Now, to be fair, Apple's had, in my description, some of the smoothest feeling 60 hertz phones of the past. But the second I unlocked the 13 Pro for the first time out of the box and I could see that high refresh rate, I loved it. I mean, you can see my actual real-time reaction in the BTS video that we just dropped on The Studio channel. But it looks great. Super smooth animations and pretty much every single app and every single animation, even pre launch of the phone, is moving at 120 hertz right off the bat. Even the classics, like Instagram and TikTok, that still need to get updated to look correct on this barely released phone are 120 hertz. But yeah, high refresh rate for the win. It won't translate here, of course, on camera in this 30fps video. But yeah, you'll have to trust my words. It's really good. Even now better than the iPad Pro because it's OLED now. It's 120 hertz, HDR, OLED. It's beautiful.
Aside from that, here's some A15 Bionic Geekbench scores just to sort of round out the initial impressions. It's obviously a very fast chip. It is a little bit of a bump over last year. There you go. But that sort of rounds up my initial thoughts on the iPhone 13s.
A lot of friends are asking, "Should I update? Is it worth it, even though it's a small update over the 12?" Maybe they have an older phone. Should they get this phone? First of all, friends, wait for the full review. It's coming very soon. That'll have all the details. But yeah, it is such a minor set of changes that I think if you were thinking about getting the 13 specifically then you might consider a freshly discounted 12 because the phone is so similar and it just dropped now that the 13 came out. With the mini, the battery life on the smaller one was bad, so maybe you'll get the 13 mini instead with the better battery life. And with the Pros, of course, there's 120 hertz to consider. But overall, for people with older phones, like iPhone Xs, iPhone 8s, any older phone, this represents a solid, now a good buy again.