THE BEST iPHONES YET... UNTIL 2022
IPHONE 13 & 13 PRO REVIEW
There’s a line in almost every iPhone review: “It’s just an incremental update!”
You will read that about both the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, because they look more or less identical to the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro.
But that doesn’t tell you the whole story.
Apple has boosted the 13s in two areas that matter most – the battery and cameras.
Photography is all about light, and any smartphone will offer decent images in good light.
Where the iPhone beats others is when there isn’t a lot of light. The images both phones can capture in low light are astounding.
The Pro has seen its wide lens system updated with a bigger sensor, but Apple has stuck with 12MP, and made the pixels bigger. Bigger pixels mean more light can be captured.
Combine this with lenses with a bigger aperture and you can understand how so much detail can be captured in challenging circumstances.
There are a couple of
Pro-only features. The telephoto lens has been updated with a longer focal length, which brings 3x optical zoom, and the Macro feature allows capture of sharp images from as close as 2cm.
The cameras on the 13 have also been updated – the wide lens is the same one on the Pro 12 Max.
The hardware combines with the software powering iPhone’s photography to bring bestin-class images – and features like Cinematic Video, which brings the blurred background of Portrait Mode to video.
The 13s are more like cameras that are also phones.
Battery anxiety is the thing that annoys phone users most. Apple has resorted to brute force physics here – the phones have bigger batteries.
I’m sure I could have worn the batteries out if I had tried, but with more usage than normal, I never had to worry.
There are many other upgrades to these phones – including better screens and screaming fast chips to power it all.
When reviewing phones, we compare to last year’s models, when those looking for a new iPhone will likely have a three- or even four-year-old device.
From those phones you will see a massive leap across the board with the 13s. We say it every time – they’re the best iPhones Apple has ever made… until next year.
iPhone 13 – from £779, iPhone 13 Pro – from £949. Both are available now from apple.com