If you own an iPhone 12 Pro, the 2021 model won't surprise you. But the owners of smartphones of earlier versions can and think about a new gadget.
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Following a long tradition, Apple releases a truly new model every two years, which is why the iPhone 13 series is a slightly improved version of the previous model. But - and this is especially nice - almost all the changes in the iPhone 13 Pro concern those things for which the "apple" corporation has long been condemned by both experts and ordinary users.
Table of contents
- Specifications
- Design and ergonomics
- Display
- Performance
- Operating system
- Sound
- Cameras
- Autonomy
- Outcomes
Specifications
| Operating system | iOS 15 |
| Frame | Steel, glass |
| Screen | 6.1 ″, Super Retina XDR, 2,532 × 1,170, ProMotion with adaptive refresh rate up to 120 Hz, True Tone, brightness up to 1,000 cd / m² (typical) and up to 1,200 cd / m² when viewing content in HDR |
| Processor and graphics | A15 Bionic, 5nm, Six Cores (Two Performance Cores and Four Efficiency Cores), Neural Engine, Apple GPU (Five Cores) |
| Memory | RAM - 6 GB, ROM - 128/256/512 GB or 1 TB |
| Cameras | Main: telephoto module - 12 Mp, Æ’ / 2.8, double optical stabilization; wide-angle lens - 12 Mp, Æ’ / 1.5, double optical stabilization with a matrix shift; ultra-wide-angle module - 12 Mp, Æ’ / 1.8, 120 °; TоF 3D LiDAR; Smart HDR 4; Apple ProRAW. Front: 12 MP, Æ’ / 2.2, TrueDepth (Face ID), Smart HDR 4 |
| Communications | Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC, 5G |
| Navigation | GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, QZSS |
| Battery | 3,095 mAh. The stated operating time: video playback - up to 22 hours; viewing video streaming - up to 20 hours; audio playback - up to 75 hours. |
| Charger | Wired - Lightning up to 20W; wireless - Qi up to 7.5 W; MagSafe - up to 15W |
| Loudspeakers | Stereo |
| Moisture protection | IP68 |
| Dimensions (edit) | 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.7 mm |
| The weight | 203 g |
| Equipment | iPhone 13 Pro, USB ‑ C to Lightning cable |
Design and ergonomics
Key changes in the design of the iPhone 13 Pro are a new body color, a cutout on the front panel, dimensions and weight of the smartphone.
In addition to the usual white, black and silver colors, Apple has added another option - blue. In the original it is called Sierra Blue, in the Russian representation it is “ sky blue ”. We tested a model of this particular color.
The matte grayish-blue iPhone 13 Pro looks interesting and practical, fingerprints are almost invisible on it. This body color works well with the glossy silver edges and glass framing the cameras, giving it a notorious premium feel.
The camera block itself still looks controversial: it is too large and bulges noticeably, so the iPhone 13 Pro sways on a flat surface.
Apple is definitely going to do something with the "monobrow" in the iPhone 14, according to rumors, even completely remove the notch in the screen. Well, the owners of version 13 Pro will have to be content with the fact that the black hole in the middle is already smaller.
At the same time, the menu at the top of the screen remains the same and the battery charge can be seen only by swiping from top to bottom. And this is much more annoying than the dimensions of the cutout.
The dimensions of the smartphone have also changed. It's a bit thicker, so you're in trouble if you try to put the iPhone 12 Pro case over it . And the new model is also 15 g heavier. It seems like nonsense if you have big hands, but in a small narrow palm, the iPhone 13 Pro slides down all the time. And that's annoying too.
The rest of the smartphone is as good as last year: a compact body with chopped edges, physical buttons that fit comfortably under your fingers. IP68 protection is still here, and the iPhone 13 Pro will survive even short-term immersion in fresh water.
Display
His iPhone 13 Pro also inherited from the previous model, which means that the owners of the new Apple smartphone may face the same problem - the rapid appearance of scratches and even chips on the Ceramic Shield protective glass.
How the screen of the iPhone 13 Pro is damaged, it was not possible to check. To do this, according to experience with the iPhone 12 , you need to walk around with a smartphone for a couple of months. Recall that Apple promised to deal with the problem, but whether it succeeded is still unclear.
But the iPhone 13 Pro finally has what we were promised a couple of years ago - support for the ProMotion smooth scrolling screen and 120 Hz refresh rate. In the iPhone 12, its use was abandoned, as it would have put too much stress on the battery. We will tell you below how the issue was solved in the new model.
Smooth scrolling on the iPhone 13 Pro looks great, especially when you return to Apple apps from third-party apps where ProMotion is not yet supported. However, Apple has promised to resolve this issue in the next renovation.
A high refresh rate inevitably leads to a faster discharge of the smartphone, so if you want to conserve power, you can turn it off. As is often the case with Apple, the corresponding menu is located in an unobvious place, namely in the "Accessibility" section, where you need to activate "Frame rate limiting" on the "Motion" tab.
Otherwise, the OLED matrix of the iPhone 13 Pro is still good: high contrast, bright and saturated colors, adequate auto brightness depending on lighting. Black is truly black. This looks especially impressive when choosing a dark theme , which is immediately turned on in some third-party applications, for example, Facebook and Instagram.
Performance
Last year's A14 Bionic processor was fast, but the new A15 Bionic, which powers the iPhone 13 Pro, is even faster. Synthetic benchmarks demonstrate this performance gain. For example, in the Antutu benchmark, the iPhone 13 Pro showed excellent results, although they are lower than those that werepublishedafter the presentation .
And yet this is almost a third more than the iPhone 12 Pro, and in the current ranking, the new Pro models are second only to the iPad Pro tablets of the third version and above.
The graphics chip in the iPhone 13 Pro is not trimmed like the iPhone 13, and has five cores versus four. There is also more RAM - 6 GB, as opposed to 4 GB in the younger model. This means that the Pro version of the smartphone is a little better at handling post-processing of images, heavy toys and many applications open at the same time . Although you are unlikely to notice this difference when using.
The storage capacity of the iPhone 13 Pro starts at 128GB and goes up to 1TB. Please note that smartphones with minimal Apple storagelimited One of the announced features of the new series is support for the ProRes codec for recording video with minimal compression, so you won't be able to save a 4K movie in this format.
Operating system
iPhone 13 Pro runs the latest iOS 15. It has a lot of updates, we will list only the most important and controversial ones.
The address bar in the Safari browser has moved down, where you can also scroll through the open tabs. To see them all, you need to swipe up from the bottom. The tabs themselves are now displayed in a grid view.
Do Not Disturb mode has become part of the larger Focus mode, which should help the iPhone owner focus on the main thing: sleep, chatting with friends, work or personal affairs.
The system can now group notifications and send them according to a schedule , for example, in the morning or in the evening. And the most important messages, from messengers or from the bank, will continue to be delivered immediately.
Spotlight now collects information from all applications in search results, and also learned to search the gallery for photos by keyword.
You can read about all the new functions and features of iOS 15 in our separate article .
While the system is a bit damp and not all the declared functions work (for example, support for the ProRes codec when recording video). So the updates that Apple will be sending out soon are worth installing.
While testing the iPhone 13 Pro, several annoying lags surfaced. It turned out that the convenient unlocking function from Apple Watch, when you are wearing a mask, stopped working (but everything was already fixed in the first update). Also, the ability to automatically recognize text by the camera was not available.
Sound
The iPhone 13 Pro is doing well here. The smartphone has two speakers at the top and at the bottom, and the sound remains clear even at maximum values.
The microphone is very sensitive. So much so that during a conversation, your interlocutor will hear not only you, but also the people nearby. Be careful.
Cameras
It is believed that the main reason to buy the iPhone 13 Pro is to get the most out of your smartphone camera . Indeed, the novelty here does not disappoint.
The first thing that is suggested when you turn on the camera app is to set up the photographic style in auto-capture mode. The options are Standard, Vivid, Contrast, Colorful, Warm, and Colorful Cool.
This should please those who don't like the regular, slightly warmer profile that Apple uses. You can set the default style in the camera menu in the "Settings", and change one-time - in the camera application by clicking on the icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
In landscapes or still lifes in bright light, the smartphone is unlikely to surprise you. All its power is revealed in portrait, night and macro photography.
Portrait mode is notable for instant focusing and perfect separation of the subject from the background. Take a look, this photo was created, as they say, "with hands", without aiming. At the same time, the person himself was in motion at the time of shooting.
But Apple still doesn't like pets . The iPhone 13 Pro's camera does just as poorly at recognizing fur and separating it from the background as the iPhone 12.
Apple decided not to chase the superzoom and limited itself to a modest 3x optical and 15x digital. It will be disappointing if you plan on photographing craters on the moon or the residents of the building across the street.
But such a zoom is useful if you like to shoot spider bugs and flowers in close-up. 3x optical zoom provides excellent macro, even when shooting movies.
But the iPhone 13 Pro's night mode capabilities are especially impressive. The camera perfectly reproduces colors and details, without going into a nasty yellowness, but, on the contrary, giving the evening colors a catchy appeal.
Beautiful night photos are obtained when you use normal or wide-angle focus options. But it will not be possible to take a panoramic picture in the dark , in which you can at least make out something.
In challenging photography, such as at night, what is most noticeable is how good and powerful the new iPhone's auto-enhancement algorithms are. Post-processing is very fast (thanks to the A15 Bionic), but even in these few seconds you can notice and admire how great the smartphone "stretches" the picture, reducing noise, increasing sharpness with contrast and optimizing colors.
The front-facing lens of the new iPhone is still the same, it is in no way superior to either the iPhone 13 or last year's model. You can get great selfies with this camera, including those with depth-of-field and wide-angle effects, but there are no significant improvements.
One of the loudest features of the new iPhones is the emergence of the "Movie Effect" mode, which allows you to shoot "like in Hollywood", that is, it adds a beautiful depth of field to the video. To do this, the camera constantly focuses on an object - a person or an animal, even when it is in continuous motion. When taking selfies, “Cinema Effect” can also be used.
But so far this mode does not work perfectly, and with a fast movement of the subject or a complex background, the camera sometimes does not focus immediately.
The iPhone 13 Pro also deserves praise for its excellent stabilization. See how great it works even when filming from a moving car.
Autonomy
IPhone 13 Pro consumes more power due to 5G support, high refresh rate and ProMotion. Therefore, Apple has increased the battery capacity and worked on algorithms that are responsible for improving energy efficiency.
Of course, the new Apple smartphone will not withstand a day and a half in active use, like some Android-smartphones, but still the main problem - where to charge the iPhone so that it will live until the evening - you will not have. Even if you use the iPhone 13 Pro often and for a long time - at least six hours of flipping through social networks, filming, keeping applications active, it will easily last until night with 25-30 percent of the remaining energy.
You can further increase the battery life of the gadget by turning off the smooth scrolling of the screen. In this case, by nightfall, the smartphone with a similar scenario of use remains more than 40% of the charge, which for many owners of old models sounds like fantasy.
IPhone 13 Pro charges fairly quickly, in about an hour and a half if you have an Apple 20-watt power supply. Recall that since last year, Apple has ceased to equip new smartphones with power adapters.
The second option is to use a wireless charger, such as branded MagSafe. Please note that she may have the same problems as tech blogger Marquez Brownlee. Due to the enlarged camera block, the smartphone does not adhere as tightly to the surface as before, and charges more slowly.
Outcomes
The iPhone 13 Pro is Apple's classic "in-between" smartphone. It has interesting new features, but nothing really revolutionary.
Three reasons to upgrade your iPhone 12 Pro to a newer model are slightly improved battery life, a 120Hz screen, and a couple of cool photo and video effects.
But if you own an iPhone 11 Pro or earlier, you won't be disappointed with the 13 Pro. The difference in price compared to last year's iPhone 12 Pro is not so great as to give up the fresh flagship and the chips that it offers.
