Review: The iPhone 13 and 13 Mini check all the boxes
Phones
Speaker 1: This is the new iPhone 13 and 13, many. We have new cameras at bigger battery, more storage, a brighter screen, an Apple's new, a 15 bionic hip all for the same price. And that seems very reasonable to me.
Speaker 1: Apple's simplified this line up for 2021 for all intents [00:00:30] and purposes. There are two phones, the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 13 pro you want a small version of the 13, get a 13 mini. You need a 13 pro with a bigger green and battery. Get the 13 pro max. In the case of the iPhone 13 and 13 mini, you get a reasonable upgrade to the iPhone 12 and 12 mini, which were already wonderful phones. Now, there will be some that had hoped that the iPhone would be a little more splashy and radical. And in that case, take a look at the iPhone [00:01:00] 13 pro and 13 pro max. And by the way, I'm just gonna focus on the 13 and 13 mini in this video. And I did an entire separate review video for the 13 pro and 13 pro max, which you can check out the iPhone 13 starts at $829 and the iPhone 13 mini at $729.
Speaker 1: And that's the price of the base model that comes with 128 gigabytes of storage. Also, if you buy and activate your phone on a carrier plan, [00:01:30] that price drops $30 and all that is before some truly wild deals from carriers. Last year's iPhone 12 is still around at a lower price. And if you are upgrading from an eye iPhone 11 or older, consider this the iPhone 12 with 128, gigabytes is now only $50, less than the iPhone 13, meaning apple really makes it easy for you to climb that upgrade ladder right up to the [00:02:00] 13. Now Apple's clever pricing aside. I definitely believe you get more than $50 worth of improvements by going to the iPhone 13, the new phones have the same flat sided slab design as the iPhone 12 and 12 mini. They come in five colors, blue Starlight product, red midnight, which is the color of the 13 mini I tested.
Speaker 1: Now it's hard to tell, but the mini actually has an indigo hue to it. And the last color is pink, which is [00:02:30] the color of the iPhone 13. I tested, it's got a nice soft pink color and in certain lighting can look almost white. Aside from the colors. There are two key differences in terms of design. The first is a camera bump, which now positions the cameras diagonally. It's funny how that one change already has people clued in. When I was testing it out and about, I had several people stop and ask if this was the new iPhone, the next change is more subtle. The notch is less wide. [00:03:00] It's still a notch. And I still have a love, hate relationship with it, aesthetically, but I'll take it being 20% smaller. Other than that, the phones have the same ceramic shield covering over the display, the same IP, 68 rating for dust and water resistance, meaning they can survive being submerged six meters, about 20 feet for 30 minutes, both the 13 and 13 mini had no trouble surviving an unexpected Dr.
Speaker 1: From an impromptu afternoon, thunderstorm, [00:03:30] technically both phones are heavier. And I, to be honest, didn't know that until I read the spec feet. And if that extra seven to 10 grams has anything to do with having a bigger battery, I welcomed the extra weight. Now I only had five days with the phones, but both the iPhone 13 and 13 mini had no trouble making it through a day on a single charge. Now I do own an iPhone, 12 mini, and I know the reality of the 3:00 PM recharge. And I hadn't experienced that so far of the [00:04:00] 13 mini. Now I'm putting both phones through C net's battery tests and will update by written review with the final results on the front of the 13 is a 6.1 inch display and a 5.4 inch one on the 13 mini both are oh, lead panels, just like the 12 and 12 mini.
Speaker 1: Now you may have heard this year. Some of the iPhones got an upgrade to a high refresh rate. It's only on the pro models, but the 13 and 13 mini did get a noticeable increase in brightness. And [00:04:30] that is a welcomed improvement because you're gonna be using it a lot to take photos and record videos, especially with these new cameras. The wide angle camera gets a larger camera sensor with sensor based. Apple says that it's the size of the camera module. That is one of the reasons the cameras are now arranged diagonally on the back of the phone to give you perspective, the main cameras on the iPhone 13 have the same size pixels as the main camera on last year's iPhone 12 pro max, which [00:05:00] at the time had the largest sensor for any iPhone. The ultra wide camera gets a new sensor, which helps it gather more light in use. These aren't drastic differences, but I definitely noticed the improvements. There's less image noise in photos. I take in medium lighting and here take a look at some of my favorite photos that I took with the iPhone. Th and 13,
Speaker 1: [00:05:30] Let's talk about one of the most hyped new camera features cinematic mode. And I've gotta say, this is so much fun to use. And experiment with cinematic mode is kind of like portrait mode for video, but as opposed to making the background have an artistic blur, cinematic mode can focus from one [00:06:00] subject like this cellist to another, like this violinist leading either the background or foreground out of focus, the effect is dramatic. And nearly everyone I showed the videos to where a struck cinematic mode captures 10 ADP video at frames per second, using the two cameras on the back. Stereoscopically. The iPhone can choose who to focus on when to focus on someone else, but you can also focus during the recording or even change the focus [00:06:30] after you record the video, which wow, it's pretty cool. Now, if the cut out effect too much, you can adjust the aperture, AKA the depth of field, the results are nice.
Speaker 1: And I imagine after using it for a while, you'll know where the limits are. And there are a few first, you can't use cinematic mode when it's dark, you'll be greeted with a message prompting you to turn on your flash editing. The videos is straightforward enough, but the controls for the key frames where you change, the focus [00:07:00] are very small. You can long press to expand the timeline, but it shrinks back to a normal size timeline as soon as you let go. So it makes it impossible to have a zoomed in view of those tiny focus, key frames. Another nice addition is called styles. And what this does is changes the appearance of the photos you take to your preference. So if you always add a little more contrast to your photos before uploading them, you can set your camera to rich [00:07:30] contrast. And any photo you take in that mode will have that look baked in.
Speaker 1: And there are four photography styles, vibrant, rich contrast, warm and cool. If you don't want to use any of these, you can leave your camera set to standard. Also what's cool is in the camera app, you can dial in the tone and warmth for each photography style to your preference. Now, these styles, aren't a filter. The upside is it's smart about giving photos. The look you without, for example, [00:08:00] making someone's skin look like an Oupa. The downside is that it's baked into your photos and you can't undo it. It's not as scary as it sounds. And there's always editing settings to compensate. After the fact on the whole, the cameras are solid now powering all of this camera magic. And the is the a 15 bionic ship. In my time with the phone, it handled everything from gaming video and photo edits and all this being done in a variety of cool and [00:08:30] hot and humid environments.
Speaker 1: The iPhone 13 and 13 mini run iOS 15, which in my time worked well. If you want a deeper dive into iOS 50. And my experience with features like focus mode, check out my iOS 15 best featured video after five days. That's all I've got. If you wanna learn even more about the iPhone 13 and 13 mini or buy one, check out the links in the description. Also, we're gonna have a lot more coverage on the phones and putting them through [00:09:00] more camera, battery, and drop tests in coming weeks. But now I wanna hear from you, what do you think of the 13 and 13 mini? Are you planning on getting one? And if so, which one are you gonna go small this year? Are you day with the normal size? Throw your thoughts in the comments.
