REVIEW OF I PHONE 13 / 13 MINI 2021. LATEST I PHONE 13 AND 13 MINI HONEST REVIEW.

sometimes phone reviews are hard

there are new features to explore new

hardware technologies to explain

entirely new camera systems and new

designs to talk about

yeah i don't think this is going to be

that kind of review this review should

be pretty easy this is the iphone 13 and

this is the iphone 13 mini and there are

only three things you need to know

okay four

maybe five

will this be easy this might not be

quite as simple as i thought i figured

it'd be pretty simple because you know

when i review an ipad i get to say it's

just an ipad but now when i review a

phone i got to talk about this camera

and that camera and there's a third

camera in there i compare it to

okay

let's just start going over the things

and i want to do it in order from the

most important thing to the least

important stuff

i think the most important parts of a

phone are the fundamental things that

make your life easier and that means

that we are going to start with battery

apple made the batteries

bigger apple says that the iphone 13

lasts two and a half hours longer for

most people and that the iphone 13 mini

goes for one and a half hours longer

those are apple's estimates based on

aggregated data so it's hard to know

exactly what they mean you know in the

real world for you so i'm just gonna

tell you what i got the regular iphone

13 made it from 7am to midnight before

it tuckered out with about five hours of

screen on time that was with some camera

testing watching some video and the

usual doom scrolling and emails and work

and really bad chests which i'm really

bad at so that's impressive but it's not

magic when we had a day where we had to

shoot a lot more 4k video testing i was

looking for a charger by like 7 or 8 p.m

now the iphone 13 mini is going to be a

different story i just have to admit

that i haven't had a chance to fully

test it yet we don't do just video

rundown tests here at the verge we like

to have real world use and there are

only so many phones i can actually use

in the real world at a time i am going

to be doing a full longer term battery

test on the iphone 13 mini over the next

couple of weeks and i will publish a

full rundown on theverge.com but i do

have an early impression and it's that

apple's one and a half hour longer claim

does seem reasonable however that's kind

of faint praise

i use the iphone 12 mini a lot over the

last year and what i said when i first

reviewed it has turned out to be true

if you use a little tiny smartphone like

it's a very big smartphone you're gonna

end up draining the battery by early

afternoon or even lunch

so my takeaway for the iphone 13 mini is

unfortunately wait and see my takeaway

for the regular iphone 13 is that we are

back to having really good battery life

on an iphone after an off year last year

because again

the batteries are bigger

now the second thing i want to talk

about is also a smartphone fundamental

cameras

apple made the main wide-angle camera

sensor bigger too and bigger is better

when it comes to camera sensors the

sensor is so big they had to switch the

camera layout to diagonal to fit it all

they also had to make the whole thing a

little bit thicker so cases from the

iphone 12 aren't going to fit around

this new bigger camera bump

this new bigger sensor is the same one

that came on the iphone 12 pro max last

year and that camera held on to the

crown for best photo and video quality

since it was released and in my testing

the results from this main camera are as

good or better thanks to software

improvements than the top tier 12 pro

max from last year

which is to say the only better camera

than the iphone 13 on the market today

is the iphone 13 pro

details out of this camera are sharp and

accurate colors are rich without being

over saturated focusing is fast and

reliable portrait mode is really good

enough to use day to day and low light

and night sight are both exceptional

video quality is also great the main

camera has sensor stabilization which

helps when you're walking around it can

do all of the modes that matter most in

terms of 4k and slow-mo and it handles

them all really well

the only way to be unhappy with this

camera is if you compare photos taken in

difficult situations

on a big screen head-to-head with the 13

pro the ultrawide sensor was also

updated for better low light performance

but it's fairly minor what i mostly see

is improved white balance and color when

it's in night mode if i could have one

wish for this camera system it's that

the selfie camera would have been

updated it does have software

improvements just like all the other

cameras and it is inside a smaller notch

on the screen now but

the selfie camera is just too important

for apple to have left the same for this

many years in a row

so after battery and camera my third

most important thing to know is a

curveball it's last year's iphone 12.

the iphone 12 has come up a lot already

in this video because well you know it's

natural to compare this phone to the one

that came last year and it would be

totally fair to call this iphone 13 an

iphone 12s it's basically the same idea

but better but the reality is many

people looking to upgrade to the iphone

13 are going to be coming from older

phones than last year's 12 and if that's

you i have very good news

nearly everything the iphone 13 is

inheriting from last year's iphone 12 is

excellent and a big upgrade

all new design is beautiful and modern

the oled screen has deep blacks and

bright brights it's got the magsafe

system for wireless charging that

ecosystem still needs work but it's

convenient you're getting everything

that's good about this phone and

everything that was good from the phone

that came before it

the fourth thing is just answering this

question should you get the iphone 13 or

the 13 pro i have a full review of the

iphone 13 pro and the pro max which i

encourage you to go watch if you're

thinking about getting the pro

what you get with the 13 pro is a better

camera system overall and a telephoto

camera the 13 pro max has the biggest

screen and the biggest battery and both

of those phones have a fast refresh

display which makes animation and

scrolling look and feel smoother

are those things worth the extra money

well they are to me but i love phones

and i use them enough that every little

detail makes a difference in my

experience

if you have to have the nicest things

get the one with the nice to haves

for me the camera improvements on the

pro are good enough to justify the extra

cost plus i'm a sucker for the extra

screen all right how many things are we

at uh five okay five means we're going

to go back to the camera to talk about

some features that are fun but they're

not reasons to go out and buy this phone

the first of those features is

photographic profiles it's a new option

in the camera that changes the default

look of the pictures you're taking apple

says that these are not filters but

instead they change how the

computational photography system makes

decisions about things like contrast and

white balance and color

you know how samsung takes super vivid

photos and if you like that look then

you can make the iphone take super vivid

photos and have that be your new default

or you know pixels are really contrasty

and blue same sort of deal you can make

the iphone do that

profiles are a toggle that sticks so

every time you open the camera you get

that look they're there all the time by

default but of course you can turn them

off if you don't want to use them

here's some examples this is the iphone

shot with the standard profile next to a

samsung zflip3

and now the iphone's vibrant profile

now here is the iphone shot and standard

next to a pixel 5

and now the iphone's rich contrast

profile

apple's photos are better across the

board but in these profiles they are

tuned in a way that makes them look a

little bit more like what those other

phones do

one thing these profiles don't do is

apply these tone and warp settings to

the entire picture the iphone knows when

it sees grass or faces or sky and so it

adjusts how it applies these color

preferences accordingly so you don't get

weird looking skin tones or purple skies

or whatever

you also can't change these in the edit

after the fact profiles are baked into

the file

i get more into the weeds on how all

this stuff works in the iphone 13 pro

video if you're interested

okay thing

5.5 there's another camera thing it's a

new feature called cinematic mode think

of it like portrait mode but for video

so this is cinematic mode and what

you're seeing here is it lock on my face

and use software to

make the background blurry and then i

could if i wanted to

choose it to focus on veering over there

now it's locked on him

i could lock it on me

what's interesting is i look at him now

it sees his face

and not my face

and so when it sees a face it wants to

lock on the biggest face in the frame

and that's what it does

you can edit this after the fact and so

what you're going to see here is it's

going to shift over to verand but i did

that in edit i didn't do it while we're

just sitting here so that's kind of fun

there are a few more notes about what

it's like to use cinematic mode it locks

onto faces or human-shaped bodies so

just looking away on your own isn't

necessarily enough to trigger a depth

change also it is very aggressive at

wanting to shift focus to the biggest

face but you can double tap on something

else to lock the focus elsewhere if you

need to

finally it can only shoot at 1080p and

30fps now cinematic mode is a software

blur just looks for human faces and kind

of blurs everything else and that means

it's the equivalent of portrait mode but

for video and that means it can have the

same portrait mode problems it can't

work very well in low light and it can

have weird or bad cutouts around hair

for example

that's a little bit less noticeable

because it's a video and not a still

photo but it's still there all that said

i think that cinematic mode generally

looks pretty okay for casual video and

just so you know it is light years ahead

of what samsung was trying to do with

portrait mode video

you can go in afterwards and edit

cinematic mode including changing the

amounts of blur for the entire video and

then also going through and picking

moments when you want the focus to shift

between different parts of the scene

it's actually really intuitive to do it

in the apple photos app but if you want

to get even more pro and do it in

desktop software you have to do it in

apple software on mac os monterey like

final cut or apple photos again

this format isn't something that can be

edited in other apps

i think of cinematic mode in the same

way i thought of portrait mode when it

first came out it's fun but don't use it

for anything super important at most

it's maybe good for some

corny tick tocks

i know

i'm very cringe i just have to embrace

it at this point

all right is there a sixth thing i mean

there's lots of little things this has

an a15 processor and it's fast because

all new iphones have fast processors the

base storage has been increased to 128

gigs and that is great thank you

the best color of the five iphone 13

colors that are available is pink it

just is ios 15 has a lot of neat

features but to me it's starting to feel

a little bit complicated heim gardenberg

has a full review and he did find a lot

to like here i'm just gonna say that the

iphone's camera interface is getting

super crowded and hard to understand

what with all the disparate settings and

strange unlabeled icons all that stuff

is small potatoes though here's the

important thing to remember with the

iphone 13

just think back to those first three

fundamentals better battery life better

cameras and you get all the improvements

from last year's iphone 12. it turns out

the cliche is true if you improve the

fundamentals the whole game gets better

everybody thanks so much for watching

we've got the iphone 13 pro and pro max

video right over there and then right

down in the comments you're all going to

talk about whether this is the iphone

for you or if you're going to get the

pro or neither probably not both though

that would be weird