iPhone 13 review: Inside cameras, display, specs and battery life

The new iPhone 13 has a game-changing feature which offers “never seen before” capabilities in a pocketable smartphone.

iPhone 13 review: Inside cameras, display, specs and battery life.

The iPhone 13 is set to offer a more advanced dual-camera system, improved processing speeds through the A15 Bionic chip and an increase in battery life. Let’s find out how it stacks up against the previous iPhone 12.

Unboxing

When purchasing a new iPhone 13 you can choose between five different colours including pink, blue, midnight, starlight and Product Red. This is the first time we’ve officially seen a pink iPhone so, obviously, I got my hands on the pink one for review.

Elly Awesome trying out the new iPhone 13. Picture: Elly Awesome.

Inside the box you’re immediately greeted with the light pink iPhone – a colourway that interestingly changes its tint depending on the way that the light hits it. Sometimes it looks fairly white and washed out and other times it’s a classic pastel pink.

The (slightly darker) pink aluminium frame really brings the design together. Overall, the colour isn’t too flashy which I think works in its favour.

Apple's iPhone 13 comes in five colourways.

Apart from this, the only other contents of the box is a USB-C to Apple Lightning charging cable and some documentation (including an Apple sticker). Unfortunately, as we’ve seen for some time now, there is no included wall charger.

Display and specs

The iPhone 13 is the in-the-middle sized iPhone with a 6.1” screen (compared to the iPhone 13 mini with a 5.4” screen). It has a new A15 Bionic chip and an improved bright Super Retina XDR display with increased peak outdoor brightness (800 nits) that helps you see your screen better indoors and outdoors.

The new iPhone 13. Picture: Elly Awesome

The device has the Ceramic Shield screen, which I’ve found to be one of the most durable iPhone screens ever – having owned an iPhone 12 with Ceramic Shield for the past year (which I’ve dropped a lot causing no issues!).

It’s also MagSafe compatible, like the iPhone 12, meaning you can use MagSafe accessories such as the MagSafe charger, Leather Wallet and MagSafe Cases.

Cameras

Although the design of the phone is unchanged when compared to iPhone 12, when it comes to the cameras on the iPhone 13 you’ll immediately notice that there have been a lot of improvements.

Visually, the cameras are a lot larger, which is due to the bigger sensor in the wide camera and a new sensor on the Ultra Wide that allows for better photos and videos in low light. These are welcome improvements that not only improve the camera’s performance at dusk and night-time but also in the daytime, offering less noise, better colour balance and more details in the dark areas of photos and videos.

Elly’s a fan of the camera on the iPhone 13.

What’s most exciting to me though is the new Cinematic mode, which allows you to use a simulated ‘rack focus’ film making technique in your videos. This allows you to bring the camera’s focus from one subject to another smoothly when recording (usually the focus ring of a lens on a camera would need to be slowly rotated to achieve this).

Cinematic mode also brings a much richer depth-of-field to videos (similar to the intensely blurry background effect that I, personally, love in the iPhone camera’s Portrait mode) allowing you to capture cinema-style videography.

I’ve never seen these capabilities in a mobile phone before, certainly not on any cameras that are pocketable, and it’s game changing for content creators, students, videographers and filmmakers. It’s even exciting for everyday iPhone users to create gorgeous home videos.

Battery life

Apple notes that due to the new A15 Bionic chip and a larger battery, they’ve been able to improve the battery life on the iPhone 13 giving you up to 2.5 hours more than the iPhone 12. I appreciate this improvement as battery life is incredibly important to me, though I’ve found this is dependent on use throughout the day. On my heavier usage days where I’m filming a lot of videos, taking photos and using a lot of apps I’ve noticed similar battery life to the iPhone 12. However, with lighter use I can easily get away with charging the phone once every two days.

Should you buy it?

Apple’s baseline model of the iPhone 13 costs $1349, which is $150 more than last year’s iPhone 12 baseline model. Although, they have doubled the built-in storage from 64GB to 128GB for the entry model, which is a welcome inclusion for those deciding which device to upgrade to.

When choosing, I’d say, if camera quality and powerful performance is important to you on your mobile phone then definitely go straight to the iPhone 13. Better yet, if you have the cash to burn and you’re all about the cameras, you might even want to consider the higher priced iPhone 13 Pro.

Elly Awesome is an Aussie tech and lifestyle vlogger | @ellyawwesome | YouTube