At its much-awaited California Streaming virtual event, Apple has taken the wraps off its next-gen iPhone lineup. Putting an end to the mystery, the company has dubbed it the iPhone 13 series. This new lineup includes fours models just like last year. The company hasn’t nixed the “mini” model just yet and brought substantial upgrades across the board. All the iPhone 13 models now have a smaller notch (finally!), Pro variants boast a ProMotion display, and much more.
Design & Display
Starting with the design, the iPhone 13 series boasts the same flat edge design as last year’s iPhone 12. You have an aerospace-grade aluminum alloy frame to offer sturdy construction aboard the iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13. The iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max, on the other hand, boasts a surgical-grade stainless steel frame. These devices also have Ceramic Shield protection onboard to safeguard the display against cracks and scratches.
The display sizes remain unchanged as well. You get a 5.4-inch display on the iPhone 13 mini, a 6.1-inch display on the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, and a 6.7-inch panel on the iPhone 13 Pro Max. The Super Retina XDR OLED panels aboard the iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13 now support up to 1200 nits of brightness, HDR, Dolby Vision, and more. On the other hand, the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max support the long-rumored ProMotion display. The panel supports “adaptive refresh rate”, meaning it can go from as low as 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the content.
While the iPhone notch may have gotten smaller, it’s nowhere close to the unintrusive experience offered by a punch-hole cutout (which is expected to be present in iPhone 14, as per leaks) offered by most Android phones out there. Heck, some phones like the Xiaomi Mix 4 and Galaxy Z Fold 3 include an under-display selfie camera to provide an even cleaner and immersive display.
Under the hood, the iPhone 13 series is powered by the new A15 Bionic chipset. It is based on the 5nm architecture and includes a 6-core CPU, which includes 2 high-performance and 4 efficiency cores. You also have a 4-core GPU aboard the standard iPhone 13 models, which enable more intensive and power-hungry gaming experiences. The Pro variants include a 5-core GPU. Moreover, the chipset also includes a new ISP (image signal processor), new display engine, and faster neural engine and ML accelerators to enable the many AI features in iOS 15.
The standard iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini have dual cameras on the rear, with a new wide-angle sensor and a custom-designed ultra-wide camera with a new sensor. The primary camera supports sensor-shift OIS, which was first introduced in iPhone 12 Pro Max. Also, both the cameras now support up to 4K @ 60FPS video recording, which is great.
Battery Life and Charging
By now, you would know that Apple does not like to share the exact battery capacity of iPhones. It simply talks in terms of battery life gains to make it easier for users to understand.
Well, the Cupertino giant today confirmed that the iPhone 13 models have bigger batteries, but didn’t dole out the specifics. As per Apple’s claims, iPhone 13 mini will provide 1.5 hours more battery life than iPhone 12 mini while the iPhone 13 will offer 2.5 hours more battery life than its predecessor.
The iPhone 13 mini is priced starting at $699 whereas the iPhone 13 is priced starting at $799 in the US. You will get a 128GB variant for this price as opposed to the 64GB base variant of its predecessors.
