iPhone 13 Pro Experience: Controversial Flagship. That’s it, Apple stopped releasing the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max. The flagship gave way to the 14 Pro and became part of history. At the same time, the “firmware” of the thirteenth series will remain relevant for a long time. Firstly, there are quite large stocks left, all this must be sold. Secondly, the iPhone generation was successful, sales were breaking records. Someone will go to change the old one for a new one, there are plenty of offers on the secondary market, also a reason to pay attention to the device.
Apple releases iOS 16.5 beta and iPadOS 16.1 beta 6 to developers
New color and durable case
Historically, I can not stand covers and can not do anything with myself. Cases increase the size of the phone, deprive the pleasant sensations of a chic case. The reverse side of the issue is that you lose protection during bumps and falls. To Apple’s credit, the iPhone 13 Pro is pretty solid.
My phone somehow slipped out of a shallow pocket of shorts onto the tiles when I sat down in a cafe. As a result, a few notches on the edges, but in general, nothing serious. There are no abrasions on the steel in the Lightning area, there are also no marks along the perimeter of the case, the quality is top five.
At the same time, I continue to use protective glasses – small scratches on the surface are very annoying, and they appear much faster than you would expect from a durable protective coating. Glass on a flat surface is almost invisible, no discomfort. People also praise hydrogel films, but I haven’t used them, I can’t say anything.
Marked steel around the perimeter gets dirty very quickly, but otherwise there is nothing to complain about. The frosted glass on the back surface still looks perfectly beautiful. The trendy color of the season, Sierra Blue, is no longer a hit, but I think it will be remembered – calm, but at the same time original and not as ordinary as silver.
In my opinion, Sierra Blue looks better in the photo than live, not as bright, but it depends on the lighting here. The fact that the color is interesting is a fact, but covers do not go well with it. Here silver, Space Gray or golden, it seems to me, are more universal.
I switched to the iPhone 13 Pro from the rather big iPhone 12 Pro Max and am very happy with its size. Still, the Max-family is beyond comfort, when it is too difficult to get used to the size of the device, not to mention the fact that it is simply uncomfortable in the pocket of shorts with such a phone.
In my opinion, the weight of the iPhone 13 Pro is still excessive, it feels too heavy for such a small device, but this is already personal taste. For example, the base iPhone 13 turned out to be more balanced, it is noticeably lighter, and the camera modules do not protrude as much as the flagship.
Summer Fads
The display disappointed me in the summer: it was hot, the phone turned down the brightness, apparently trying to save itself from overheating. But this didn’t make it much easier for me – you walk down the street, and nothing is visible on the top-end display.
Although if you look at the characteristics of the screen, then everything is super: an excellent margin for brightness, and even indoors, the backlight at the maximum hits the eyes. In general, I did not expect such behavior on the street in the heat. The previous generation was similar, but there was hope that it would get better.
Of course, you need to mention the main feature of the iPhone – support for 120 Hz. You quickly get used to good things, smooth animation is very pleasing. At the same time, I cannot say that it is impossible to use other iPhones that do not have such advanced technology. I calmly switch from 13 Pro to “just” 13, 12 Pro Max or 11 Pro – there are no unpleasant sensations, and the glory of increased hertz, as for me, is greatly exaggerated. It is possible that for someone these treasured 120 Hz just warm the soul, but for me it’s just a feature that you can live without.
Suffering with a battery
I switched to iPhone 13 Pro from iPhone 12 Pro Max. The largest iPhone did not suit me with the ratio of size and operating time. As I wrote in my experience of use, at first everything was fine, the giant gave out about 8 hours of screen time, and I was happy with everything. Then iOS 15 came out, and the phone barely survived until the evening, showing about 5-6 hours of screen time. I had nothing to lose, I decided to try how things are with the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro.
To my surprise, the regular iPhone 13 quietly showed 7-8 hours of screen time, I started using it shortly after the start of sales last fall. True, three months later, the indicators were reduced to 6 hours. At the same time, the battery still showed and shows 100%. As for the 13 Pro, it’s complete nonsense. It gives out 6 hours on the strength, sometimes it even shows 4-5 screen hours. By my standards, this is just, well, very bad – I get the same results, for example, iPhone SE (2022). And during his work, if not everyone, then almost everyone scolds him.
As a result, I killed enough time to find the problem, but I still did not understand what was wrong. I’ll try to list the tried and tested methods:
- Replaced the physical SIM card;
- Tried other operators;
- Disabled eSIM – the presence of a second electronic SIM-card does not affect the operating time at all;
- Forced to switch from 120 Hz to 60 Hz in the settings;
- Turned off all geolocation services – it turned out that there was no difference, except that the geolocation icon on the screen was annoying;
- Did a network settings reset;
- Did a full data reset;
- Tried walking with another iPhone 13 Pro;
- Reset and set up the phone from scratch with the new iCloud.
Of course, I also tried to disable all sorts of ordinary functions like background content refresh, removed widgets from the desktop, launched a power-saving mode. I sinned on iCloud, I decided to try something else. First of all, I deleted messages in iMessage, because there were about 15 GB of them, and some correspondence did not load when scrolling, the application just crashed. Did not help. Disabled syncing photos to iCloud, also to no avail. They wrote on the Internet that they were eating the Locator application and AirDrop tags – they deleted the tags, but no result.
Then I was advised to try the phone with a different iCloud – they say, tails from other devices could be in the old account, and that’s where problems arise. Okay, I started a new iCloud, took a new phone, set it up, there was no data at all, everything from scratch – the result is disappointing.
As a result, the only way to extend the phone’s operating time turned out to be the option of deleting iCloud, then the iPhone really stops sitting down by itself. But without Apple services, life becomes very difficult, almost impossible.
Otherwise, the iPhone loses about 20-25% per day at rest, which, together with the SIM card, and when connected to Wi-Fi, even airplane mode does not help. And this phone just lies on the table in the zone of normal reception. What kind of wild background processes are going on there, I don’t understand. I contacted Apple support, they did not reveal any problems in the diagnostics. I thought maybe the marriage got caught. I bought a second iPhone 13 Pro six months later – the same song. The wife also uses 13 Pro and is also not inspired by its autonomy.
According to my feelings, the iPhone has a weak modem: as soon as communication problems begin, it immediately hits the battery. It is possible that I am in such places and this at least somehow explains the battery eater. But at the same time, other Apple devices – iPad, for example, or Android devices – do not differ in such trouble in the same places. In addition, sometimes the iPhone suddenly works longer than usual: I somehow had almost 8 hours of screen time when I sat at home all day and did not let go of the phone from morning to evening. But most often you get an ordinary result – about 6 hours, as I wrote above.
I don’t need any super performance, but when a top phone performs at the level of the old iPhone XS, it’s kind of sad. I don’t play games, I don’t shoot the camera so that it’s very active. I mostly have Safari and Telegram, I don’t even have a banned “Insta”. There is no VPN on this phone either – I don’t understand what happened to iOS. There are either those who have 13 Pro gives out 7-9 hours of screen, or those who get 5-6 and endure. It remains, as an option, to move to a hefty 13 Pro Max or 14 Pro Max – it seems like they live 30 percent longer, but after not the most pleasant experience with 12 Pro Max, I’m not eager yet.
And I also use Android in parallel, things are not so bad there. Some Pixel 6 gives out 6 hours of screen time, but Pixel 5a – 8-9. Recently there was a vivo V23 – it’s quiet for 9 hours. And this is without any optimization and system settings, just turn it on and use it. Even though these are not flagships, you don’t have to monitor the battery there.
I have optimized charging active, the phone itself charges at night, and in the morning it is always ready to go. The method is generally normal, but there have been times when you urgently need to leave at night, and the phone is slightly charged. So sometimes you have to manually turn off the function so as not to end up in an awkward situation.
Charging Device
I bought myself a battery with MagSafe for a trip in the summer, I carry it with me in my backpack, I used it several times, but the thing is not very useful. Firstly, the phone gets very hot with such wireless charging, it is uncomfortable to use it. Secondly, charging takes too long. Of course, it’s convenient that there is no interfering wire, I attached a magnetic accessory, that’s all, but in fact it’s easier to find an outlet and quickly charge it in such an unfashionable way.
My charger kit consists of handy 100W Ugreen GaN blocks. You can connect four devices at once, and such a power adapter will calmly charge a MacBook. The only negative is that sometimes the Apple Watch does not charge, for which reason, I do not understand, but occasionally there is such an unpleasant moment.
New Apple power supplies with two USB-C ports have also appeared on sale, which is also a handy thing in the household. I advise you to take a closer look if you suddenly do not like the solutions of Anker, Satechi and other eminent accessories manufacturers.
Not Always A Convenient Cloud
As a user of Apple One, which includes iCloud Photo cloud storage for storing videos and pictures with a capacity of 2 TB among other services, I chose the 128 GB version of the iPhone. In my opinion, releasing a flagship with this amount of memory in 2021 is at least strange, but Apple has never been generous. Oddly enough, the iPhone 14 Pro didn’t get more storage, even though analysts had suggested doubling the storage.
I have about 250 GB of photo content in the cloud, and I don’t need all this diversity on my phone. But it is also impossible to make the iPhone synchronize the data partially. Here you either upload all the data – you buy a phone with at least 512 GB – or you endure the peculiarities of the iCloud system.
Of course, I would like to change the principle of Apple cloud storage, in its current form it is worse than any analogues. For example, it unwittingly uploads fresh videos or photos from the phone to the cloud, and does not touch some of the old ones. Therefore, there are very uncomfortable moments when I went to shoot on the phone, then returned to the room, where the iPhone immediately connected to Wi-Fi, uploaded the content. But then you need to transfer pictures via AirDrop – and again you need to upload pictures from the cloud. And okay, when the network is normal, but sometimes there is slow Wi-Fi in hotels.
It generally hurts over cellular communication, the phone heats up furiously at first, uploading it to the cloud, and then, when you need to transfer pictures, the reverse process begins. Here you can find a solution in the form of creating group albums, but this is not always convenient and you want to simply and easily solve the issue without unnecessary gestures.
I don’t understand why it’s impossible to do intelligent caching, as in Google Photo, where you can safely watch previews of old photos in normal quality without loading them in full size. Or at least leave pictures in the phone’s memory for the last couple of weeks without freeing up space in an accelerated mode. In short, a compromise requires sacrifice, and if you have a cloud of photos and videos, then you need to at least duplicate the data on physical media, upload it to different clouds and buy a phone with more memory. In my case, this is 512 GB at least.
The camera is good, but the zoom is unpredictable
A huge block with cameras is the hallmark of top-end iPhones. If I have no questions about the main camera, then the auxiliary module with a threefold optical zoom has become my pain. Let me remind you that in the last generation of iPhones, the iPhone 12 had a 2x zoom, and the 12 Pro Max had 2.5x. The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max have a 3× zoom, but the aperture has become smaller compared to older models. As a result, the phone more and more often turns on the main camera when starting the camera and takes a picture on it, simply by enlarging the image using the software method. It’s cool, yes, when a $1000 phone constantly crops as soon as it sees that there is not enough light to shoot.
And it would be nice if the problem arose only in the dark. But no, even on a sunny bright day, when you point the camera at an object, the iPhone can first take a picture on the main camera using soft zoom, and then take the next one on the optics in normal quality.
Moreover, the third module in the iPhone is used for macro photography. I almost never use this mode, but in the settings you can force it to turn off when you point at an object. Why it is impossible to do the same for using the telephoto – I do not understand.
I don’t use the cinematic effect at all when shooting a video, I didn’t appreciate the customizable color profiles either. In general, I looked at old photos and remembered how I came up with something, watched processing lessons and was drawn to color correction, but now there is no such thing. It’s a pity, it was an interesting time for experiments in the era of the iPhone 7 Plus and somewhere before 11 Pro.
As before, the iPhone pleases with consistently high quality video recording in almost any conditions, it has smooth switching between cameras – this is chic. Another would be to bring the front-end finally to the level of top android competitors for complete happiness. Although it seems like in the iPhone 14 Pro it has reached a new level, but I have not tried it yet.
In general, with regard to the camera, all my complaints boil down to the strange operation of the telephoto. Otherwise, it is universal, very rarely slows down (yes, this happens on top-end iPhones) and leaves a good impression. I tried to switch to the Google Pixel 6 for photography, but I couldn’t and went back to the iPhone as the main device.