Apple’s four new iPhone 13 models hit stores on Friday.
Apple is well-positioned to maintain its momentum from last year’s big 5G super cycle. It focused on battery life and cameras this year since that’s what buyers care about most. Apple also improved the displays and tucked in a few other upgrades — like expanded support for 5G in more places — that may help the phones appeal to a wider global audience who want faster data in markets like China, Australia and Japan.
But this is not a major shift in the iPhone landscape, like the iPhone 12 last year, which introduced 5G and the biggest screen ever on an iPhone. Or the iPhone 5s, which in 2013 introduced a fingerprint reader for the first time.
In short, you really don’t need to upgrade if you bought a new iPhone last year. But anyone with an iPhone 11 or older will find enough new parts and features to consider the new models. That means more than 250 million iPhone owners with phones that are more than 3 years old.
I’ve been testing all the new models — the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max — for the past several days. While I used all of them, the core of this review focuses on the Pro Max, because it’s the biggest and best — and most expensive — phone you can get from Apple today.
Starting at $1,099, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is for folks who want the primo iPhone, with the best battery life, cameras and display. But it’s unlikely to be the most popular model Apple sells, since the regular iPhone 13 is still great, and costs $300 less.
I’ll walk you through the differences and help you figure out which, if any, is right for you.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is huge, with a screen that measures 6.7 inches diagonally.
That’s either good or bad depending on what you want out of a phone. If you want something that feels a bit like a mini-tablet in your pocket and is great for gaming and viewing TV shows and movies, then you’ll love the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The screen is notably better than last year’s. It’s the first iPhone with Apple’s ProMotion display, a very high refresh-rate screen technology that was introduced on the iPad Pro in 2017.
The screen can adjust to the content on the page to help save battery life and make things feel smoother. If you’re just reading a website, for example, it might refresh less frequently and save battery life. But then if you’re gaming or scrolling through a long webpage, it’ll refresh really fast to make everything much smoother. It’s one of those things you need to see for yourself to appreciate.
Battery life is top-notch and lasts longer than any other iPhone on the market. Unless you’re playing games for hours and hours, iPhone 13 Pro Max should get you to bedtime and even into another day.
That’s thanks to a combination of a newer processor, a new screen and a bigger battery. I streamed nine hours of movies, for example, with just over 50% brightness, and still had more than half the battery left. Apple promises up to 25 hours of streaming video playback, but I imagine I took a bit of a hit since I was streaming instead of playing a downloaded video, and used the phone for other things.
Speaking of movies, the screen also gets brighter than last year’s model, although I find the iPhone 12 Pro Max already gets plenty bright.
Apple also updated the cameras. The regular wide-angle, the zoom and the ultra-wide-angle lenses on the back now allow in more light, which means they’re better at taking pictures in the dark.
The HDR feature is also better in situations where your subject might have a lot of light behind them, which can normally make people in a picture look dark — all the iPhone 13 phones can keep color and detail even if the sun is right behind someone.
