Apple iPhone 13 review: The best phone money can buy

Apple iPhone 13 review: After successfully launching the most popular iPhone 12 series last year, Cupertino-based tech giant Apple recently unveiled its iPhone 13 series smartphones - iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro Max globally with a new striking design, improved cameras, impressive leap in battery life and more.

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Apple iPhone 13 series starts at Rs 69,900 and goes up to Rs 129,900. The starting price of the Apple iPhone 13 is Rs 79,900 (4GB RAM/128GB internal storage) for the base variant. The device also offers 256GB and 512GB capacities and comes in Blue, Pink, Red, Starlight, Midnight colors. 

I reviewed the iPhone 13 in pink color and here's what I have to say about this new incredible piece of tech from Apple. I have been using Apple iPhone 13 for a while and I feel the iPhone 13 is one of the most powerful smartphones in 2021 and a bestseller in the making. Like its predecessors, iPhone 13 is also a beautiful and powerful smartphone to look out for.

Featuring a beautiful design with sleek flat edges, iPhone 13 features major innovations, including the most-talked-about Cinematic mode feature, a new Wide camera with bigger pixels, and sensor-shift optical image stabilization (OIS) offering improvements in low-light photos and videos. It also boasts super-fast performance and power efficiency with an A15 Bionic chipset, longer battery life, a brighter Super Retina XDR display incredible durability with the Ceramic Shield front cover, IP68 rating for water resistance, and more. The smartphone comes with iOS 15, an impressive leap in battery life to ensure you can depend on the iPhone when you need it.

When it comes to design and looks in the super-premium smartphone category, it is difficult for other smartphone brands to come closer to this beautiful and powerful device from Apple. Honestly, the pink color I was using looks beautiful and premium. When you first use this iPhone 13 in public it will immediately catch everyone’s attention. Why? There are two visible changes people can see in iPhone 13 when you compare it with its predecessors. There's a new camera bump that houses the dual-rear cameras diagonally and the other difference is that the notch is slimmer and 20 percent smaller than iPhone 12 and iPhone 11.

The moment I picked a call from the new iPhone 13 my colleagues immediately reacted - "Yeh toh iPhone 13 hai" ( this is the iPhone 13).  Another good thing about the iPhone 13 i is not slippery and it rarely attracts fingerprint marks on the rear side of the device. Like the other iPhones, the iPhone 13 is extremely handy and weighs 173 grams only. As I said earlier, the iPhone 13 is easy to hold you can carry in hands without any discomfort. Overall, the looks of this device are very premium and appealing.

The Apple iPhone 13 comes with a 6.1-inch and features improved Super Retina XDR OLED display has a resolution of 2532×1170 pixels and while it does not come with the ProMotion feature and 120Hz refresh rate. The Super Retina XDR OLED display has ensured a brighter, more immersive viewing and gaming experience with some key specifications. The display has rounded corners that follow a beautiful curved design, and these corners are within a standard rectangle. It offers the most accurate and natural color reproduction and colors came bright on-screen even in direct sunlight. We didn't face any issues here. It comes with an IP68 rating to withstand water submersion up to 6 meters for up to 30 minutes, and are protected against everyday spills. The overall experience with Apple iPhone 13 display was smooth and amazing. Also, the Apple iPhone 13 speakers deliver clear and loud sound. This is probably one the best mobile phone in 2021 when it comes to audio performance.

In terms of camera performance, enabled by the A15 Bionic chip, new image signal processor (ISP), and advancements in computational photography, iPhone 13 on the rear side features a dual-camera setup featuring a 12MP primary camera with an f/1.6 aperture, and a 12MP camera with an f/2.4 aperture. The rear camera setup has autofocus. The device has a single front camera setup for selfies, featuring a 12MP sensor with an f/2.2 aperture. The device represents a huge leap in camera design with advancements in hardware and computational photography to deliver stunning photos and videos. The camera mode offers various in-built features including - brand new Cinematic mode, Portrait, Pano, Slo-Mo, Time-Lapse, and more. The new Wide camera, with 1.7 µm pixels, comes with the biggest sensor ever in an iPhone dual-camera system and is capable of gathering 47 percent more light for less noise and brighter results.

The Apple iPhone 13 stabilizes the sensor instead of the lens so shots are more steady, while the custom-designed Ultra-Wide camera with a new sensor captures images with more detail in the dark areas of photos and videos with less noise. Photographic Styles will allow you to bring personal photo preferences to every image while still benefiting from Apple's multi-frame image processing. Preset and customized preferences work across scenes and subjects, and unlike a simple filter, intelligently apply the right adjustments to different parts of the photo to ensure the important elements, like skin tones, are preserved. The dual-camera system and power of computational photography support Smart HDR 4, now with improved color, contrast and lighting for each subject in a group photo, including in challenging conditions, making images more true to life, as well as improved Night mode.

The TrueDepth camera supports all the new camera features, including Cinematic mode, Photographic Styles, Smart HDR 4, and more. The major highlight here is the Cinematic mode in iPhone 13  which records video with a beautiful depth effect with automatic focus changes, so anyone can capture cinema-style moments. For creative control, the focus can be changed during and after capture, and users can also adjust the level of bokeh in the Photos app and iMovie for iOS. Cinematic mode records in Dolby Vision HDR. The device also offers HDR video recording with Dolby Vision -- from capture to editing and sharing -- supported for 4K up to 60 fps on all cameras. Apart from the camera specifications, the software also makes a major difference in the eventual images you get. You can expect brighter, sharp, and colorful pictures even in low-light settings, especially when you take pictures at night. I found that pictures in Portrait modes came out pretty brilliant. The iPhone 13 captured sharp, high-resolution, and detailed images and videos in both bright and low lighting conditions. This Apple device has indeed captured more accurate and natural-looking colors to the photos.

The iPhone 13 series runs on A15 Bionic chipset, much faster than the competition, delivering more performance and better power efficiency, making everything even more fluid in the iPhone 13 lineup. It uses 5-nanometer technology and has nearly 15 billion transistors to tackle the most demanding tasks, including the latest computational photography features. A new 6-core CPU with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores is up to 50 percent faster than the competition, the fastest in any smartphone, and handles demanding tasks smoothly and efficiently, while the new 4-core GPU is up to 30 percent faster than the competition and enables more lifelike visuals and lighting effects in graphics-intensive games. The new 16-core Neural Engine is capable of 15.8 trillion operations per second, enabling even faster machine learning computations for third-party app experiences, as well as features like Live Text in Camera with iOS 15.

While playing games like Garena Free Fire, Asphalt 9: Legends, and Call of Duty: Mobile on this device, we enjoyed lag-free gaming. The graphic quality on the advanced setting was up to the mark. Overall the video experience on iPhone 13 was fast, colorful smooth. I watched several web series and movies on Netflix including Spring Nights, Sex Education season 3 and more. Also, switching between the apps and using multiple social media platforms was easy and the experience was amazing. Audio performance is a big plus here if you plan to buy the iPhone 13. The bottom speaker did produce high-quality sound while playing games and watching videos.

Also, the latest iOS 15 enhances the iPhone experience with new ways to stay connected, and powerful features that help users focus, explore, and do more with on-device intelligence. FaceTime calls feel more natural with spatial audio and a new Portrait mode, new Focus features help users reduce distraction, notifications have been redesigned, and Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognize text in a photo and allows users to take action.  Apple Maps brings beautiful new ways to navigate and explore the world with a new three-dimensional city-driving experience and walking directions in augmented reality. Weather is redesigned with full-screen maps and more graphical displays of data, Wallet adds support for home keys, and new privacy controls in Siri, Mail, and more places across the system further protect user information.

Apple has brought major battery life improvements to iPhone 13. On the battery front, iPhone 13 offers good battery life and lasts for almost a day on basic-to-moderate usage better than iPhone 12.  iPhone 13 delivers incredible all-day battery life, offering up to two and a half more hours in a day than iPhone 12. Also, when I played heavy games for longs hours, the device lasted for around 14-15 hours. The good thing is we didn't face any heating issues on this phone during heavy gaming sessions and during video streaming. The battery performance was good when the low power mode was off during heavy usage. Also, the smartphone supports fast charging and it can reach from 10 percent to 100 percent in a couple of hours. Alternatively, you can buy the company’s new MagSafe charger, which magnetically attaches to the back of your phone. And please remember the company is not shipping charging adaptors with the phones anymore. You only get the Type-C to Lightning Cable inside the box which can be used with any adaptor.  

Apple iPhone 13 verdict: Available at a starting price of Rs 79,900, the Apple iPhone 13 is the best affordable latest iPhone one can buy. The smartphone is undoubtedly, one of the most powerful smartphones in 2021, and I can say that it is the bestseller in the making. The iPhone 13 is the most appealing offering from the smartphone brand this year. With the great camera performance, new design and looks, the iPhone 13 is a true upgrade if you are already using iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 series. If you are willing to spend above 70K on your phone, iPhone 13 is the right choice.