IPhone 13 Event And Everything New

 

All right, today we, of course, had Apple's expected, anticipated September 2021 event. This is where they announced the new iPhone lineup, the new iPhone 13s and a couple of other small things as well. Here's the thing. This was a pretty small update overall but, you know, Apple's events are always these huge grandiose things. They had tons of drone shots this year. And of course these amazing transitions, cinematography and lighting all through the roof, it looked incredible. But then it's all to announce like a couple small updates to a few things so it felt like it didn't quite match. But I still have a bunch of thoughts on a lot of the things they actually did talk about. Plus some stuff you might not have caught from inside the keynote. So this is all of that in one place.

IPad:

 So they actually started with the iPads. So we got a new refresh baseline iPad. Honestly, it's still the best deal in the entire tablet world in my opinion. It is basically the same on the outside, it's the same 10.2 inch size, the same design and that famous $329 price. But with refresh insights you got a new A13 bionic chip inside and there's also a new 12 megapixel ultra wide selfie with center stage just like the iPad Pro. So even more than the iPad mini, this is the number one entry point for most people getting their first iPad. It's still the most popular iPad and yeah, pretty minor updates, small stuff. But again, to get iPad iOS 15, 64 gigs of base storage and like a pretty tried and true designs, its fine. We'll make a lot of headlines but that's the easiest tablet to recommend. But then we also did get a new iPad mini as well. It's been a while since they refresh this, but this would be the biggest redesign or the biggest refresh of the day, just because this was the redesign outside and inside. It's basically now a tiny iPad Air. So full metal jacket in four new colors and some nice curves at the corners as you'd expect. Still a single camera at the back now but with a camera bump this time. The last iPad mini did not have a camera bump and that's a new 12 megapixel camera along with a new ultra wide at the front with center stage as well. It's got an eight 15 bionic inside even though they didn't say it on stage and also new 5G support in the mini. The star of the show though is definitely the new 8.3 inch display with thin bezels that fits in the palm of your hand. And also USBC in this one as well. So that means now all of Apple's iPads have different chips and they all now have USBC except for the baseline iPad, which still has lightening. And it's kind of interesting. Now if you look at the lineup, it's clear that the iPad Air needs another update because now the iPad mini officially has a better newer chip and better insides then that iPad Air. But generally I'm like a little bit torn on if I actually want this mini or not. I really like the small form factor. I've liked it for a long time. But I'm going to miss 120 Hz not being there, is a 60 Hz iPad and I love the 120 Hz on the iPad Pro. And I think that's going to be the reason I stick with it. But other than that, the mini is looking really good. And we'll talk more about 120 Hz in a second,

 

 Apple Watch 7:

Then we got onto the Apple Watch. We got Apple Watch series 7. Now we might've seen some of those rumors floating around about maybe a square design that was just not happening. It's not true. So we have another Apple Watch in the same shape as before but this is mostly just a bigger screen update happening here. So the bezels all the way around are 40% thinner than the series 6 and the screen now does curve and sort of flow over the edges a little bit, right up to the metal body. And they really highlighted this. They made a big deal about it. And there's lots of other stuff about the watch that's either the same or wasn't talked about as much. It looks like the same sensors, maybe the same chip as far as I can tell, same buttons and the same digital crown. I like the way the bigger screen looks but I want to see it in person. I'm not sure how to feel about it yet. And it's not even a durability thing like I beat up the Apple Watch all the time. It's never cracked, never broken, never even really scratched that much. I play ultimate in it, I land on it. It's in the dirt and turf all the time, its fine. And the new one actually has harder ceramic and hard glass on the outside but it's more of how it'll look. And we've seen this shape for a while, with the reflections all the way around, the sort of curved outsides of the Apple Watch. I feel like curving the display all the way to the very, very outside like this and bring in texts and things like that all the way to the outside. While you can fit more on the screen, might reflect even more and make some of that stuff harder to read. We'll see though. Apple Watch pretty minor updates, same shape, just slightly bumped on that screen. It also charges 33% faster with an included USBC charger and the larger display is also a bit brighter so it should be more visible more often. Oh, they also added shared workouts in Fitness+. So basically if you're on FaceTime and you have share play, they added Fitness+ workouts to share play. So you can work out with someone across the country with an Apple Fitness Plus workout. But what I really wanted them to add is group competitions. You know, the competitions where you close your ring, Apple, the one thing I want from a new Apple Watch update is just to have group fitness competitions.

iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max:

 Now we finally get to the phones, the real update a lot of you were here for, which is a lineup of iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max. So most of what we've been seeing develop turns out to be correct, which is that the iPhone 13 series looks a lot like the iPhone 12 series, but with two main updates worth talking about, the display and the cameras. So with the display, all of the new iPhones have brighter screens for visibility and HDR. A thousand nits on the iPhone 13 and 1200 nits peak on the 13 Pros. And they all have a 20% smaller notch. So all the same face ID hardware's up there, same selfie camera and all that. They've just finally compressed it a bit to make the notch a bit smaller, give you some of that screen real estate back. And then the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max have finally done it. They finally added 120 Hz display to these Pro phones and I kind of suspected they would do this, but they've done it. It's a promotion display. And it's actually a variable refresh rate from 10 Hz all the way up to 120 Hz. And this is interesting because this is now a real differentiator between the 13 and the 13 Pro. And we'll see if regular people like actually notice the difference and really want to upgrade for the 120 Hz. I think a lot of people will notice but this will be the real test. And then also you might be thinking, oh, okay, how's the battery life going to be? Now that we're expecting a brighter, 120 Hz display on the Pro phones? But it's good to know that Apple is actually expecting a slightly better battery life from one and a half to two and a half hours of use, better depending on which phone you get. Which is good, I mean, I'm going to have to put these phones through their paces and see what that actually turns into with my real world use. But it's good to see it they don't expect the battery life to go down. So that's the display then there are the cameras. So lots of stuff here per usual. Obviously, you can see there is a slightly new layout with those dual cameras diagonal from each other this time. And the camera bumps are definitely a bit larger, especially with those Pro phones. Look at the cameras again, pretty thick now, not going to lie. But the 13 and 13 mini have new dual cameras, both still 12 megapixels, both with larger sensors and larger apertures all around. And sensor shift optical image stabilization on the main sensor. In theory, this is great. There should be a bigger sensor plus better stabilization to give you much better, low light and should catch up to the competition but we shall see. But then the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max appear to have matching cameras this year and they are all better than the regular 13. So it's triple cameras again. They're all 12 megapixels again and they're all with wider apertures than every camera on the 13 for even shallower natural depth of field and even better light gathering. So also the telephoto lens is 3X this year up from 2.5X and all the cameras have night mode now.  So I'm pumped to test these new cameras. Obviously with new hardware and a new generation image signal processor, it should be both better photos and videos. Also the new ultra wide can shoot macro photos now but what I'm really most excited about is actually some of the features they announced in video mode. So video on the iPhone I've already said is I think still the best in any phone but to the new features, they've added are two new video features. And those are cinematic mode and ProRes video. So the cinematic mode has a bunch of focus tricks and tools to help video shooters better control focus. This is something a lot of people play with on the iPhone camera all the time. There's a smooth focus racking and an AI based depth detection that lets you adjust the level of fake blur and focus rack between subjects in a way that smoothly moves that blur. It sounds really cool in theory but basically I'm watching Apple's demos and I've watched them back now a bunch of times and Apple's demos are typically the absolute best case scenario of what you can expect the phones cameras to be capable of. But these to me didn't look that good. Now maybe I'm pixel peeping, maybe I'm expecting a little too much out of a tiny smartphone sensor and lenses. But the focus racks still hunted a little bit sometimes like any other normal smartphone tap to focus. And of course, when you go from a really close up shot to a really far one, focus racking you can see the edge of the frame move because the iPhone's lenses are not par focal but I'm definitely nitpicking here. This is Apple claiming a better focus control system with the iPhone camera, gotta try it and I'll definitely report back. But that's something I'll be diving into. Then the other thing I mentioned was ProRes. So we can now shoot with the Pros 4K 30 FPS ProRes video on the iPhone, unless you get the 128 gig baseline pro iPhone, in which case only 1080. So instead of moving the baseline storage up to 256, they just literally disable this one feature and it's kind of brutal. I guess maybe there could be a really good technical reason for it. Maybe the 128 gig chips aren't reading or writing fast enough to shoot 4K 30 ProRes. Maybe they're just like scared you'll fill up your storage too fast on 128 gigs. And they just want to disable the feature. Either way it seems like they should explain. But that's really the major iPhone updates with the screen and the cameras this year. Aside from that you do have new specs. The new A15 bionic chip is in all these phones with a 5 Core GPU in the Pro phone and a 4 Core in the regular. There is also a slight battery bump like I mentioned, it's physically bigger batteries. And the new iPhones are actually a tiny bit thicker and a little heavier than last year to accommodate that same ceramic shield, same IP 68, same flat side materials as last year. So you're looking at $699 for the iPhone 13 mini $729 for the iPhone13 $999 for the 13 Pro and $999 for the 13 Pro and $1099 for 13 Pro Max. And since I know you were wondering, just so you know, it's $1599 for the fully maxed out, one terabyte, iPhone 13 Pro Max, you're welcome. So yeah, a bunch of small upgrades overall. I think the iPad mini might be the biggest upgrade but on the phones, you know, I'm pretty confident without even handling the phones yet that you probably don't need to run out and get an iPhone 13 if you already have an iPhone 12. But that 120 Hz on the Pro phones, I'm into it obviously and I really like a good 120 Hz screen. But we'll have to see, that might be a good reason for people with older iPhones and maybe even up to an 11 or 12 to think about the Pro phone. We'll see all this stuff pretty soon.