this is my first iphone yeah you heard that right my first iphone you see i’ve been testing out android smartphones here on the channel for the majority of my life i’ve gone through the samsungs motorolas rest in peace onepluses and pixels of the world and while a lot of them still offer an amazing experience i wanted to try out what apple had to offer with the iphone so i came in not to mention my previous experience with the pixel 6 pro really steered me to switching to this phone by the way you can check out that video right over here if you really want to get the complete breakdown anyways this is the iphone 13 pro i chose this over the regular 13 for two main reasons which might sound silly but hear me out one is the fact that it comes with a 120hz pro motion display i’ve been spoiled by high refreshed screens on android smartphones so going back to 60 hertz on the regular 13 felt like a punishment the second reason was the telephoto camera now i love to take photos and it’s part of what i do for a living so having that extra reach to compose shots is pretty important to me if none of what i said matters to you save yourself some money and just get the regular 13 because at a thousand dollars the iphone 13 pro is one of the most expensive phones that i’ve spent my own money on now this phone has been living in my pocket for the past four months and my transition so far has been really good but there’s always a but there are certain things that i had to wrap my head around especially with ios and some of its complexities which i’ll get to later in the video but first i want to talk about the fit and finish of this phone because it is just absolutely incredible when i unboxed it the first thought that just rushed into my mind was man this is built exceptionally well and to my taste too the back features a matte glass finish that can resist fingerprints the ceramic shield front glass hosting the display blends in really well with the stainless steel frame and that along with the flat display gives you a really good grip when you’re holding the phone in one hand i did wish if apple replaced the stainless steel finish with a matte texture but you only get that with the standard 13.
But you know what none of what i said would really matter if you decide to throw a case on it as i did i also tossed in a screen protector on the phone just to be safe since i’ve heard that iphones are notorious for getting scratches even with the slightest aggressive use so now you know exactly what my setup has been for the past four months i also picked up this graphite 120 gigabyte model but if you want to switch it up apple does offer the 13 pro in gold silver sierra blue and the newly announced alpine green now about this form factor it is just perfect for my hands it’s not too big or too small like the 13 mini because the 6.1 inch display is adequate screen real estate for my usage i didn’t have any issues with reachability however it is a bit on the heavier side and for context the galaxy s22 is almost 20 lighter than the 13 pro so if you’re holding the phone while you’re in bed or lying down on a couch looking at content you will start to experience fatigue quite easily the buttons are nice and tactile with no
signs of rattling and i was expecting that for a phone that costs a thousand dollars i also appreciate the alert slider on the side which comes in clutch at times uh when i want to silence notifications or any sounds it low-key reminded me of using a oneplus smartphone speaking of notifications the haptic motor inside the 13 pro is excellent it’s really strong i haven’t missed any calls or text prompts when i’ve had this thing in my pocket so that’s great as for the built-in speakers you aren’t getting a stereo setup with the earpiece at the top and bottom facing drivers the output is clear with a little sprinkle of bass there is good clarity with the vocals but it’s not the best that i’ve heard from a smartphone because that certainly goes to the rg phone five with its massive dual front-facing speakers at the front now i don’t use these speakers that much since i paired the 13 pro with my airpods to listen to music and watch shows on netflix so it’s not of great importance but you know what is call quality and i’m happy to report that it has been excellent on the 13 pro i didn’t experience any call dropping issues as i did with the pixel 6 pro so that’s a relief interestingly i did notice that the built-in flashlight was much weaker in terms of output compared to my pixel 6 pro and some other android smartphones that i’ve had it’s honestly useless if you choose to rely on it as a utility to find things in a dark room setting now what’s it like living with a notch well i had to face it
anyway because it’s part of the design and one could argue that it looks a bit dated compared to modern android flagships with hole punch cameras at the front and nearly bezel-less displays but there is a valid reason for this you see this notch houses apple’s secure face id authentication which uses an ir camera and advanced facial recognition software or algorithms to log into the device they’ve actually shrunken the size this year with the 13 series compared to the 12 series and given that this is my first experience using this feature i was genuinely impressed it only took a few seconds to set up and it works every single time even when i was in a pitch black environment it especially comes in handy when you’re trying to get into the phone during colder winter days when you’re all covered up in winter gear a phone with a fingerprint scanner it would require a little bit more effort that being said during the pandemic this tech did struggle to log in with a face mask on but the recent ios 15.4 update added that feature so kudos to apple for that the 6.1 inch ola display is great you all know what ola can do and this phone gives you exactly that with punchy colors and deeper blacks i still think samsung offers some of the best saturation levels if that’s what you’re looking for but is it a noticeable difference than the rest of competition not really because i still think this technology has reached a plateau it still gets plenty bright when you’re viewing content outdoors and the 120 hertz promotion feature seals the deal but remember it doesn’t stay at that refresh rate full time apple actually dynamically shifts that refresh rate between 10 to 120 hertz to preserve battery life and so far the
experience has been really smooth uh whether if it’s navigating through ios or even third-party applications i will say that oftentimes gmail decides to give up on that feature because it does tend to lag or stay at 60 hertz when i’m scrolling through long threads of email but i just think that’s a gmail thing and not necessarily a hardware issue i also noticed that over the first few weeks of using this phone the right hand side of the display was exhibiting a pinkish gradient shift when i enabled dark mode or if i had anything gray displayed on it so i took it back to the apple store and the support team identified the issue and within an hour they replaced the entire display it was pretty eye-opening and i walked out as a very satisfied customer now look everyone’s experience with apple support can vary depending on their situation but i thought this was worth bringing up because android phones still have a long way to catch up to the level of support that apple offers with their devices i know samsung is getting there but look at the rest of players i guess i’ll maybe revisit this topic in another video speaking of support now would be a good time to show some love for today’s video sponsor the view is spectacular indeed with the corsair xenion monitor 32 inches of gorgeous goodness with 165 hertz refresh rate qhd resolution and plenty of streamer friendly features including iq support for osd so you can enjoy your screen with zero that pixel guarantee check it out below [Music] all right one of the things i was afraid of when i bought the iphone 13 pro was its battery life because smaller phones naturally have smaller batteries and if you look at my history of using android smartphones most of them if not all of them are super sized monsters rocking 4 000 to 5000 million powers that lasted me a few days this one only has a 3 000 milliamp battery so i was preparing to accept defeat but boy was i wrong
the 13 pro surpassed my expectations guys i mostly ended up my days with close to 30 and seven hours my phone that’s pretty comparable to some of my previous android phones but remember for this size it really says something so what sort of magical sauce is apple using here optimization people because apple has been making their hardware and software for years and they’ve clearly been learning and making adjustments over time to give users a seamless experience and that’s the driving factor for people to stay with this platform take magsay for instance it’s a brilliant and thoughtful feature that works so well essentially it’s a series of magnets placed around the iphone’s internal charging coil that automatically opens a gateway of accessories uh to fit users needs i bought this car mount from belkin that features max a support so is this leather case that apple will happily sell you for 80 bucks and this combination provides a seamless set it and forget it driving experience i don’t have to break my head trying to mount my smartphone every time when i get inside my car it just works and for those of you wondering it actually holds up really well with toronto’s pothole infested roads so yeah that’s awesome this one also supports wireless charging but it’s not the fastest out there it only tops out at seven and a half watts using qi or 15 watts using max safe and listen it’s not a deal breaker for me since i mostly charge my phone before i go to bed and apple has implemented some optimizations to reduce battery aging but you know what’s deal breaker getting used to this lightning connector it just doesn’t make any sense guys i don’t understand why apple is sticking to this ancient 2.0 spec proprietary thingy funny enough they’re actually marketing this phone towards pro users but transferring 4k prores video which this
phone is capable of shooting is completely bottlenecked by this lightning connector apple’s ipads and macbooks have already transitioned to faster usb-c ports but why not this i’m truly perplexed now what about performance well it’s fine to be honest actually the right question would be what’s the experience like using the hardware and software because apple made the a15 bionic chip and ios has been their bread and butter for the past 14 years so it’s been pretty flawless on my end apps are responsive and i barely noticed any slowdowns it only has six gigabytes of ram but it manages to hold up really well with my multitasking needs i’ve had 20 plus applications running in the background which i didn’t even notice until i started to clear them one by one it’s just a habit that i’m used to guys but i did wish it had a clear all button like android now before you guys start commenting on why my home screen looks different than usual it’s because i’m using a custom icon pack designed by rami elnegar i’ll actually leave a link to his video on how to do this whole setup but it did take me a whole day to set this thing up using shortcuts which is a complete pin in the ass i mean this is what made me miss android so much it’s the customization factor and i think this is the perfect segue to talk about some of the complexities that i had to deal with when i switched over to the iphone first things first i lost all my whatsapp messages for some reason you can’t backup and restore messages from android to ios and vice versa it took me a few days to process that and then i wanted to change the ringtone to something custom made and what do you know there’s no easy way of doing that either i had to use this guide to get that working i’ll leave a link down below if you wanted to do that as well the file system is also so limiting and it lacks granular control for instance on android you get a bird’s-eye view of everything that’s on your phone like downloads photos videos audio files docs apps and you can even access the root directory on ios this is all you get now sure you can create your own folders and spend time organizing your stuff but android source things up for you right away
then there is icloud did you know that apple only gives you five gigabytes of free storage to backup anything you have versus 15 gigabytes that google offers yeah five gigabytes is absolute joke if you want to backup any messages i actually learned that the hard way when i got a notification from whatsapp uh saying that it didn’t or didn’t have any space to back up any texts so i had to spare some change every month to get the next year which was 50 gigabytes if you really think about it i could have used that to get a delicious tim horton small double double but i had no option that’s how brands get you and then there’s this whole ecosystem conversation that i wanted to talk about because i was a hardcore android user all my smart home devices were linked to my google home app and of course my google home mini speakers as well including my nvidia shield tv legendary streaming device by the way but if i wanted to cast anything that’s displayed on my iphone to the shield tv i can’t do that because they can’t talk to each other like a typical android phone i know it’s tough at first but i got used to it and aside from that one hiccup the rest of the platform was pretty easy to understand most of my smart home devices were supported
through apple’s homekit api so i had to take some time to reconfigure them to work with siri which works pretty well and you know you’re set after that there are a few other perks that come with this ecosystem like airdrop which in my opinion is a godsend i use this multiple times a day to share files between my mac my ipad and the iphone i can’t even take phone calls on my mac respond to imessages and just witnessing this beautiful harmony made me go out and get the airpods and so now these earbuds automatically switch between these devices seamlessly it just works and i guess the best way of summarizing all of this is that when you choose to get an iphone it essentially turns itself into a token to apple’s brilliant ecosystem once you’re in you’re really in and it’s really difficult to get out all right finally it’s time to talk about cameras i’ll get right to it you get three sensors a 12 megapixel ultra bite a 12 megapixel standard and a 12 megapixel telephoto setup now on paper that might not sound like a lot compared to 48 or 108 megapixel offerings from the competition but that didn’t stop me from exploring this phone’s true potential let’s start with the ultrawide camera the field of view is adequate to fit so much of the subject into the frame and the colors look balanced since i chose to shoot in the rich contrast setting you can switch to standard mode if you want to get a flatter look but either way the results are great dynamic range is on point without too much emphasis on hdr processing and if you’re really picky
about pixels the 12 megapixel sensor falls a bit short compared to what’s already out there since this phone does struggle to capture details especially in low light i would hands-down pick the pixel 6 pro over the iphone since google’s magic sauce with night photography is bananas switching to the main camera and once again the iphone delivers clean balanced and contrasty photos without boosting the shadows that much however i did wish if it took brighter photos because throughout my testing period i noticed that the images were a bit underexposed but with the magic of some editing using lightroom you can get a lot more out of the raw photos that come out of the camera i also feel like this 12 megapixel sensor is starting to show its age because in some cases it tries really hard to emphasize a detail but it can’t due to the size you can clearly see that when you start to shoot in low light environments this phone just can’t keep up guys the telephoto lens is super nice like i mentioned in the beginning of this video i love shooting portraits and subjects with this focal length but i just wished if it had a bigger sensor to capture a bit more detail if you give it a lot of light it’ll love you back but if you don’t well he’ll just struggle to give you satisfying results portrait mode works pretty well but i still think pixel and samsung have nailed that feature if you have a pet you might struggle to get that perfect separation and if you love shooting random
objects it does an okay job at detecting that but don’t expect mind-blowing results the selfie camera is good it’s a hit or miss sometimes because this phone for some reason struggles to capture my skin tones accurately the image on the left hand side looks like somebody applied a vaseline filter or something it’s just not me and then there is macro mode which is cool but i didn’t really use that much i know some people who use this for work to capture details of certain equipments and stuff so i guess that’s beneficial but either way it’s there if you like being a little bit more creative i think with photography the iphone 13 pro delivers respectable results i know word on the street is that apple is working on a bigger sensor or higher megapixel sensor for the next iphone we’ll just have to wait and see how that addresses some of my concerns but with that being said i was pleasantly surprised with the video quality coming out of this camera something about the colors the stabilization and just the overall processing made me consider using this as a secondary camera for shooting b-roll and now that i can shoot pro res it just gives creators like myself that extra flexibility with post-processing cinematic mode is pretty cool i actually
think it got a lot better with software updates over the past few months so i do see myself taking advantage of this every now and then i just wish that apple gave this camera app a little bit more control with things like iso exposure shutter speed and white balance you know stuff that actually matters to cinematographers so my experience with my first iphone has been both good and bad but mostly good just to get the record straight for you guys you see initially it was hard to say goodbye to my whatsapp messages and getting used to this limiting file system icloud being such a pain in the butt with just five gigabytes to start with and lack of customization was just certainly something that i had to wrap my head around but once i passed that point i thoroughly started to enjoy using this phone because the form factor is just perfect the display is beautiful with promotion the haptics are strong i love face id i mean seriously the accuracy is a thousand times better than some of the android phones that i’ve tested in the past i’ve never had an issue with app stability and the way how it talks to my mac and my airpods just makes me appreciate the hard work that apple put into building this ecosystem albeit a very expensive and brilliant ecosystem but it works and that’s what matters to me so that note thank you so much for watching and uh i’ll talk to you guys in the next one
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