Another year, another brand new iPhone to contemplate buying. Apple earlier this week officially took the wraps off the iPhone 13, the company’s next-gen smartphone. And while new iPhone releases these days typically offer incremental improvements, the iPhone 13 is nonetheless a compelling upgrade. The list of iPhone 13 features is extensive and includes a significantly more powerful camera system and incredibly impressive battery life.
Still, it was a busy event for Apple and the company, as is often the case, didn’t have time to divulge every single iPhone 13 detail worth sharing. And with good reason, not every iPhone 13 detail is something Apple necessarily wants to draw attention to. With that said, below are six iPhone 13 tidbits you’ll probably want to be aware of before making the upgrade leap.
iPhone 13 notch is taller
Apple noted that the iPhone 13 notch is smaller than it is on the iPhone 12. This is true, but Apple didn’t mention that the iPhone 13 notch is slightly taller. It’s arguably a negligible difference, but perhaps worth bringing to light. We’ll know for sure once the iPhone 13 actually arrives, but rumor has it that the new notch is 26.8mm wide and 5.35mm tall. This compares to the iPhone 12 notch that is 34.83mm wide and 5.3mm tall.
The battery percentage indicator isn’t coming back
While arguably less of an issue given that battery life on the iPhone 13 is vastly improved, it would be nice if the battery percentage indicator returned with iOS 15. Especially now that the notch is markedly less wide, there’s definitely room for it. Alas, it’s definitely not happening.
iPhone 13 Pro has a more powerful GPU than the regular iPhone 13
According to some Geekbench scores, the iPhone 13 Pro GPU performance is significantly better than the iPhone 12 Pro. Specifically, performance jumped by nearly 55%. On a related note, it’s worth highlighting that the GPU on the iPhone 13 Pro is more powerful than the regular iPhone 13.
To this point, 9to5Mac notes:
The GPU from the A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 13 features four cores, and Apple says it delivers 30% better graphics performance compared to the “competition.” As for the A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, the GPU has an extra core for a total of five cores that deliver up to 50% better performance compared to the competition.
Shooting ProRes video requires a 256GB iPhone
For the first time, the iPhone 13 Pro models will enable users to shoot in ProRes.
Apple writes:
ProRes, an advanced video codec used widely as the final delivery format for commercials, feature films, and broadcasts, to offer higher color fidelity and less compression.3 This powerful new pro workflow is enabled by the new camera hardware, advanced video encoders and decoders in A15 Bionic, and flash storage pipeline.
Shooting in ProRes will naturally eat up storage like crazy on your device. Thankfully, Apple this year introduced a 1TB storage option. Additionally, if you’re planning to shoot ProRes in 4K, you’ll need an iPhone 13 Pro with 256GB of storage at a minimum. If you have a 128GB device, ProRes videos will be shot in 1080p at 30 frames per second.
ProRes won’t be available at launch
Apple is arguably getting a bit too comfortable announcing features that won’t be ready on time. And now, you can add ProRes video support to the list. According to Apple, the feature will be unlocked with a future iOS 15 update.
