Apple iPhone 13 Pro 256GB

At front is the same 6.1-inch, Super Retina XDR OLED display that supports HDR10 and Dolby Vision, albeit featuring better brightness this time. The wide notch that accommodates the FaceID hardware is still around, though the size has been reduced slightly. It's a subtle difference that's not going to make a massive difference in day-to-day usage. The good part is that one does get used to it with time, and if you've been using any of the older iPhones that have Face ID, you'd know exactly what I mean. The big news on the screen is the addition of high refresh rate. Yes, finally. The Android side of the fence has had this for ages now, and the feature is pretty much ubiquitous on most phones priced upwards of Rs 10-12k. Apple has finally brought it to its iPhones now, reserving it only for the Pro models. Dubbed ProMotion in Apple speak, the LTPO display on the iPhone 13 Pro (and on its Max sibling) can refresh as low as 10 times a second, going up as high as 120 times a second. This basically results in smoother screen interaction, blur-free scrolling and jerk-free animations. iOS has generally been an extremely fluid interface, so the difference might not be night and day… but look closely, and it's there. And once you do get used it, going back to an older iPhone could be tough. Apple being Apple, hasn't included any option in display settings for users to manually set refresh rate though. However, if you do want to do so for whatever reason, you can dive into Accessibility settings, find Motion, and locate a toggle that gives you an option to limit the max refresh rate to 60Hz.

The other key update is in the camera department. Apple isn't big on megapixel count, so the cameras on the iPhone 13 Pro still have 12MP sensors like last year. However, the aperture sizes have been increased, the pixel sizes have been bumped up and the telephoto sensor can zoom up to 3x (as compared to 2x in the predecessor). The primary camera has even gained sensor-shift stabilisation. Worth mentioning that in last year's lineup, only the iPhone 12 Pro Max had this feature, while the other 12 series iPhones has regular OIS. This time, the entire 13 series range boasts this. Also, the ultra-wide sensor can even do macro this time. It's a comprehensive overhaul as far as the camera setup is concerned, and in short, it does deliver.

Software-wise, there's iOS 15. And staying true to the general scheme of things, is more an internal spruce-up than an entirely new paint job. Visually, it's not too different from iOS 14, but carries a ton of upgrades in terms of features. There's a lot to talk about here and I won't go into details, but the key new features include new Focus modes that allow you to set different ‘profiles' for different locations or timings, giving you temporary (and free) access to extra iCloud storage access for migrating your data to a new iPhone, mail privacy protection, notifications summary, and lots more. If I were to pick out my favourite new feature, and one that I think should be extremely useful to everyone, it would be the Live Text feature. This allows you to point your iPhone camera on text (on a document, signboard, screen etc), and copy the words straight off it. It even works on existing pictures you have in your gallery.

Moving on to performance, the new A15 Bionic brings in the muscle. The latest silicone features a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU, and is blazing fast in terms of pure performance, as you might expect. There's a new Neural engine as well. Combined with the 120Hz display and the power of the A15 Bionic, day-to-day usage on the iPhone 13 Pro is smooth as butter, and the same feeling continues when the phone is stressed too. Intensive games play smoothly at the highest settings, and the phone just gets a bit warm after extended sessions. Running benchmarks does heat it up more, though in most real-life scenarios, you won't be stressing the phone that much. Speaking of benchmarks, results show how powerful the new chipset is, matching, and in some cases, beating the Snapdragon 888 in terms of scores, and indicating the bump over last year's A14 Bionic as well. More importantly, I think the main point to keep in mind is that real-life usage is great, and the iPhone 13 Pro's performance won't leave you thirsty for more.

That's not all. The battery life has received a boost too. The iPhone 13 Pro is able to offer solid battery life, possibly due to the efficiencies brought in by the new chipset and iOS 15. You can expect the device to last you a full day with ease, even with heavy use, and if your usage isn't that intensive, you can expect to see about 20-30% juice in the tank as you wrap up the day. Charging speed, however, is an area where the iPhone can't really match its Android counterparts, supporting just 20W max when connected to a compatible charger.