Apple unveils iPhone 13 with new chip, smaller notch, and better cameras

By Alex Blake Published April 25, 2023

Apple has revealed the latest edition to its iPhone range, the iPhone 13. It comes with a new camera arrangement, a more powerful chip, a thinner notch, and more.

Since its debut in the iPhone X, the notch — which houses the phone’s Face ID system and front-facing camera — has been divisive. Apple seems to have listened to dissenters and has shrunk the notch’s width by 20%, making it less intrusive in use.

New iPhone 13 Colors: Pink, Blue, Midnight, Starlight, & Product RED. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

On the back, the dual-camera system has a new diagonal arrangement. The iPhone Pro Max’s sensor-shift optical image stabilization is now in the entry-level iPhone 13, and rack-mount-style video is now possible thanks to the new Cinematic shooting mode.

Recommended Videos

As for the display, Apple says it can reach 800 nits in normal use and 1,200 nits of peak brightness. It’s still covered in the damage-resistant Ceramic Shield and uses OLED technology that Apple calls Super Retina XDR.

Powering all these features is the new 5 nanometer A15 Bionic chip. This comes with a 6-core CPU that’s 50% faster than the competition, according to Apple, and a 4-core GPU that’s 30% faster than Apple’s rivals. The 16-core Neural Engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second.

Many of the iPhone 13’s features had been leaked before Apple’s California Streaming event, but there were still some surprises in store.

Overview of what's new for the all new iPhone 13. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Topics

Computing Writer

Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…

Mobile

It’s the end of the road for these two iPhone models

Apple iPhone 6S Plus

Seeing your favorite handheld gaming device in a retro store has a unique way of making you feel old, but Apple might have topped it. According to the company, the iPhone XS Max and iPhone 6s Plus are now "vintage." They join the ranks of the iPhone 4 and even the iPad Pro 12.9-inch model.

It's not wholly unexpected. Apple declares a device vintage after five years, and that means it becomes more difficult to have that device repaired or to find replacement parts for it. Obsolete is applied to products that are more than seven years old, but sometimes certain variants get that label early.

Computing

Google Gemini arrives on iPhone as a native app

the Google extensions feature on iPhone

Google announced Thursday that it has released a new native Gemini app for iOS that will give iPhone users free, direct access to the chatbot without the need for a mobile web browser.

The Gemini mobile app has been available for Android since February, when the platform transitioned from the older Bard branding. However, iOS users could only access the AI on their phones through either the mobile Google app or via a web browser. This new app provides a more streamlined means of chatting with the bot as well as a host of new (to iOS) features.

Mobile

I tried a new Android phone that puts some of the best smartphone cameras to shame

The rear camera setup on the Oppo Find X8 Pro.

It’s been a few years since I was surprised by a smartphone camera’s zoom performance. With Samsung offering 100x zoom on its Galaxy S Ultra lineup, little has shocked me with smartphone cameras — until now.

The Oppo Find X8 series is the successor to the Find X7 series from last year, and alongside several other improvements, there’s also been a significant upgrade in one area: the 30x zoom. Oppo and OnePlus have great cameras at shorter zoom distances, and at a recent briefing, I discovered that we can now add the 30x zoom to the list.