iPhone 13 Review

Five years on, the case for the 13 is not what it did in 2021 but what it is still doing in 2026. It shipped on iOS 15 that September and it runs iOS 27, released this month: six major versions on one handset, and no Android flagship from 2021 is still on the current release of its own system.

The reason is the pair of things Apple got right. The A15 Bionic was quick enough in 2021 to embarrass the Android flagships beside it, and quick enough now that iOS 27 does not drag. And the battery, which is the whole argument. The 12 carried 2815 mAh and was looking for a charger by evening; the 13 carries 3227 mAh in a case a fraction of a millimetre thicker and is quoted at 19 hours of video, roughly two and a half hours more screen time than the phone it replaced. That one change turned a handset people charged twice a day into one they stopped thinking about.

The cameras inherited the sensor shift stabilisation that had been exclusive to the 12 Pro Max, added Photographic Styles and Cinematic mode, and left the pair at 12 megapixels. The screen is where the age shows: 6.1 inches at 460 ppi and 800 nits typical, still 60 Hz in a year when rivals had moved to 120, and it is the one grade here that cannot be argued upward. Storage started at 128GB rather than 64GB, at $799. Nothing on the sheet was new. It outlasted everything that was.