Apple unveils iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini

Apple has introduced the new iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, the next generation of the tech giant's smartphone.

The new series features sleek flat edges in five new colours: pink, blue, midnight, starlight, and red.

Both models feature major innovations, including a dual-camera system with a new wide camera with bigger pixels and sensor-shift optical image stabilisation, offering improvements in low-light photos and videos, a new way to personalise the camera with Photographic Styles, and Cinematic mode, which brings a new dimension to video storytelling.

iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini also boast super-fast performance and power efficiency with A15 Bionic, longer battery life, a brighter Super Retina XDR display, a Ceramic Shield front cover, double the entry-level storage at 128GB, an IP68 rating for water resistance, and 5G.

Pre-orders begin Saturday, 18 September, with availability beginning Friday, 24 September.

"Our customers rely on iPhone every day, which is why we have made iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini more powerful, more capable, and more fun to use," says Greg Joswiak, Apple senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.

"Both phones have beautiful designs, industry-leading performance, and advanced camera systems with impressive computational photography features, all with incredible durability, water resistance, and a big jump in battery life to ensure customers can depend on their iPhone when they need it," he says.

"All of this, tightly integrated with iOS 15 and with privacy built in, make iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini an unbeatable choice."

Design and Battery Life
iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini have been redesigned on the inside and out, and come in five colours featuring a durable flat-edge design and aluminium frame.

The 6.1-inch and 5.4-inch displays feature Ceramic Shield on the front, exclusive to iPhone. Both models have an IP68 rating for water resistance, and are designed to protect against spills from common liquids.

A redesigned rear camera layout with diagonally arranged lenses enables the advanced dual-camera system, and a redesigned TrueDepth camera system is smaller while still packing in the same technologies, including Face ID, but offering more display area.

The improved Super Retina XDR OLED displays deliver an incredible contrast ratio for true blacks and a 28 per cent increase in max outdoor brightness at 800 nits, with higher peak brightness for HDR content like photos and videos at 1200 nits, all while being more power efficient.

Major battery life improvements come to both iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, made possible by A15 Bionic, more efficient components, a larger battery, and power optimisations from a deep integration of hardware and software. iPhone 13 delivers all-day battery life, offering up to two and a half more hours in a day than iPhone 12, and iPhone 13 mini provides up to an hour and a half more in a day than iPhone 12 mini.

Dual-Camera System
iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini represent a massive leap in camera design with advancements in hardware and computational photography. The new Wide camera, with 1.7 m pixels, comes with the biggest sensor ever in an iPhone dual-camera system and is capable of gathering 47 per cent more light for less noise and brighter results.

Sensor-shift OIS a technology introduced in iPhone 12 Pro Max and not found in any other smartphone also comes to the Wide camera, even in the more compact iPhone 13 mini. It stabilises the sensor instead of the lens so shots are more steady, while the custom-designed Ultra Wide camera with a new sensor captures images with more detail in the dark areas of photos, and videos with less noise.

A faster Neural Engine in A15 Bionic, new image signal processor (ISP), and advancements in computational photography power all-new features on iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini. Photographic Styles allows users to bring their personal photo preferences to every image while still benefitting from Apple's multiframe image processing.

Preset and customised preferences work across scenes and subjects, and unlike a simple filter, intelligently apply the right adjustments to parts of the photo to ensure the important elements, like different skin tones, are preserved. The dual-camera system and power of computational photography support Smart HDR 4, now with improved colour, contrast, and lighting for each subject in a group photo, including in challenging conditions, making images more true to life, as well as improved Night mode. And the TrueDepth camera supports all the new camera features, including Cinematic mode, Photographic Styles, Smart HDR 4, and more.

A15 Bionic: The Engine of iPhone 13
A15 Bionic uses 5-nanometre technology and has nearly 15 billion transistors to tackle the most demanding tasks, including the latest computational photography features. A new 6-core CPU with two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores is up to 50 per cent faster than the competition, the fastest in any smartphone, and handles demanding tasks smoothly and efficiently, while the new 4-core GPU is up to 30 per cent faster than the competition and enables more lifelike visuals and lighting effects in graphics-intensive games.

The new 16-core Neural Engine is capable of 15.8 trillion operations per second, enabling even faster machine learning computations for third-party app experiences, as well as features like Live Text in Camera with iOS 15. Major advancements to the next-generation ISP, paired with computational photography and powerful camera hardware, combine to create the new dual-camera system.

5G
The customised hardware design in the iPhone 13 lineup features more 5G bands, allowing it to work in more places on 5G for greater coverage and performance. By the end of 2021, support for 5G on iPhone will double around the globe, with over 200 carriers worldwide in 60 countries and regions.

Users can experience higher-quality video streaming on their favourite platforms, more competitive gameplay in multiplayer games, and faster download and upload speeds.

iOS 15
According to Apple, iOS 15 enhances the iPhone experience with new ways to stay connected, and powerful features that help users focus, explore, and do more with on-device intelligence. FaceTime calls feel more natural with spatial audio and a new Portrait mode, new Focus features help users reduce distraction, notifications have been redesigned, and Live Text uses on-device intelligence to recognise text in a photo and allows users to take action. Apple Maps brings new ways to navigate and explore the world with a new three-dimensional city-driving experience and walking directions in augmented reality. Weather is redesigned with full-screen maps and more graphical displays of data, Wallet adds support for home keys, and new privacy controls in Siri, Mail, and more places across the system further protect user information.

Availability
iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini will be available in pink, blue, midnight, starlight, and red in a new entry-level capacity of 128GB for double the storage, as well as 256GB and 512GB capacities. Customers in New Zealand, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, the UK, the US, and more than 30 other countries and regions will be able to pre-order iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini beginning at 12 a.m. NZST on Saturday, 18 September, with availability beginning Friday, 24 September.

Customers can get iPhone 13 starting at RRP NZ$1,429 inc. GST, and iPhone 13 mini starting at RRP NZ$1,249 inc. GST from apple.com/nz/store, and in the Apple Store app.

iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini are also available through Apple Authorised Resellers and select carriers.iOS 15 will be available as a free software update from Monday, 20 September.