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00:00New studio. It's finally finished. Well, built at least. It's still a bit of a work in progress,
00:09but yeah, not too bad. Better than my dining room. Anyway, that's for a different video
00:14where I'll do a full studio tour and everything else that's been going on, but today is all
00:19about this. It's a great phone, but there are still a couple of issues with it, some
00:23of which can be fixed, others that, well, maybe we'll have to wait for the iPhone 14.
00:28So first of all, and it's not a big deal really, but it doesn't support the latest Wi-Fi 6E,
00:33which is a bit of a shame. There were some rumors that it would support the latest version
00:38of Wi-Fi, which theoretically is the same speed as Wi-Fi 6, but because 6E uses its
00:43own dedicated six gigahertz spectrum of radio waves, it's less congested and therefore you're
00:48more likely to have better bandwidth and therefore more likely to reach those potential max speeds.
00:53Now you do need a Wi-Fi 6E router as well as compatible devices, and it is still quite
00:59rare, but most flagship Android phones, if they have the Snapdragon 888, do support it,
01:04but not on the iPhone. So really that's going to be something I have to wait for the iPhone
01:0714, hopefully. It's not a huge deal right now and almost no one actually owns a Wi-Fi
01:126E router. In terms of future proofing, because you might want to hold onto this for two,
01:16three, four years, it would have been nice to see.
01:19The second problem, and one that was rumored to be coming, but unfortunately didn't materialize,
01:23is having an always-on display. Again, it's a pretty standard feature on Android now,
01:28and while you could argue it drains battery, well it does drain battery, the flip side
01:32of that is that you might not actually have to unlock your phone as often to check what's
01:35going on because you can, at a glance, see all your notifications, and that could actually,
01:39in fact, end up saving your battery. Either way, it's a moot point because we don't have
01:43support for it yet again, but it is something I'd like to see, possibly that could come
01:47with iOS 16 or an update. It's not necessarily something we'd have to wait for an all-new
01:51iPhone to see, but right now, no AOD.
01:54Okay, problem number three, and as I was researching this video, I came across a few people who
01:58had auto-brightness and screen dimming issues. Max Tech, who I'm a big fan of, he actually
02:04had some of that screen dimming when he was recording with a drone using the phone. Now,
02:09there's a couple of things here. Firstly, you can actually disable auto-brightness if
02:13you want. It's in the accessibility and the display settings, something that's a bit hidden
02:17away and most people don't know is there, so you can turn it off and that prevents the
02:22screen dimming based on the ambient light around it.
02:24It also turns out that true tone can cause some issues with dimming depending on the
02:28environment. So generally, I actually recommend turning true tone off, not least because it
02:33might cause that dimming that some people are experiencing, although that also may have
02:36been fixed with an update. But for me, I often forget that I've turned it on and then editing
02:41a photo in Lightroom or Instagram or something, and I post it and I realize I've had true
02:46tone on, so my photo's then actually a lot cooler in real life and I've kind of forgotten
02:49about it. So while true tone is nice in terms of reducing blue light and making it a bit
02:53more comfortable for your eyes, particularly in low light, for me at least, I just prefer
02:57turning true tone off.
02:59So this next problem was actually widely talked about when these iPhones first came out and
03:03a lot of reviews mentioned it. The camera would automatically switch between the main
03:07lens and the ultra-wide when you got close up to your subject, so you'd get this weird
03:11ghosting transition effect. So in a lot of situations, you don't want to use the ultra-wide.
03:16You want it to stick with the main. So hats off to Apple, actually. They acknowledged
03:19this issue and they fixed it. I'm on the iOS 15.1 developer beta 3 right now. I believe
03:25it will be coming to the public version soon. It may already be as you're watching this.
03:29But in the camera settings, we now have this auto macro toggle. So I would suggest making
03:34sure this is turned off so that it doesn't automatically switch unless you do it manually.
03:40Sticking with the camera and another new feature we've had with the latest update is support
03:44for Apple's ProRes video. They've been talking about it, but it's just come out now. And
03:48so you can actually shoot in much higher bit rates, so much higher quality video at up
03:53to 4K 30.
03:54But there are a couple of issues with this. Firstly, you can't shoot in 4K 60. It tops
03:58out at 4K 30, which is fine. But having that 60 FPS option is nice for videographers who
04:04then like to slow down the footage in the edit to get slow motion. But the bigger issue
04:09is file sizes and then actually how to get the files off the phone, because we're talking
04:13six gigs of storage for every one minute shot at 4K. It's like 600 megabits per second of
04:18data. Realistically, if you are going to shoot a lot of this, go for at least the 512, if
04:23not the one terabyte storage option.
04:25But then the bigger problem is how you then get those huge files off the phone. You can
04:29airdrop to your MacBook or your Mac or something or your iPad, but then you'll need a very
04:33fast internet connection if you've got tens or hundreds of gigs of videos to transfer,
04:39or you can do it through a wired connection. But because we've still got this bloody lightning
04:42port rather than the latest Thunderbolt USB-C, this is essentially USB 2.0, so it is painfully
04:48slow.
04:49And it really would have been a good reason for Apple to update this to USB-C, as they
04:53have done on every iPad except for the cheapest entry-level iPad, which is the only other
04:58device to still have a lightning port. It just makes getting these files off the phone
05:02a bit frustrating.
05:03It really should be USB-C with Thunderbolt 3 like we have on the higher-end iPads.
05:08Then we have this cinematic mode, which I actually have been quite impressed by, although
05:12I would suggest reducing the bokeh blur a little bit to make it look less artificial.
05:17But the issue is you can only shoot it at 1080p30, and while 4K would have been nice,
05:21actually, more importantly, would be an option to shoot at 1080p24, which is a more cinematic
05:26frame rate.
05:27Okay, the last thing I'll say about video. As you can see, we still have these lens flares.
05:33It's something J.J. Abrams may love because every single one of his movies has lens flares
05:37everywhere, but for me, it's a bit annoying, and I do wish Apple would fix it because we've
05:41had this for years now.
05:44Another problem I was having, but it does seem to have been fixed with the latest updates,
05:48is my finger not actually registering touches.
05:50It was particularly in the YouTube app, I could touch the thumbnail of a photo, it just
05:54wouldn't launch, it wouldn't start playing.
05:56You'd have to touch the profile picture or open and restart the app.
05:59It's something I know a few other people have experienced, but with the latest 15.1
06:03Beta 3 software that I'm running here, it doesn't seem to be happening anymore.
06:06So that was another problem, like that auto macro mode with the camera, but again, it
06:10seems Apple have fixed it.
06:11So just teething issues with the new launch, it seems.
06:14Speaking of the software, though, and I do have a couple of things on my wish list, especially
06:18as someone jumping ship from an Android phone recently, and the first one is I really wish
06:23we had a universal back button.
06:26Most apps let you swipe in from the left to go back, but not all, and then sometimes
06:29you have to go up to the top left and press back, which is a little bit awkward on the
06:32size of the Pro Max.
06:34But also, since I mostly use the phone in my right hand, it would be so convenient to
06:38be able to swipe in from the right hand side to go back as well, like we can do on Android.
06:43Also, particularly on the Pro Max with this huge 6.7 inch screen, the fact that we still
06:48don't have any kind of split screen multitasking option is a bit frustrating.
06:52And also considering how good the split screen mode is on iPads, I wish we had something
06:56like that on the iPhone.
06:59The other thing I miss a little bit about my S21 Ultra is just how much faster it felt.
07:04While obviously they're both 120Hz screens, and this is incredibly powerful with the A15,
07:08the fairly lengthy animations that we get on iPhone just makes it feel a little bit
07:12more sluggish, particularly if you're a bit techie and you're happy to jump into the
07:16developer options and then reduce those animation times further, it would be great to have an
07:19option for faster animations or something on here.
07:22And while there are some accessibility modes around turning off the sort of transitions,
07:26it doesn't actually speed anything up.
07:28So again, that is something I'd like to see.
07:30Now one of the absolute standouts with these new iPhones, and particularly the Pro Max,
07:34is the battery life.
07:35But the problem is the charging hasn't really kept up.
07:38And while this does technically support 27 watt charging, it really isn't much faster
07:43than just the basic 20 watt.
07:45It's only about two minutes faster, charging up to 50%.
07:48And in my tests, it takes the exact same one hour, 46 minutes to top up to 100.
07:53So while this technically does support a higher wattage, it doesn't really make much difference
07:57to the charging speed, which is still really lagging behind some of the Android competition.
08:01And finally, I have to say, I would quite like to see a fingerprint reader on the iPhone.
08:06It's something that we had obviously on the older ones with the Touch ID home button.
08:09We have on iPad still, but not on the iPhone, which isn't the end of the world because the
08:13TrueDepth Face ID is the best in the business, particularly with the IR sensor, so it's great
08:18in low light.
08:19But when you're out and about and you want to pay for things, you know, through contactless
08:22and you have to put your mask down to do the Face ID, for me at least, I would quite like
08:25to have an in-screen or even just a power button that doubles as a fingerprint reader.
08:30But maybe that's just me.
08:32So that is a lot of complaining about the iPhone.
08:34But don't get me wrong, it is a terrific phone.
08:36I still highly recommend it.
08:38I think the 13 Pro is probably the best phone in the world right now for most people.
08:43And of course, this Pro Max is my everyday daily phone.
08:46But nothing's perfect.
08:47There's always room for improvement.
08:48And actually, it has been good to see that Apple have addressed some of the early issues
08:51through software updates already.
08:53But what about you?
08:54Are there any other problems you've been experiencing with the 13 that maybe I've missed?
08:57Let me know in the comments below.
08:58And if you did enjoy this video and want to see more from me and this fancy new studio,
09:02then a cheeky like and subscribe would be lovely.
09:05Thank you so much for watching, guys.
09:06I'll see you next time right here on The Tech Chap.