iPhone 13 Pro
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iPhone 13 Pro
Oh. So. Pro.
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| Sierra Blue | Graphite | Gold | Silver | Alpine Green |
| iPhone 13 Pro — Technical Specifications (Apple Support) | ||||
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The iPhone 13 Pro is a smartphone designed and marketed by Apple, announced on September 14, 2021, and released on September 24, 2021. It ended the iPhone's most conspicuous spec deficit: ProMotion — the adaptive 120 Hz display refresh Android flagships had carried for two years and iPad Pros since 2017 — arrived at last, ramping from 10 Hz to 120 Hz by content and touch. With it came the generation's fully rebuilt triple camera: a 3× telephoto, an f/1.5 main lens, macro photography through the autofocusing ultra-wide, ProRes video, and — restoring order after the 12 year — full camera parity with the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The A15 Bionic gained a fifth GPU core at the Pro tier, a 1 TB storage option topped the line for the first time, and battery life jumped ninety minutes over the iPhone 12 Pro. Reviews rated it the most complete Pro since the 11 — the display finally beyond reproach, the camera system the year's best — and its Sierra Blue and spring Alpine Green finishes carried the fashion duties. One year, as usual, before the iPhone 14 Pro replaced it.
1 Design✎
The generation's flat stainless design at 203 g — noticeably heavier, all sensor and battery — with the 20% smaller notch and a visibly larger camera plateau whose lenses grew with their optics. Sierra Blue, Graphite, Gold, Silver; Alpine Green added March 2022. Ceramic Shield, IP68 at six meters, MagSafe.
2 Display✎
The 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR with ProMotion scaled its refresh between 10 and 120 Hz — 120 for touch and scrolls, 10 for a static page — pairing flagship smoothness with better battery than a fixed-rate panel. Peak outdoor brightness rose to 1,000 nits. Reviewers who had spent two years calling 60 Hz the iPhone's one glaring weakness retired the complaint; the panel measured, again, best-in-class.
3 Hardware✎
| Developer | Apple |
|---|---|
| Generation | 15th |
| Announced | September 14, 2021 |
| Released | September 24, 2021 |
| Discontinued | September 7, 2022 |
| Predecessor | iPhone 12 Pro |
| Related | iPhone 13 · iPhone 13 Pro Max |
| Successor | iPhone 14 Pro |
| Display | 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR OLED 2532 × 1170 (460 ppi) ProMotion 10–120 Hz · 1,000 nits |
| Chip | Apple A15 Bionic (2 + 4 cores · 5-core GPU · 16-core Neural Engine) |
| RAM | 6 GB |
| Storage | 128 GB · 256 GB · 512 GB · 1 TB |
| Rear cameras | 12 MP ultra-wide, f/1.8, AF (macro) + 12 MP wide, f/1.5, sensor-shift OIS + 12 MP telephoto, f/2.8 (3×) + LiDAR · ProRAW · ProRes video Cinematic mode · Night mode all lenses |
| Front camera | 12 MP TrueDepth |
| Battery | 3,095 mAh · MagSafe 15 W · Qi |
| Connectivity | 5G · Wi-Fi 6 · Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Colors | Sierra Blue · Graphite · Gold · Silver (+ Alpine Green from March 2022) |
| Launch price | $999 (128 GB) · $1,099 (256 GB) $1,299 (512 GB) · $1,499 (1 TB) |
| OS | iOS 15.0 ~ current |
The Pro-binned A15 with its fifth GPU core opened the first silicon gap between tiers since the Plus era — modest in benchmarks, meaningful for ProRes encoding and sustained graphics. The 1 TB tier served the ProRes pitch directly: at 6 GB per minute for 4K ProRes, storage was the constraint, and 128 GB models capped ProRes at 1080p.
4 Camera✎
All three lenses were new: the f/1.5 main (2.2× the 12 Pro's light), a 3× f/2.8 telephoto stretching optical reach to 77 mm, and an f/1.8 autofocusing ultra-wide that doubled as a macro camera focusing at two centimeters — a genuinely new capability that produced the launch cycle's most striking sample photos (and a brief interface controversy over automatic macro switching, settled by a toggle in iOS 15.2). Night mode ran on every lens; ProRes and Cinematic mode covered video's professional and cinematic ends. Reviews scored the system the best in any phone of its cycle, with the macro and 3× reach the daily-use differences.
5 Software✎
Shipped with iOS 15; ProRes arrived in 15.1, the macro toggle in 15.2. Current release train since.
6 Release and reception✎
The Pro absorbed most of the generation's enthusiasm — ProMotion, the camera trio, and the battery jump answered the 12 Pro year's "why not just buy the base model?" with an actual list. Alpine Green and Sierra Blue led carrier constraint reports through the chip-shortage winter. The 13 Pro pair was discontinued on September 7, 2022, and uniquely was not kept as a discounted prior-year tier — the 14 generation's pricing left no room.
7 Legacy✎
ProMotion closed the iPhone's last hardware-checklist gap and became the Pro display's permanent signature — 120 Hz has anchored the Pro-versus-base display divide from that year through the current iPhone 17 Pro. The 13 Pro's macro, 3× reach, and ProRes established the Pro camera as a working toolset rather than a spec sheet, and the 1 TB phone stopped sounding absurd within a generation. It stands as the completion of the Pro concept the iPhone 11 Pro had named.