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Phones · Apple iPhone

Apple iPhone 13

90owners with an opinion
52%of verdicts positive
42/38positive/negative since 2024
5 yrslongest happy owner
5happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and reliability; criticized for ease of use.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
I update my phone now when the battery requires two full charges to 100% to last throughout the day. But there's no feature I'm looking for. My current phone is a 13 -- so I guess it lasted five years, which seems crazy long for it to be perfectly fine from a functionality perspective.
Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
Still on 87% battery health on my iPhone 13 (not mini) that’s approaching 5 years old. Still an awesome phone with great battery life! I don’t plan to update it beyond iOS 18 though, and the Lightning port is becoming more and more of a pain over time.
Likes itOwned 5 years
Why is it "time" after 3 years? They should hopefully still be getting software updates, at least security updates. I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years. EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.
NeutralOwned 4 years
I'm currently using an iPhone 13 from late 2021, so almost 4 years old. It's showing 79% Maximum Capacity in Battery Health, and I only occasionally use more then 75% of battery over a days use. I still have the iPhone XR I upgraded from, so a 7 year old 2018 phone, that still holds a whole day's charge too (but doesn't get much use, and doesn't have a SIM in it right now so I'd guess it's powered down the cellular radios?) I have an iPod Touch from a bit before Covid, so 6 years old from 2019-ish - it stopped getting daily use when Covid and WFH hit, so it's battery is old, but still in reasonable condition. (Pity newer iOS won't run on it...)
Likes itOwned 3.5 yearsStill going
I have the standard iPhone 13 (not mini) and the battery longevity is probably the best of any phone I've ever owned. At over 3.5 years old it still reports 89% battery health and lasts much longer than I need. Previous iPhones I owned were all pretty much on their last legs by that age. I haven't upgraded it to iOS 26 / Liquid Glass, though, and given what I'm seeing/hearing, I don't plan to.
Likes itOwned 3 years
I am an iOS developer too and I use an iPhone 13 before which I used an iPhone 6 until its support was dropped. I prefer developing with older devices as it helps me ensure my apps work well on slower devices. I haven't seen any reason to upgrade for the last 3 years. Switching from iPhone 6 to 13 was the most needed change for me due to the change in safe area insets (notch).
Likes itOwned 3 years
Fwiw, the newer iPhone Pros are in fact extremely durable. I don’t like cases (they make the phone too bulky for my liking) but also frequently drop my phone on stone/ceramic tiles (not the perfect combo, I know) and after 3 years of having a 13 Pro it’s still in great shape. Just a few scratches on the corners of the phone (which usually get the most of the hit). In other words, I very much appreciate them improving durability.
Doesn’t like it
I'm on iPhone 13 and only reason I'd like to upgrade is my battery is poor now and because I have a small crack on the back glass, Apple requires me changing both the back glass and battery which is $500 CAD.
Likes it
I have my iPhone 13 in a $10 cover for years now. I don’t like the bump, but I don’t think it’s a scheme to buy covers. Also my favorite smartphone was a motorola with a cloth back (ballistic something) and a metal frame. No cover was needed for this one.
Doesn’t like it
Making any recent second-hand smartphone a SBC-equivilent field computer is always a custom job/not scalable. OF course, that shouldn't matter for most tinkerer jobs like a CarPi. But anecdotally, I tried using my old iphone 13 (idk why I tried this) and then a couple old galaxies for my car project taking data from bluetooth dongle and relaying to a custom gui I made. Of course also dealing with power cycles and screen, data trasnfer etc. Very, very quickly it became easier to justify buying a SBC for the same project
Neutral
Usually I wait until december to install the new iOS on my phone, since most of the time I don't care about the upgrades. This time I installed iOS 27 beta on my phone since the public beta was out, and I had 0 new bugs compared to iOS 26, but it hasn't been the big relief that I hoped for. Now I am worried about what the new versions of iOS will bring us, I hope that the "we removed the crap" wasn't just a thing of this year, and that iOS will go back to high software standards. Phone prices are really high for me now, and I would like for my poor little iphone 13 to survive another couple of years.
Likes it
Still on a 13 mini for the same reason. The closed Duo is closer to a regular Pro than to a mini, so it doesn't actually replace the small phone — it replaces the "I also carry an iPad mini" phone. Apple killed the one size I wanted and then shipped a $2,000 fold. I get why the fold exists. I just wish the mini line hadn't had to die for it.
Likes it
IMHO, one of the reasons I've been delaying an upgrade is because the standard sized iphone 13 ( not even pro ) I've had for a few years now is big enough already, anything larger just would not be ergonomic ( and I have large hands )...
Doesn’t like it
> Alas it seems we won't see any such phone that fits in a pant's pocket and that can be operated single-handedly Check out the Motorola Razr! I switched from an iPhone 13 Mini to the Razr last year and I'm a big fan. The outer display is 4"! It runs all applications and it's extremely usable one-handed. Some apps and websites are clearly not designed for a screen that small, but the vast majority work just fine. And it unfolds into a phablet for when you want/need an enormous screen. And it's Android so you can use Firefox. I'm much happier with it than I was with the iPhone.
Likes itStill going
My iPhone 13 is likewise still ticking along, most nights I put it on the charger with over 70% battery remaining. Of course, about the only thing I use it for is reading e-books, which isn't very taxing. Also a little photography. If the upcoming folding iPhone supports the Apple Pencil Pro, that'll be the first tempting phone feature in years. It would be fun to have a digital sketchbook in my pocket. Of course the price tag will probably cancel the temptation. Part of me is sad to see so little innovation in new phones, but another part of me enjoys keeping my money.
Likes it
Anecdotally, I can't tell much of a difference between the newer phone of my girlfriend (latest iPhone) and my iPhone 13. Maybe if I nitpick on it, but for my untrained eye they all look 'good enough'. Plus, many people who take photos on their phone will upload it to a service like instagram/discord which compresses the photos so you lose some of the quality anyway.
Doesn’t like it
Good grief, hopefully in v28 Lemay will also throw away the absolute crap that is Liquid glass. Aesthetically it looks horrible, it slows my iPhone 13 — which never before lagged in all its life since iOS 15 – to a maddening crawl. Liquid glass should be taught in design school as an example of what not to do when you design UX. And also in business school as a case of how middle management can fudge up something that is working normally in the illusion of progress.
Doesn’t like it
Depends on the phone, I have trouble fitting models into memory on my iPhone 13 before iOS kills the app. I imagine newer phones with more RAM don’t have this issue especially with some new flagship phones having 16+ GB of memory
Doesn’t like it
My iPhone 13 can’t run most of these models. A decent local LLM is one of the few reasons I can imagine actually upgrading earlier than typically necessary.
Likes it
Yeah, it seems fine on my iPhone 13 running Safari 18. It's not warming up. Some ball shadows look kind of grainy but moving my finger around moves the balls around.