Hands-on Apple's Green iPhone 13 - it looks like wet paint, and we love it
Apple's iPhone has been green before, but the richness of the Apple iPhone 13 Green and iPhone 13 Pro Alpine Green is something else.
This is the inkiest, deepest green Apple's produced to date.
Apple unveiled the two new finishes on March 8, during an hour-long product launch event that focused primarily on Apple Silicon and its use in an M1 Ultra and a new Mac Studio.
More color choice is always welcome, especially in Apple's flagship phone and the iPhone 13 Pro, which we called "one of 2021's best smartphones."
The iPhone 13 Pro, which features matte glass on the back and a stainless steel band around the body gets Alpine Green. The iPhone 13, which has a glossy glass back and brushed aluminum band, gets simply Green.
Sitting under the frosted ceramic shield glass, the iPhone 13 Pro's Alpine Green is deep enough to absorb the light, making it look even darker than it really is, so much so that the Apple logo nearly disappears. This contrasts with the ultra-shiny and cool-to-the-touch green-hued stainless steel band.
If you're staring at the Super Retina XDR display, the Alpine Green is almost undetectable, save for a hint of it around the thin metal edge that wraps around the ceramic glass screen cover.
If you're looking for something more dramatic, there's the iPhone 13 in Green. We know, this is a slightly less powerful iPhone 13 model (two cameras instead of three, no LiDAR), but that gloss, almost wet-paint like green back is stunning.
The iPhone 13 ceramic glass is almost exactly the same as what you'll find on the iPhone 13 Pro, but the polished surface and liquid-like green are as bold as the iPhone 13 Pro's back is muted. Even on the iPhone 13's brushed metal band, the green looks more substantial, like it was carefully painted on.
Where the green on the front of the iPhone 13 Pro is a nearly undetectable hint, we can clearly see the deep green line running around the edge of the phone screen.
The color used on both these phones may, in fact, be exactly the same. You can tell by looking at the camera array hump. On the iPhone 13, it has a brushed glass look, which makes the green look almost exactly like the Alpine Green on the iPhone 13 Pro. The polished glass camera array on the iPhone 13 Pro shows through a green that, you guessed it, looks just like the Green on the iPhone 13.
With these new colors, the iPhone 13 now comes in Green, Pink, Blue, Midnight, Starlight, and (PRODUCT)RED. The iPhone 13 Pro is now available in Alpine Green, Silver, Gold, Graphite, and Sierra Blue.
Aside from the new colors, these are the exact same iPhone 13 and 13 Pro handsets we reviewed last year. Same 5G capabilities, A15 Bionic CPUs. Super Retina XDR displays, same camera arrays, and Cinematic video mode capabilities
Pricing also remains the same. the iPhone 13 Pro starts at $999 / £949 / AU$1,699, which gets you 128GB of storage and the iPhone 13 starts at $799 / £779 / AU$1,349 for the same amount of storage.
Pre-orders for the new phone colors kicked off on Friday, March 11 and they'll be available to buy on Friday, March 18.