This morning, iOS 13 updating was in progress. From left to right, XS Max, XR, and XS.
iPad Pro is waiting for its own update to iPadOS. iPadOS and iOS 13.1 are coming on 25th September 2019.
The new Series 5 has also been set up and paired to the iPhone 11 Pro Max, which I am using to take this photo.
Stuff I like in iOS 13 so far: Dark Mode, Memoji Sticker packs, and the tighter privacy controls (no, Facebook, you are NOT allowed to use my Bluetooth to track my location. Thanks, iOS 13!).
Memoji sticker packs are fun. My wife saw my stickers, which are automatically generated by iOS 13 when you create a Memoji, and was immediately smitten. “Create a nice Memoji for me,” she said. “Must be beautiful one.”
No pressure.
You can use the sticker packs in other messenger apps like WhatsApp too. Which is neat.
Since I also just shifted from the iPhone XS Max to the 11 Pro Max, I see it is now possible to do a full iPhone-to-iPhone transfer. It is almost like Time Machine restore for iPhone.
This means that ALL your iPhone content will transfer over instead of just iCloud credentials.
No need to wait for the apps to download from iCloud in the background. Just phone-to-phone transfer, lock, stock and barrel. Useful for folks who have a large photo library and don’t want to wait for the new iPhone to download the photos from iCloud. I left it to transfer overnight but it only took about 3 hours (I have a LOT of stuff on my iPhone haha!).
The only thing that I had to do manually was Authenticators. I had to re-setup by hand. And I have two Authenticators, one is Google’s and one is Microsoft’s. I suppose for security reasons, Authenticators don’t allow direct transfers of the accounts within.
Apple also made the Watch transfer easier. When I was setting up the iPhone 11 Pro Max by transferring data from the iPhone XS Max I normally use, I was asked if I also wanted to pair my existing Series 4 Apple Watch to the new 11 Pro Max. This used to be a manual affair when you changed iPhones. In the dark old days (yesterday), you had to unpair the Watch from your old iPhone, wait a long time, and then re-pair it with your new iPhone, and wait again. But now it does that pairing for you. Very very cool.
And no, you don’t need to update your existing iPhone to iOS 13 to make the transfer to the new iPhone 11 or 11 Pro. My XS Max was on iOS 12 and it transferred just fine to the iPhone 11 Pro Max running on iOS 13.
The first thing I played with was, of course, the new Triple-Camera.
Isaac became my reluctant model for the Ultra Wide camera.
The wife is going to complain again, that I took a photo of the house when it was so messy.
The next thing to test will be battery life. The iPhone 11 Pro Max is supposed to have up to 5 hours more battery life than the XS Max. We shall see. I am notoriously #brutal and #savage when it comes to smartphone battery life, because I use my iPhone all day for work and play. Game on!
