The iPhone 13 official name appears to have been leaked, and it’s going to surprise anyone who expected it to be called Tiny Tim’s Tick-Tock-A-Doodle-Phone: the successor to the iPhone 12 is going to be called… the iPhone 13.
I’ll pause for a moment while you pick yourself up from the floor.
Obvious sarcasm aside, it is very slightly surprising news because of course the number 13 has negative connotations for some people: it’s why some buildings don’t have a 13th floor and why some airplanes don’t have a 13th row. So there was a lot of speculation that the iPhone numbering system would take a little iPhone XR/XS-style jump away from unlucky thirteen to be called something else, such as the iPhone 12S. Apparently not: via MacRumors we can see the words iPhone 13 printed very clearly on what looks awfully like proper Apple packaging, which you’d expect to be in production by now.
But the iPhone 13 might have another surprise up its sleeve, and that one might annoy you.
Will the iPhone 13 be unlucky for some?
There's a chance that the iPhone 13 is going to be more expensive than the iPhone 12. According to electronics news site DigiTimes, the ongoing global semiconductor shortage is even starting to affect the mighty Apple. That contradicts previous reports that Apple intended to keep the prices identical to those of the iPhone 12, but the laws of supply and demand have started to make component costs soar, and it's possible Apple has been more affected by this than expected.
Apple has tight control over its manufacturing partners but ultimately it’s still reliant on components made by other organisations. That’s one of the reasons Apple tends to buy so many companies: it prefers to control the technologies that its products rely on. But even Apple can’t own everything.
Apple already raised the price of the iPhone 12 compared to the iPhone 11, which T3's own Matt Bolton griped about in his iPhone 12 review. If we had to gamble, we'd say Apple will probably try to absorb any price increase, and probably won't be too badly affected because of how it control its supplies. But that's just a guess – we'll find out soon enough.
