This year Apple made it more clear than ever the difference between the non-pro and pro iPhone models. Specifically, when you look at the two phones side-by-side you can now see that the new iPhone 14 looks very similar to the previous iPhone 13 and the iPhone 14 Pro models now have the new pill-shaped notch. So visually, there’s not too much difference between the two lineups, but internally there are differences, mainly what powers the iPhone and the cameras.
iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus
This year the iPhone 14 lineup comes with a 6.1-inch display and the new 6.7-inch display, similar to the previous Pro Max model sizes. We also got five colors with this iPhone model, blue, purple, midnight, starlight, and product red. The outside of the iPhone is very similar to previous models with a ceramic shield on the front glass, claiming to be the toughest, smartphone glass, I’m sure there will be some people out there to test as I would not want to be smashing a phone to see how to tough this glass is. Another new claim this year is that the iPhone 14 lineup has the longest battery life ever and I have some speculation as to what exactly is causing that. The battery claims 26 hours of video playback on the iPhone 14 Plus and 20 hours of video playback on the iPhone 14. Essentially all-day battery life for most people.
If you look closely at the tech specs, and if you watched Apple‘s announcement, the chip that’s powering the new iPhone 14 is the A15 Bionic chip, if that sounds familiar it’s because it was the same chip that was in last year‘s iPhone 13 Pro models. Because of this chip, it’s likely more efficient than the previous A14 chip which does help a lot with battery life. Also this year in the US only Apple is switching to eSims on all iPhone models. SIM cards were never really large but when you think about the amount of space, it takes up inside a phone and how much space Apple has to work with any additional room would have contributed to a slightly larger battery. Now we don’t know exactly how much larger the batteries are in this year but every little bit of space counts, we’ll have to see how true these claims are in real-world use. Another new feature this year is called Emergency SOS and this is Apple‘s implementation of a satellite phone inside of an iPhone. Essentially when you are somewhere where there’s no cell connectivity, you would be able to point your phone in the sky if the sky is clear, of course, and be able to send an emergency SOS message via a satellite. I won’t be testing this feature out anytime soon so I would love to know if anybody else does get a chance to test this out and how it works out for them, but note this feature won’t be ready until November and Apple mentioned that it would be free for two years but no word what the cost as after those two years are up. Another new safety feature coming to iPhone this year is called Crash Detection. Your iPhone will now be able to determine if you’ve been in a car accident and automatically calls 911 for help. If you don’t pick up your phone and dismiss that you were not in a crash and will automatically dispatch 911 emergency to you which is pretty interesting and also notify emergency contacts on your phone like loved ones so they know that something has happened to you. Not sure how much we needed this feature and knock on wood nobody has to experience such a thing but it's nice to have.
This year the iPhone 14 also received updates to the cameras. The new main camera has a bigger sensor, not to confuse it with the new iPhone 14 Pro sensor, and a larger aperture that lets in 49% more light according to Apple, they’ve also implemented what they call the Photonic Engine that essentially is an AI algorithm for making your photos look picture perfect coming out with more detail, more colors and more lifelike, even in low light. Night mode now also exposes two times faster compared to last year’s iPhone on the main cameras and will help you get sharper photos even in dark scenes. We also have a new feature that turns your iPhone into a Steadicam, featuring Action Mode that gives you super smooth, handheld videos for those run-and-gun type of videos or when there’s a lot of action, pun intended. You can also record in cinematic mode at 4K 24 frames per second previously this stuck at 1080P 24 frames per second. The front-facing camera also received nice updates this year and now has autofocus and is better in low light. So your selfies should look sharper and better than ever. Of course, we also get iOS 16, which I’ll cover in a separate post that comes with a whole slew of new features even for your current iPhone, and some specific features for the new iPhones.
iPhone 14 Pro’s
This year the iPhone 14 Pro line-up received a slight redesign to the screen and that is with the new pill-shaped notch just below the top of the phone but it’s not completely useless. Leave it to Apple to come up with something like Dynamic Island, as they call it, that turns this entire area into an interactive widget so that various applications on the phone will be able to present information at the top as you exit them and work in other apps. For example, let’s say you’re listening to a song, when you exit the Music or Spotify app you will see a NowPlaying widget, hovering at the top of the screen and it lets you quickly interact with your music by either playing, pausing, scrubbing through, or jumping right back into the app, from anywhere or any app on your iPhone. I think this is a neat feature that Apple has created here. Not so sure about the name.
Also new this year is the always-on display now this wouldn’t be new if you came from android as the most dangerous I’ve had this feature for the last few years but now on your iPhone when you put it down on your desk facing upwards, you will see the screen, slightly damp, but still have the time and any widgets you have easily viewable. This is done by reducing the screen's refresh rate to 1 Hz. If you have a recent Apple Watch, you would know the same feature that your watch still stays slightly dimmed where you can see the time on your wrist so Apple is taken from the Apple Watch features, and now put it in our iPhones.
Most people will probably be concerned about the battery life, but Apple is claiming even with this feature you'll still get all the battery life on your iPhone 14 Pro. The screen is also two times brighter than last year’s iPhone Pro, making it much easier to see in bright daylight. Specifically, the screen can reach a peak brightness of 2000 nits. This is the brightest screen on a smartphone ever made so props to Apple for achieving this. This also means that when you’re watching HDR content, it’ll look brighter and more colorful than ever. The iPhone 14 Pro also gets the same emergency SOS and Crash Detection features.
The biggest change to the iPhone 14 Pro is the new main 48-megapixel camera, for reference the previous iPhones have always had 12 megapixels sensors, so this is a pretty big step up for the iPhone. Apple has also increased the main camera sensor by 65% compared to the iPhone 13 Pro. With this, we are getting sharper images at the cost of larger image files. Apple has put in some trickery to make sure that photo files are not to be greater than 50 megabits and take up all of your storage. If you’re shooting in automatic mode, the image file; size will still stay roughly the same as the current iPhone 13 Pro. If you’re a professional photographer though, as I’d like to call myself, you can shoot in Apple ProRAW and get the full 48-megapixel RAW image which will take up more space on your phone but give you more control of editing the photo in apps like Photoshop and Lightroom. Because of this new larger sensor, we now get a 2x optical zoom option back on the iPhone 14 Pro and the way Apple is implementing this is by changing the size of the pixels on the sensor, they call these quad-pixels, and turning the sensor into a 12-megapixel sensor, which gives you a natural 2x crop. They have also drastically improved the low light quality on the Ultra Wide camera, the main camera, and the telephoto camera. You should be getting much sharper, much clearer images when in darker situations or using night mode. Cinematic mode now also shoots in 4K HDR at 24 frames per second which is a film industry standard. I’d be interested to see how many people film short films using purely an iPhone 14 Pro. I may film some YouTube videos purely with the iPhone 14 Pro once I get it in hand. Here’s the breakdown of the specific details of the new cameras.
This will be the first year that Apple finally has a specific CPU for the Pro models. This year's Pro models come with the A16 Bionic. The interesting thing was during the presentation, all the speed comparisons were to the A14 chip, a 2-year-old chip, and not the A15 Bionic, last year's chip, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. The A16 Bionic has a six-core CPU two of which are power cores and four efficiency cores and a five-core GPU, along with the other updates mentioned below.
The iPhone 14 Pro also received a nice battery bump this year, slightly better than the iPhone 14 lineup. They are claiming up to 29 hours of video playback from an iPhone 14 Pro Max and up to 23 hours on the iPhone 14 Pro. In my opinion, pretty incredible battery life, but let’s see how that plays into real-life use.
That’s pretty much it for the main new features of the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro models. I will discuss how iOS 16 brings new enhancements to your old iPhone and the new iPhones once they’re released. Look out for the next post on iOS 16. Do you think the new iPhones are worth it? Are you going to be upgrading this year? Let me know your comments down below.
