Apple iPhone 14 Series

The new iPhone 14s is here and let's take a look at all the variants. So we have four new iPhones, we've got the 14, 14 Plus, the 14 Pro, and the 14 Pro Max. So what's new are they any good and if you are tempted to upgrade what should you go for?

Well before we dive in there are five things you need to know straight away. Number one, there is no new iPhone Mini which is a shame but we do have the new 14 Plus which might become incredibly popular. We have two brand new safety features: car crash mode and we also have the new emergency SOS features so if you're off-grid hiking and even got a normal sell signal. Hopefully, you never have to use it but it's a pretty cool feature, although right now it is only in the US and Canada. Number four, this is important there are new colors there is the new midnight black, the purple, and deep purple on the 14 Pro. And finally, number five, before you head over to the Apple website and start furiously placing your order to get an iPhone on launch day hold up because there are some big differences between the regular 14s and the pros. More than there have been in a long time so make sure you're getting the right one.

iPhone 14 Pro and Pro-Max

So let's start with the flagships, the 14 Pro, and the pro-Max. These get all the new bells and whistles, now the very first thing you'll notice is the dynamic Island. It's essentially a pill-shaped cut out so obviously it hides the selfie camera in the face ID sensor but it also acts as a sort of secondary notification window and the dynamic island is always on top of whatever app you're using so it's basically a whole new way of interacting with notifications. Now the pros come in four colors, we have the new space black, silver gold, and deep purple. 

It is very similar to before really it is that Dynamic Helen that makes it stand out although on close inspection you'll notice that the bezels are a little bit thinner which is always appreciated. As for the screens we have the usual 6.1 and 6.7-inch options for the pro and the pro-Max although now Brandis tops out at 2,000 nits. If you're using outdoors the pro series also gets this new always-on display which you can customize. Also, the pro-motion adaptive refresh is more adaptive now it can go from 1 to 120 hertz which should give a little boost to efficiency and perhaps save some battery.

Now on the inside, we have Apple's new a16 bionic processor which is built on a new smaller four-nanometer architecture down from five nanometers on the a15. And according to Apple, this is the fastest chip ever in a phone but all this isn't just about higher frame rates and games and speeding up your renders in Premiere rush or iMovie, the new chip also improves the ISP, the image signal processor, and this is by far the most significant upgrade on the new iPhones.

It's a similar-looking triple lens setup but now we're getting a 48-megapixel main camera up from 12 last year and it's a quad-pixel sensor so essentially they're using pixel billing four into one which should improve detail and reduce noise. We also have a new 12-megapixel Ultra wide which of course doubles as the macro camera which has been improved as well. And finally, we have the 12-megapixel telephoto, and actually, one of the big upgrades here is that we have a much wider F 1.78 aperture versus 2.8 last year so it should let a lot more light in. We have a new Zoom option so the 14 Pros get the 0.5 times Ultra wide the one times main but now we have a two and a three times telephoto Zoom which is definitely a welcome upgrade. It gives you a slightly different focal length for your photos and portraits. Also, the true tone flash is now two times brighter and they've improved the flash uniformity so we have some big upgrades to the camera Hardware.

But that's only half the story because we also have this new technology called photonic which is essentially their new version of the deep Fusion technology which takes multiple photos and does some magic and makes them better. And Apple is saying that we're going to get between two and three times better images from all camera display places, all the cameras versus last year and particularly in low light. Now it is a bit hard to quantify what three times better low-light photo means, but the claims they're making the new hardware with this new software could be one of the biggest iPhone camera upgrades we've seen in a long time.

But hey it's not all about the rear cameras, unlike the iPhone 13 series which kind of forgot about the true depth front selfie camera. We've had a pretty big upgrade here not only do we have a much wider aperture but it also now supports autofocus for the first time on an iPhone. And it benefits from all that photonic magic behind the scenes switching over to video and the cinematic mode is Now supported at both 4K 24 FPS and 4k 30. But we also now get action mode which is essentially Ultra steady, it does drop the resolution from 4K down to 2.8 K but then if you're running or filming maybe during an earthquake or something then you're going to get much smoother footage.

One area we didn't hear much about is battery life. They kind of skipped over it, they just said all-day battery but it seems there aren't any improvements to the battery on the 14 pro-Opera Max which is a bit of a shame but then again the pro-Max is still like the king of battery life anyway.

Regular iPhone 14

So that's the pro and the pro-Max but what about the regular 14s, is it worth saving a few hundred pounds of dollars and getting those instead. So the 14 starts at 799 dollars same as last year and the 14 plus are 899 which gets you that bigger display and the much better battery life so it's a hundred dollars worth of that so like the pro series we're looking at a 6.1 and 6.7-inch display. And the 14s come in five colors we have midnight Starlight blue, purple, and product red. Now to be honest you'd have a hard time telling these apart from last year's 13 series, we've still got a dual lens set up in the back we still got that quite Hefty Notch. Although we do benefit from the slightly thinner bezels which the pro also gets Runners tops out at 1200 nits so not quite as bright as the pro series and also it's still stuck at 60 hertz.

There is no promotion with the regular 14 phones which is a bit disappointing for a 2022 new iPhone. They also miss out on the new a16 so instead, we get last year's a15 bionic although they do get the slightly beefier version which was previously exclusive on the 13 Pros which come with five GPU cores. So graphics performance should be about 18 faster than the 13 series they have also tweaked the chip a little bit including a new custom ISP so the 14s do get some of the new camera features.

So let's talk about this camera we get a new 12-megapixel main camera not the 48-megapixels of the pros but Apple still says this is a new sensor that is bigger. We get larger 1.4 Micron pixels, and a faster 1.5 aperture so again that lets more light in and they're saying we're looking at up to 50% of improved low light performance and also two times faster night mode exposure so hopefully fewer blurry shots at night. Not much seems to have changed with the ultra-wide camera but we do get the new true depth selfie camera with that wider f19 aperture and autofocus. So still no telephoto lens on the regular four teams and the ultra-high camera from a hardware perspective doesn't seem to be that different but all the lenses, the two on the back and the front camera benefit from that photonic software upgrade. That sort of new deep Fusion surprisingly that's not just exclusive to the pros, all iPhones get this new tech.

The 14s also get cinematic mode also up to 4K 24 and 4K 30 and they get the new action mode as well and also that brighter true tone flash. The regular 14s no longer have a physical SIM card tray or at least in the US. It's kind of crazy they're relying entirely on esims in the US going forward with the four teams not really a big deal if you do have a physical Sim you can get that transferred easily and presumably it frees up some space because they no longer need that SIM card tray in the phone. 

That was it hope you enjoyed it. If you have any concerns do leave a comment. Thank you and See ya!