Before its public sale, Apple provided several reviewers with the iPhone 14 Pro. What have they made for the latest iOS smartphone? Let’s see the highlights of the new smartphone and how they were received. iPhone 14 Pro press screenshot Apple Newsroom The Dynamic Island The biggest talking point is probably the dynamic island. Apple is expanding it as a whole new way of working with your smartphone. For the more cynical, it’s a large notification popup that tries to hide the screen cutout required for the cameras and Face ID. As always, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Nilay Patel for The Verge: “The simplest way to understand the island is that it’s basically a new widget system based on this Live Activities API, and widgets can have three views: the main island view, an expanded view, and an extremely minimal icon when there two things at once. If you have more than two things, Apple has an internal priority list to put the two most important things on the island.” Will this work? A lot depends on how thoughtful the approach is from third-party developers. If new content and new ways of working are adopted then it will be amazing. But if the coding work for both the original notification system and the new island system is too complicated or expensive, the iPhone might just have built its own Touch Bar. A16 Performance Apple’s latest chip system is the A16 Bionic, and it’s limited to the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max (creating a noticeable difference in performance between the vanilla iPhone and pro iPhone models in the process). It certainly packs the big numbers in a presentation slide and in benchmark tests. Lance Ulanoff for TechRadar: “It’s an upgrade from the A15 Bionic… with 16 billion transistors and a 4-nanometer process, which means the size of each of those transistors is shrinking. Benchmarks and real-world performance seem to prove the power of this new silicon from Apple, reaching nearly every corner of the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s performance (photos, always-on display, and Dynamic Island). Between the new, more efficient A16 Bionic display technology and the size of the 14 Pro Max, we expected more than the 13 hours of mixed-use battery life we got.” Ulanoff notes the relatively short battery life for a smartphone of this price, but notes that he increased the screen’s brightness to make the phone readable outside. Pull it back when you’re indoors and you’ll get closer to Apple’s indicated 20 to 25 hours of battery life. Gizmodo’s Florence Ion: “The battery drain test is usually the last thing I test for any review, so I’ll have to continue with the final numbers of the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max in the video playback test. For now, I can say the iPhone 14 The Pro Max streams a 24-hour YouTube video at 200 nits for nearly 16 hours, still 29% responsive. Display Apple may have loaded up the camera presentation with ‘Photonic Engine’ and ‘Action Mode’, but the difference between the 13 Pro images and the 14 Pro images isn’t as big as the branding suggests. The main sensor has been increased to 48 megapixels and, for the first time, includes pixel binning – a feature popular on Android devices. To many eyes, the comparison shows a cooler color temperature and less saturation in the 14 Pro’s images compared to last year’s model. Taking the Pixel 6 Pro for comparison, the 14 Pro still comes out less vibrant, and Engadget’s Cherlynn Low ranks Google’s aging flagship as the best smartphone for low-light photography: “A similar story can be told for low-light cameras. In one example, the iPhone 14 Pro’s shots had the most accurate color and sharpest detail, beating the Pixel 6 Pro in capturing individual lines on a sheet. But Google’s flagship did a better job with an image of a bright bar in a dim restaurant. It clearly captured individual leaves on a potted plant on a shelf, while the same part of the image was shaded when taken with the iPhone 14 Pro.” Emergency SOS via satellite This seems like cutting edge to the vast majority of users, but the ability to send an SOS over a network of satellites is a bend in Apple’s ability to deliver. In an unusual move, Apple is first to market here, but will soon join this service like T-Mobile with Starlink. Myriam Joire for PocketNow: “T-Mobile USA and Starlink, SpaceX’s high-speed Internet satellite provider, recently announced a partnership to provide low-bandwidth satellite communications to the carrier’s subscribers. But unlike Apple’s app, which requires an additional hardware on compatible devices, the T-Mobile and Starlink service works with any handset that already supports mid-band 5G and is not limited to emergency situations.” iPhone 14 Pro press screenshot Apple Newsroom Some Thoughts There’s no doubt that the iPhone 14 Pro is an improvement over the iPhone 13 Pro (as are the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Max over their 2021 counterparts). Whether it’s enough for anyone but the die-hard to upgrade from last year’s model remains to be seen, but put it next to an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12 and it’s a worthy replacement. For those outside the Apple ecosystem, the iPhone 14 Pro’s hardware is on par with flagship Android devices. There are some areas where it wins in the top trumps comparison. There are others with Android having the edge, and some where it’s essentially neck and neck. The difference is the software, and the eternal ‘Android vs iOS’ shows no signs of letting up. Apple continues to simplify as many options as possible while providing more graphical cues and different ways to do existing things. Android continues to remain flexible for many partner manufacturers and offers more customization to users. There is no magic dot in the iOS 16 / iPhone 14 Pro combination that makes the switch necessary. Apple delivered a steady update to the iPhone, making small gains in many areas. It’s an improvement over previous models and existing users will definitely feel the difference. But it doesn’t seem to have built enough of an edge over Android to entice the masses. Read now the latest iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch headlines in Forbes’ Apple Weekly Roundup…
