Finally Complete Review Of Apple iPhone 14 Pro: The Next Step To Perfection?
I don’t think so. You will find out why in conclusion.
The iPhone 14 Pro review is probably the most irresponsible article I’ve been waiting to write this year. After all, the “14s” generated a lot of controversy after their introduction, which I honestly don’t blame at all, and it’s apparent to me that many of you will want to hear what these phones are like in real life.
So let’s skip the introductory formalities and get straight down to business. This time there is something to talk about, or rather write about. Not because there’s too much news, but rather because there are both positive and negative aspects, which makes the iPhone 14 Pro quite controversial.
Design and dimensions
Design-wise, at least when the display is off, the iPhone 13 Pro and 14 Pro are about as similar as eggs to eggs — at least for less knowledgeable users. The more astute will notice the slightly modified front-facing speaker, which is even more recessed into the phone’s top bezel on the iPhone 14 Pro, or the more prominent camera lens on the back. However, in the same breath, you’ll notice these primarily on light models, where the metal ring surrounding the lenses is more visually prominent than on dark versions.
My First Impressions Of The New iPhone 14 Pro Max
Unfortunately, it’s more boring than ever
medium.com
So if you are visually bothered by the protruding lenses, I recommend reaching for either the black or purple version, which can mask the protrusion nicely. Remember that camouflage is one thing and real-world use is another. I’m thinking specifically of that hand in hand with the more prominent cameras go larger protective rings on the covers, which brings nothing but more wobble to the phone when you put it on your back. So buying the dark variant doesn’t solve that much in the end.
As for the colours available this year, Apple has again opted for gold and silver, complemented by dark purple and black. I had the opportunity to test the black, which I think is stunning in design. It is finally a proper dark coat, which Apple has quite surprisingly avoided in recent years, preferring to replace it with space grey or graphite.
Not that those colours weren’t lovely, but I was kind of sick of them, and that’s why I’m so glad that this year has finally been a year of change in that regard. However, I find it a bit of a shame that out of the five colour variants of the iPhone 13 Pro, we now have four again, but who knows — maybe Apple will delight us again in a few months with a brand new shade to pump up sales.
As in the previous two years, Apple has bet on 6.1" for the 14 Pro series but crammed it into a slightly taller body. The height of the iPhone 14 Pro is now 147.5 mm, compared to 146.7 mm for the iPhone 13 Pro last year. However, you have no chance of noticing the extra millimetre — especially since the phone’s width has remained 71.5mm and its thickness has increased by 0.2mm from 7.65mm to 7.85mm.
In terms of weight, the novelty is not bad at all, as it has “gained” only 3 grams, having “sprouted” from 203 grams to 206 grams. Therefore, it is clear that the 14 Pro feels identical to the iPhone 13 Pro, which could also be said of the iPhone 12 Pro and 13 Pro. Given that Apple significantly redesigns its iPhones in three-year cycles, however, this is no surprise, quite the opposite. Nothing else could be expected.
Display and Always-on
Although Apple touted the new iPhone’s display at the keynote, glancing at its technical specifications immediately makes you realise that things are slightly different. Not that the iPhone 14 Pro’s display isn’t impressive, because quite frankly, it is, but it’s almost as unique as the display on last year’s iPhone 13 Pro.
The only paper difference in terms of technical specs here is in the brightness during HDR, which is now 1600 nits, and the brightness outdoors, which is now 2000 nits. Of course, ProMotion, TrueTone, P3 gamut support, 2,000,000:1 contrast, HDR or 460 PPI fineness.
In addition, however, there’s a new Always-on, thanks to Apple deploying a panel that can reduce the display refresh rate to 1Hz instead of last year’s 10Hz. Honestly, Always-on in Apple’s concept is extremely fun, although I have to add in the same breath that it’s also a bit different than what everyone imagines by the term “Always-on”. As perceived by Apple, Always-on is a significantly dimmed wallpaper brightness with darkening of some elements and omitting those that need constant updating.
Although this solution doesn’t save the battery practically 100% as it is in android phones (in practice, I would say that Always-on accounts for about 8 to 15% of the daily battery consumption), I like it and like it more than just a black screen with a glowing clock or a few other notifications. What’s also positive is that Apple has played around with all sorts of energy-saving solutions in both hardware and software so that everything should run as efficiently as possible and, in short, in a way that is not more trouble than pleasure for the user.
So you don’t have to worry about burning out the display, as Always-on slightly moves the displayed content and mutes it in various ways. The fact that Always-on mode is pretty clever probably doesn’t need to be emphasised anymore, given that it comes from Apple.
Still, I won’t forgive myself another small praise for it, which I think it deserves. Always-on is managed by advanced hardware and software, emphasising keeping the power consumption as low as possible. It also has several behavioural patterns that it uses to shut itself down to save power and combat burn-in.
There’s no point in mentioning that Always-on turns off when you put the phone in your pocket, turn it face down, activate sleep mode, and so on, as expected. What’s extremely interesting, however, is that Always-on also turns off according to your behaviour, which the phone learns through machine learning and artificial intelligence, which in other words means that if you’re used to taking a two-hour nap after lunch, for example, the phone should understand your ritual and turn Always-on off over time as you sleep.
Another truly fantastic thing about Always-on is its cooperation with the Apple Watch. The latter now communicates with your phone about distance as well. The iPhone gets a signal that you’ve moved far enough away from it (which it will understand thanks to your Apple Watch on your wrist). Always-on turns off because there’s no point in having content on display glowing, thus draining the battery.
If you’re wondering if the physical holes in the display are visible, the answer is yes. Look at the display from a certain angle, like an elongated pill hiding the Face ID module. You can see the circle for the camera without any significant masking by the black Dynamic Island.
In addition, it should be added that the front camera lens is significantly more visible this year than in previous years as it is both more extensive and more “sunken” overall. However, I am not overly offended by this; I don’t think anyone will be.
As much as I would love to tell you more about the display, the truth is that I have written absolutely everything I could about it. There are no visibly narrower bezels around it, nor do we seem to have improved, for example, colour rendering.
I’ve had the opportunity to compare the iPhone 14 Pro specifically to the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and as hard as I tried, I wouldn’t say you’ll see any improvement year-on-year apart from the things mentioned above. And if it does, it will only be a minor step forward.
Always-on problems
However, not to praise Always-on, three things surprise me, and I’m not entirely sure if this is a downright ideal solution. The first one is the brightness already bitten off above. While Always-on doesn’t overly glow in the dark, if you have your phone in a harsher light, Always-on glows due to it trying to react to light and be logically legible to the user quite a bit, draining the battery more than it needs to.
Sure, the user experience is guaranteed by the higher brightness. I’d probably prefer if this didn’t happen at all and therefore battery life was +- stable, or if I had the option to adjust the brightness in the settings — either fixed or within a specific range — and control everything from there. The customisation option is closely related to the second thing I’m sorry about.
I don’t understand why Apple, at least for now, doesn’t allow more customisation of both the Lock Screen and Always-on. I find it a shame that when you can pin a vast number of widgets to the display, you end up only being able to use a handful of them in this way due to limited slots.
Besides that, I would have liked to play around with which element would shine more brightly and which would be dimmed to the maximum. After all, when I have a photo on my wallpaper, I don’t need to see the bluish background around her in Always-on, but at the moment, I have no other choice.
The last criticism, which surprised me a bit with Always-on, is that it cannot be used at night as a clock or simply like this. Yes, I know I would be depriving myself of battery life, but it’s a shame that after years of finally having the Always-on option, it can’t be used 100%. Sure, it’s ultimately just a software limitation that Apple can delete in the coming weeks or months via a software update. Still, it’s always better if Apple just “bakes” all the new features into the first version of the system to make it as easy as possible for users to wipe the slate clean.
Dynamic Island
We must not forget the brand new element replacing the cut-out. It’s called Dynamic Island and can be described as a clever camouflage for the pair of cutouts in the display created for the front-facing camera and Face ID module. However, evaluating this feature is extremely difficult, as only a handful of apps from Apple’s workshop and exactly zero apps from third-party developers have supported it.
At the moment, it can be used to make calls, control the music player, maximise Apple Maps, use the timer, or serve as an indicator of the phone’s battery or connected AirPods. Animations or general usability are therefore scarce so far, and to be quite honest, quite surprisingly, even what should have been in Dynamic Island was often forgotten.
An example of this is the orange dot during calls, which, although it is displayed by default in Dynamic Island if you put a FaceTime call full screen (and the phone locks, for example), the dot moves from Dynamic Island to the right corner of the phone, which looks rather strange.
After all, consistency is needed with features like this, and when it’s not, it strikes one as more of a bug than something Apple intended. I’d say that what Apple presented at the Keynote isn’t even half of what Dynamic Island offers yet, at least if you’re not that committed to native Apple apps. However, this begs the question of who’s actually to blame.
At first blush, one might say Apple. On the other hand, if Apple had burned through Dynamic Island ahead of time, it wouldn’t have had to make so much secrecy around the iPhone 14 Pro, which would have been a shame in its own right, but again, it would have ensured far better support for Dynamic Island. In short, we have a little Sophie’s Choice here, as both solutions would be inherently evil, and the question is which is worse. I’d say Option B — i.e. phone secrecy at the expense of software support.
However, I believe there are plenty of opponents of the first option among you because, in short, you want to have a perfect surprise no matter how well it runs. I understand, I accept, and in the same breath, I add that both my opinion and yours are ultimately irrelevant anyway because the decision in Cupertino has already been made regardless. If I were to disregard Dynamic Island’s existing (in)functionality and look at it as just a feature replacing the existing cutout, I probably wouldn’t honestly find words of praise for it either.
Yes, I found the elongated cutout instead of the cutout to be more modern and more appealing on Keynote than I do with the cutout. However, the reality is that even a week after first unboxing the iPhone, I still find it more distracting than just the display, as it’s set deeper into the show.
Because the display on all sides surrounds it, it’s inherently constantly being highlighted, which isn’t always entirely ideal. I don’t understand then that Apple hasn’t decided to turn Dynamic Island off intuitively when, for example, watching a full-screen video, viewing photos, etc.
I can’t help it, but I’d probably instead look at two bullet holes in the display at a time like that than one oblong black blob that often covers up pretty essential parts of a video while watching YouTube. Again, however, we are talking about a software solution that may arrive in the near or distant future.
Performance
I find it completely unnecessary to evaluate the performance of iPhones in recent years with a bit of exaggeration. Every year, Apple sets performance trends for iPhones, which sounds perfect on the one hand, but on the other hand, from a user’s point of view, it is somewhat irrelevant.
You have absolutely no way to use, let alone appreciate, the performance for quite a few years now. And so it is this year with the arrival of Apple’s 4nm A16 Bionic chipset. It’s improved by more than 20% in several cross-generation tests, which is impressive, but you cannot feel it when using your phone regularly. Apps launch the same on the iPhone 13 and run just as smoothly.
The only place where the increased performance comes in handy is with photography and filming, as that’s again a bit more intertwined with the software this year — at least in the case of video, which we’ll talk more about later. I don’t think there’s much point in writing benchmark test results or adding screenshots from Geekbench or AnTuTu to the review, as anyone can find this data in a few seconds on the internet.
Therefore, my perspective will be much more helpful as a person who used iPhone 13 Pro Max, until recently the most powerful iPhone, and who switched to iPhone 14 Pro last Friday. From my own experience, I can reiterate what I said a few lines above. You won’t improve an inch in terms of feel, so forget about the new iPhone making you more productive, for example, because it makes you get things done faster.
There’s no such thing, just like you won’t be able to run your favourite Call of Duty or other more demanding games any faster. I think the new processor is designed primarily for processing photos and videos, which are highly performance-intensive this year and for which it made sense to develop the processor.
After all, a remarkable proof is the iPhone 14, which has only last year’s A15 Bionic chips. Why? Because, more or less, the only significant difference between them and the 14 Pro series, not counting visual stuff like Always-on and Dynamic Island, are just photos and videos.
Camera
It has become a tradition that Apple improves the camera of its iPhones year after year, and this year is no exception. All three lenses have been upgraded and now feature larger sensors that can capture more light to create better quality, more detailed and more realistic photos. But to be honest, I don’t feel the camera revolution this year that much — at least compared to last year.
While last year we cheered the macro mode, which is appreciated by (just about) everyone, the most significant upgrade this year is the increase in the 12MPx resolution of the wide-angle lens to 48MPx. However, there’s one, in my opinion, giant catch that I’m somehow unable to swallow even a week after unboxing the iPhone 14 Pro, and which I’ll try to explain in the following lines through the eyes of someone who loves to take photos, but also cares about simplicity and therefore doesn’t need to sit in front of photo editors.
While I am a total layman in photography, I could use a higher resolution photo from time to time. So when Apple announced the deployment of a 48MPx wide-angle lens, I was delighted with this upgrade. The catch, however, is that shooting up to 48MP makes absolutely no sense to me, as it’s only possible with RAW format settings. Sure, it’s ideal for post-production, but for the average user, it’s a nightmare, as they shoot simply as the camera “sees” the scene.
Forget about additional software adjustments used to improve the image. On — nothing like that is done on RAW photos by iPhone, which means nothing else than that the photos may not be — and usually are not — as lovely as those shot in classic PNG. There’s another problem with the format — namely, size. RAW is significantly storage intensive, as a single photo can steal as much as 80 MB.
So if you like to take photos, you’re looking at 800 MB for ten shots, which is not a lot. Let’s add another zero — 100 photos for 8000 MB, which is 8 GB.
Pretty crazy idea for iPhones with a base of 128 GB of storage, right? And what if I told you that the option to compress from DNG (i.e. RAW) to PNG doesn’t exist or isn’t offered by Apple? I’m sure some of you will write to me about this, saying what good is a high-resolution image if it’s compressed.
All I can say is that I’d rather have a compressed 48MPx image than a compressed 12MPx image. In short, don’t look for any tricky things in this, there are millions of users like me in the world, and it is, therefore, a pity that Apple has not been able to satisfy us so completely. However, I secretly hope we are dealing here again with a software thing that will be fine-tuned by software in the future.
Shooting in RAW is also somewhat problematic in terms of fast shooting. It takes much longer to process a photo in this format than “clicking” into PNG, so you have to reckon with the fact that every time you press the shutter, you have to give the phone a good three seconds to process everything as it needs to and let you go on to the possibility of creating another image, which is often a pain.
Another tricky thing is that you can only shoot in RAW in good lighting conditions and without zooming in. And when I write “without any”, I mean without any. Even a 1.1x zoom will distort the RAW, and you are shooting in PNG. However, I must add that if you have already started shooting on RAW and don’t want to bother too much with editing on the computer, in the native editor on the iPhone, you can also get quite solidly edited (colourised, brightened, etc.) photos that will be enough for many people.
But there’s still the size factor, which is simply undeniable. While the wide-angle lens upgrade is the most exciting thing about this year’s camera, the truth is that the ultra-wide-angle and telephoto lenses are also worthy of consideration. Apple has let it be known that it has fitted all of its lenses with larger sensors that can accommodate more light and therefore shoot better in low-light conditions. However, on this account, it’s worth adding that on paper, the aperture of the ultra-wide angle lens has worsened, and then the crack of the telephoto lens has moved neither down nor up.
Don’t be fooled by this, however. In fact, according to Apple, the ultra-wide angle lens is supposed to be up to 3x better year-on-year and the telephoto lens up to 2x better. And what is the reality? Frankly, the photos are better. However, whether they are 2x, 3x, 0.5x or perhaps “other times” better, I am not quite able to judge because I don’t know Apple’s metrics. But from what I’ve observed from taking photos over the last few days, I’d say that 2x or 3x better photos are rarely in the dark and rarely in the gloom.
They are indeed more detailed and overall more believable but don’t expect an outright revolution, but rather a pretty decent step forward. Having already sketched believability in the previous paragraph, I can’t help but return to the wide-angle lens for a few moments. It seems to me that the iPhone 14 Pro shoots more believably, or if you like, with an emphasis on realism, compared to the iPhone 13 Pro and other older models.
However, there is a slight catch to this seemingly great news — believability often does not equal likability, and photos from older iPhones sometimes look better in direct comparison, at least in my opinion, because they are more software-enhanced, more colourful, and simply prettier to the eye. While this isn’t the rule, it’s good to know — especially since at times when photos from older iPhones aren’t visually prettier, they’re very, very close to those from the iPhone 14 Pro.
Video
Regarding the video, Apple has worked on improvements here too this year, the most exciting being, without a doubt, the deployment of Action Mode, or Action Mode if you prefer, which is nothing more than very decent software stabilisation. The word “software” is significant to emphasise here. Because everything is handled by software, the video sometimes contains minor glitches that give away the fact that it’s not quite kosher.
However, this is not the rule, and if you manage to capture the video without them, you are in for a sea of fun. The same in pale blue can be said of the improved Cinematic Mode, which Apple introduced last year as a mode capable of switching from one subject to another and vice versa. While last year it only ran in Full HD, this year we can finally enjoy it in 4K.
Unfortunately, though, in both cases, I kind of feel like it’s precisely the type of feature that, while you subconsciously need to have, once you have it, you’ll use it a few times in the first few days of owning a new iPhone and then you won’t even sigh for it — at least, not unless you’re used to shooting in large on iPhones.
Battery life
The deployment of the 4nm A16 Bionic chipset in combination with software and hardware drivers for the Always-on display and other elements of the phone has resulted in the fact that the iPhone 14 Pro has not deteriorated year-on-year despite Always-on, and what’s more, it has improved by an hour according to Apple’s official specifications.
This particular thing is tough to compare with last year since I was switching from the iPhone 13 Pro Max, which is, after all, somewhere else in terms of endurance due to its size. However, if I were to evaluate the endurance through the eyes of an impartial user, I would say it is average, if not slightly above average.
In fact, with more active use, the phone will last you a day just fine, and with more moderate use, you’ll get a solid day and a half. In the same breath, however, I have to add that there are things I don’t quite understand. For example, I don’t know why my phone drains a good 10% overnight when nothing much should be running on it, just as my head doesn’t get how brutally power-hungry the camera is.
Yes, I gave it a “smoke” more than usual during the review because, after all, I rarely take dozens of photos “in one go”, but I was still surprised that I drained the phone by more than 20% during a photo shoot of a few dozen minutes, then one or two hours at most. But processing photos requires energy, especially if you want to “flash” something to RAW.
Other news worth mentioning
Although Apple didn’t reveal much about other new features at the keynote, I did find that the speakers sound a bit better than they did last year, both in terms of bass and the overall “liveliness” of the music. However, the spoken word or microphone system is also better, which again picks up your voice a little better than we used to.
These are small steps forward, but every little thing is a pleasure, like the faster 5G.
However, since I don’t live in an area with its coverage, I’ve only had a chance to try it out in one of my work meetings, so I’m honestly not quite able to say how usable the speedup is. Given that most people are happy with LTE, you’d probably have to be a solid connoisseur to appreciate this speed.
Final summary
From the preceding lines, you can probably sense that I’m not downright “cooked” by the iPhone 14 Pro, but on the other hand, I’m not downright disappointed either. In short, I see it as one of the many evolutionary steps we’ve witnessed over the years. However, it seems to me that this time the step is a lot less than it was, for example, last year with the iPhone 13 Pro, because with those, I felt they brought many more things to ordinary people.
However, 48MPx RAW is not for everyone, Dynamic Island is quite questionable, and only time will show its potential. Always-on is appealing, but for now, we can talk about it in the same way as Dynamic Island — that time will show its potential. The unfinishedness of the island and, from a certain point of view, its meaninglessness strikes me, and I am somewhat disappointed with it.
I often feel that the cutout obscures something I need to see. The isle hasn’t solved that in any way. The time lag for shooting in RAW surprises me. This is because I would understand shooting in RAW as a process where I save the raw data and do nothing, whereas conventional shooting requires incomparably more steps before I get the final image. Who knows what’s behind that, but I don’t need to worry about it anyway because I don’t care about RAW. I haven’t even used it in a camera I’ve had for about 20 years.
And here, those “pseudo 48 MPix” from a sensor that always contains quads of identical cells, I consider that a very cheated 48 MPix, so it’s not worth my bothering about. I think better quality results could be achieved using 12 million more giant cells on that new larger chip than the current 48 million small cells.
But we’ll never know. And it is with the size, or perhaps more accurately the smallness, of this year’s evolutionary step forward that the question of who this iPhone is for constantly boggles my mind. If you are interested in photos and videos, you can find many on the internet.
If it costs the same as last year, I’d probably say it’s actually for all existing iPhone owners, as its price is still entirely justifiable given what it delivers. When upgrading from a year-old iPhone to the 14 Pro (Max), your wallet won't get too bogged down. However, considering how much the new features cost, I have to be completely honest. I would only recommend upgrading from the 13 Pro to heartthrobs or people who can appreciate the new features.
In the case of older models, I’d have a lot of second thoughts about whether the elements of 14 Pro make sense for me or whether I’d get by with the still-great iPhone 13 Pro (Max). I’m a heartthrob, but I’ll be honest and admit that I wasn’t so impressed with the new 14 Pro iPhones that I could justify their price to myself (inflation notwithstanding), so I made the switch from the 13 Pro Max to the 14 Pro, and only to get the new iPhone as cheaply as possible.
So reason has played perhaps the most significant role in my purchase this year in the last few years. In conclusion, I can only say that I am happy that due to some oversight, my order for the iPhone 14 Pro Max was cancelled because if I had bought it, I would have regretted that it did not bring me anything so revolutionary.
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