A Beginner’s Review of the iPhone 14
Partly due to a failing, spluttering phone and partly due to peer pressure, I decided to switch over to the dark side… and get an iPhone! Unfortunately as this was an urgent issue I wasn’t able to wait until the release of the iPhone 15 and had to settle with the basic 14. However, given my previous circumstances this was still a major upgrade. What were my circumstances you ask?
I bought my Oneplus 6T in 2018, and back then it truly was a sight to behold. On-screen fingerprint sensor, edge-to-edge OLED display, super fast charging, all at a price that didn’t require you to lose a kidney. 5 years after however, having its display and ports replaced, it was quite a sluggish and sometimes unreliable device.
It was indeed for this reliability and smoothness that I looked towards Apple for comfort. In this article I will talk about some specifications of the iPhone 14, what I like, what I don’t, and what I look forward to exploring further.
Basic specifications and selling points
Processors
The Apple A15 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit six-core CPU implementing ARMv8 with two high-performance cores called Avalanche running at 3.24 GHz and four energy-efficient cores called Blizzard running at 2.01 GHz. It includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine. The Neural Engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second.
Why does the iPhone have a Neural engine?
Apple Neural Engine is a marketing name for a cluster of highly specialized compute cores optimized for the energy-efficient execution of deep neural networks on Apple devices. It accelerates machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, offering tremendous speed, memory, and power advantages over the main CPU or GPU. ANE is a big part of why the latest iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Apple TVs are responsive and don’t get hot during heavy ML and AI computations.
Display
The iPhone 14 has a 6.1 inch (diagonal) OLED display with a resolution of 2532x1170 pixels at pixel density of 460 ppi. The typical brightness is about 800 nits (nits is a unit of measurement of brightness which is one candela per square meter [1]), while the peak brightness is 1200. What’s the difference? Well, typical brightness refers to the level of brightness when using a smartphone in a general environment, such as indoors, while peak brightness refers to the level of brightness when using a smartphone in an extremely bright environment, such as a sunny outdoor environment.
Battery
The iPhone 14 has a 3279 mAh Lithium ion battery that can provide up to 20 hours of video playback, 16 hours of streaming video playback, and 80 hours of audio playback. In most battery tests the iphone 14 seemed to outperform its counterparts, the Galaxy S22 and the Pixel 7[2]
Camera
The phone has one front-facing camera (12MP f/1.9), and two back-facing cameras: a wide (12MP f/1.5) and ultra-wide (12MP f/2.4) camera. The cameras also use Apple’s computational photography engine called Smart HDR 4, which can improve colour, contrast and lighting in photos. This latest engine can recognise up to four different people in a scene and can optimize the skin tone for each person, making the scene and the subjects look more natural. This is essentially an improved version of standard HDR, with AI that can better determine the dynamic range in an image to create the best shot for iPhone users. [3]
Strangely enough, the front facing camera now having an auto-focus is a point worthy of note, but that’s a trend we’ve been seeing in Apple products recently, of introducing common features quite late into the game.
What I like!
Fair warning: many of the points are from the perspective of a person new to iOS, so while these may not be new to the iPhone 14, I am experiencing them for the first time. I think the first thing my friend told me as she peer pressu- *ahem* I mean, convinced me to consider an iphone was that if I didn’t have iMessage I would be an outcast. No one wants to message green bubbles!!!
While things with iMessage never got that bad and I still made friends before getting an iPhone, I do like how iMessage looks and feels. Silly features like Message effects, stickers, and memojis are pretty fun to play around with. Ironically, since most of my friends are international students anyway I actually don’t end up using iMessage too much.
Other aspects of iPhones that I had heard quite a lot of praise for was the software hardware integration. Having cameras being used to their full extent within apps and the ease of access between apps really add to a super smooth experience. Experience has really carried the phone for me, and I do appreciate the minor animations and overall smoothness.
One thing that was completely unexpected was the stereo speakers. I do often watch YouTube videos on my phone, and discovering this feature was quite amusing. I think it definitely improves the experience enough that I would actively watch videos on speaker, at least when I’m in my room not disturbing anybody.
While iPhone cameras are always the selling point of these phones, I was still caught off-guard by some of its features. The video stabilization is incredible, especially with the Action mode. It was designed to capture smooth-looking video that adjusts to significant shakes, motion, and vibrations, even when video is being captured in the middle of the action. It uses the full camera sensor with more over scan and advanced roll correction to achieve this effect.
Another feature I appreciate that ties into the camera is FaceID. I was quite surprised that it works in extremely low light conditions as well, and so far the recognition itself has had no reason to disappoint, even at odd angles. That being said, my earlier phone would automatically unlock and move to the home screen after detecting a face, so it did take time getting used to having to swipe up even after unlocking the phone.
The image processing is also really good, with one of my all time favorite features is being able to cut out subjects and objects from photos. Not only does this make it extremely easy to make stickers out of funny photos, but a friend of mine showed me a neat trick of coping and pasting them on Instagram to create amazing collages. My instagram stories have never been the same since.
One of the iOS features I have started using more often is the Focus modes, and having schedules for them has been incredibly helpful. I also really appreciate the customizability of the lock screens and being able to set specific lock screens for specific focus modes, which is not an appreciation that extends into the home screens unfortunately.
What I Don’t Like
Considering my previous points, it baffles me why iOS still doesn’t allow completely customizable home screens. I like arranging my app screens a certain way and it’s really frustrating that I’m not allowed to do that. Meanwhile MacOS has the most frustrating organization of icons with absolutely no rules at all?? I will never know why this simple thing is a hill Apple chooses to die on.
I think my biggest gripes so far are ecosystem issues, and along with app sorting there is a fundamental problem with Apple and it is onboarding. In an effort to set itself apart from other Operating systems and ecosystems it has made itself quite convoluted for certain tasks. Saving photos, downloading documents and figuring out where certain options are has been frustrating at times. I believe that the system designers assume that people are used to apple ecosystems and workflows, and hence the onboarding process needs improvement.
Speaking of the ecosystem, I do understand why people invest in Apple peripherals as it seems like it really pushes you to use accessories like the Apple Watch and Airpods. While it is definitely a satisfying experience to use these accessories, I don’t see myself investing in them in the near future, or even without considering better alternatives.
A minor downside of the image processing I mentioned earlier, is that sometimes the HDR makes certain photos look like they were photoshopped. Subjects look like they were artificially placed in the image because of the altered lighting that the processing applies to subjects, which creates an artificial looking edge around the subject. This doesn’t happen too often, but it is quite uncanny when it does.
What I’m Looking Forward to
Shortcuts
I think a big part of what I’d love for onboarding to do is to show me apps and settings unique to iOS. One default app that I stumbled onto by mistake is the Shortcuts app. I don’t think I ever expected an app that allows you to essentially program custom functions for the iPhone. I’m yet to fully understand what’s possible and find niche use cases for it but I definitely see myself using this feature soon. It’s also a great addition for setting custom accessibility shortcuts for anyone that needs it. Overall, I’m quite excited to watch some tutorials on how to optimize my experience.
Camera Usage
While the iPhone camera has been great to explore so far, I haven’t had the chance to actually try filming something cinematic with the iPhone. One of the first short films I had ever made was shot completely on my Oneplus 6T (link to watch it if you’re interested), so it would be fun to go back and try to make a film with the iPhone 14 and test its cinematic capabilities. After all, they did push the Shot on iPhone ad campaign a lot!
Siri
I’m not used to having Siri assist me in my day to day activities, and I do think it can be quite odd to talk to Siri when I’m in public surrounded by people, which is why I haven’t had the chance to make much use of it. Asking Siri for the weather instead of quickly going to the widget myself might take more training on my part, but combined with the Shortcuts I do think there’s a lot of potential for it to become a major part of how I use my phone daily.
