iPhone 14 Series: Rounding up!
It’s that time of the year, the iPhone family gets new siblings, new colors, and new features. People are anticipating, some to get their hands on it, and some to mock it. I will be summing up all the tips, leaks, and rumors just like I did last year for the iPhone 13 Series, and before that for the iPhone 12 Series. There’s so much to talk about.
Regarding adding new siblings to the family, one new variant will be filling up for the ‘Mini’ variant as it is being discontinued, which would be the ‘Plus/Max’ variant. (I’m calling shots on the ‘Plus’.)
Let’s start with the design.
Design
We’re ditching the notch, a big chunk of it at least. This drastic change will not contribute to the screen-to-body ratio much, but it definitely will be a visual change.
Mark Gurman, a credible tipster has backed the theory of Apple leveraging software to make it look unified. A pill design so that the ‘two-separated hole’ look doesn’t throw off the customers, and gives the developers the freedom to use it creatively, and in a productive manner.
Now that I think about it, the TrueDepth Camera system has come so far where once it needed that big notch to pack that hardware and now, this space is enough for the TrueDepth Camera to do its thing. Miniaturization is cool, man!
We still be seeing the boxy design being complemented by new colors. The cameras wouldn’t be changing places either.
Display
We’ve talked about the notch, but I would like to add one more thing, I think it’s pretty clean. The camera and microphone LED indicators will be moved to the void between the punch-hole and pill-shaped cut-out.
See! That’s a pretty neat way to use the space that otherwise would’ve been wasted.
All models will be flaunting the Super Retina XDR Display with Dolby Vision support protected by the Ceramic Shield and will be following the flat design. Apple might’ve improved the glass strength too.
Let’s talk numbers, there will be two models with a 6.1-inch display, namely, iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro, and the rest two models with a 6.7-inch display. The ProMotion Display will only be available to Pro members.
There’s one more thing that’s been requested so much, the Always-On Display. I was expecting it last year as all the models had OLED panels but I guess it wasn’t ready by Apple’s standard. I saw some samples and I think I know how it will work. So, your iPhone’s background will be inspected by the AI engine which will then figure out and separate the foreground/subject from the background and when the iPhone is idle, the background will fade away and a subtle amount of foreground will be shown.
I’m sure Apple will give us the options to customize the look for the AOD.
Camera
The highest megapixel count won’t be 13MP this time. We’re going big, guys! The ‘Pro Max’ and ‘Pro’ variants will be debuting with a 48MP wide lens, a better telephoto lens, and an improved Ultra-wide lens to complement these two. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also confirms that the telephoto lens will be using a 7-element lens to get a better image quality.
These improvements will result in better low-light shots across the three lenses. LiDAR will be exclusive to the ‘Pro’ models. I’m really curious as to how Apple will use the 48MP to its full capability. Oh, what if they introduce a whole new encoding format just to tackle the size problem while conserving all that information?
Apple will be using the pixel-binning technology (I’m sure they will have a witty, classy name for this too) to combine those 48MP shots to a storage healthy 12MP shots.
Talking of the ‘non-Pro’ models, while I’m sure that Apple must have improvements on the ISP(Image Signal Processing) and software front, there’s not much to talk about on the hardware front as everything’s the same. I wonder if the camera will stay diagonal though.
Up until now, iPhones could only do 4K 60fps with Dolby Vision encoding that too with OIS (Sensor-shift Stabilization in Apple’s terms.) That’s gonna change because we’re going twice that resolution this time, taking advantage of that big sensor. I’m hoping there’ll be some sort of stabilization mechanism for 8K video mode if not the ‘Sensor-Shift’ one
Performance
This is the area where Apple’s killing it, right? Like, they design chips that are way ahead of their time, and then the competition tries to catch up. Well, I’m pretty sure this time won’t be any different.
Every year, new iPhones debut with new, fast, improved SoC (system-on-chip). However, it seems that won’t be the case for the new iPhones now. While ‘Pro’ models will be present with A16 SoC, the non-Pro model, such as iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus will come with it, instead, they rock the same A15 Bionic with slight little improvements. Like earlier, the iPhone 13 came with a 4-core GPU variant of A15. Chances are a few more cores must’ve been added to the CPU, GPU, not forget, the Neural Engine, to add a little spice to the A15.
Just like the last year’s SoC, A16 will be following the 5nm process technology (backed by Apple analyst Kuo), but the number of transistors will be way over than what A15 Bionic has. To put it in numbers, over 15–20 Billion transistors. We are looking at a 15–20% CPU gain, while a whopping 30–40% GPU (yeah, that’s a massive jump), and a few more cores will be added to the Neural Engine giving it a significant amount of performance boost.
iOS 16
iPhone 14 Series will be coming with iOS 16 out of the box, and there is nothing wrong to say that it will be the most optimized for it.
This version of iOS brings many customization features with it. Like widgets for the lock screen, better and much improved Apple Maps, a Live Activities Section for the notifications, Photo sharing through a shared iCloud Library, and many more.
The new iPhones bring a few more features probably exclusive to them, the Astrophotography mode, Satellite connectivity, and more. I mean, that’s what Apple’s been teasing the launch event with the ‘Far Out’ title, right?
Battery
The battery life on the iPhone 13 ‘Pro’ series was ridiculously good. I mean, no other phone with that same battery size could give that same performance. They outdid themselves.
This time, we will be seeing an increase in the battery size across all models, and the already ‘ridiculously good’ battery will be getting even better. What I am interested in seeing is an adapter with better output. Till now, the best iPhones were getting was 20W, it should be 30W at least, right? And a slight bump in Wireless charging output won’t hurt either.
That’s been it for this story guy, hope this story was informative and enjoyable.
Peace. ✌🏻
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