iPhone 14: Not so far out after all
time for the iPhone 14. can’t wait to see what’s new oh no it looks just like the last one huh okay all right oh come on just the pro gets that the regular 14 doesn’t get it okay always on display that’s just the pro too I mean why even call it a 14 you can just call it a 13. that’s it all right foreign there’s not a whole lot to get excited about this phone later this fall apple will release a bigger version called the iPhone 14 plus which we’ll take a look at separately but
here we’re just looking at the standard iPhone 14 and it is extremely similar to the iPhone 13. in fact I’ll just tell you now that you certainly should not upgrade if you own a 13 and you can make a really good case for just buying an iPhone 13 and saving some money if you do need a new phone right now but there are some decent camera upgrades we can talk about both hardware and software there’s a bigger sensor in the main camera and upgraded selfie camera and some changes to image processing that are supposed to
help with low light performance let’s get into the hardware upgrades first compared to the iPhone 13 the 14’s 12 megapixel Main camera lens is a little faster F 1.5 compared to
well no Hardware changes to that one as for software Apple’s touting a new technology called photonic engine on the iPhone 14 that moves deep Fusion earlier in the image processing pipeline I can easily see the effects on the ultra wide camera in very low light photos look a lot less water colory than the 13. on the main camera I have a harder time seeing the difference low light photos do look a little better on the 14 if you look close but I think that’s more down to the faster lens and the sensor size increase the
camera can usually use a lower ISO to get the same exposure so images come out a little cleaner I don’t think photonic engine is as responsible for the improvements here as much as good old-fashioned physics the selfie camera is substantially better too again mostly because of better Hardware details look much cleaner I got a fairly sharp picture of myself on a moving fairy boat at Sunset while the iPhone 13 struggled even the processing looks a lot better here especially with the skin tones there’s also a new stabilization mode for video shooting called action mode that’s
designed to correct for more extreme movement than the standard mode you can use it up to 2.8 K resolution with HDR which is cool and it’s really smooth but I have two issues with it the first is that it needs a lot of light anything in moderate indoor lighting or lower looks pretty bad there’s a setting you can toggle to boost the modes low light capture at the expense of some stabilization but even with it enabled I still got a low light warning in dim situations I can’t really use it to film my toddler as
I chase him around the house which is kind of my primary form of exercise right now the second issue I have with action mode is that actually iPhone’s video stabilization is already pretty good I can see a difference when I look at footage shot side by side but I think for most people the regular stabilization mode will work just fine even if there is a bit of intense action also new is that you can shoot cinematic mode up to 4K now previously it was capped at HD resolution it looks okay too it’s still a little
weird but the 24p frame rate kind of helps it pass as more film-like footage a little better there’s no change to the other video modes they’re still slow motion time lapse and all the usual standard video recording options plus 10-bit Dolby vision this is one area where Apple can afford to stand still because the iPhone’s video is some of the best in the game so what exactly makes the 14 different from the 13 for one thing Apple thinks it could save your life there’s a new feature called crash detection thank you Google for pioneering that
one and it uses data from multiple sensors to detect when you’ve been in a car accident it’ll contact emergency services for you and your emergency contact we decided not to test that feature yet there’s also a new feature coming in November that will allow you to send an emergency message via satellite if you’re in an area without cell coverage the phone’s UI walks you through some questions to help First Responders understand your situation and it shows you where to point your phone to make contact with a satellite you can even see the satellite’s position changing
as it moves across the sky if the emergency services in your area don’t support text communication you’ll be messaging someone at one of Apple’s relay centers the service will cost extra though the 14 will come with two years free it’s pretty appealing to a quasi-serious hiker like me but I’m curious how much it’ll cost so we’ve got new emergency features but there’s one thing missing from the 14 that the 13 offers and that’s a physical SIM card slot for the models sold in the US apple is going all in on e-sim whether we like it
or not I didn’t have any trouble converting my physical Verizon sim on my iPhone 11 and loading it onto the 14 but things might get trickier if you’re switching from Android to iPhone ECM is kind of a polarizing topic it’s either anti-consumer or pro-consumer depending on who you talk to either way Apple adopting it will push a lot of other manufacturers to do the same so get comfortable with the idea of losing your physical SIM card sometime in the future even if you aren’t in Apple’s Garden so we’ve got slightly better cameras emergency features and
a non-existent SIM tray that’s basically the iPhone 14 right there it looks identical to the 13. it uses an a15 bionic chipset like last year but with one more GPU core and it still has a 6.1 inch standard 60 hertz refresh rate display which same storage options the same charging speeds you get the idea it’s good but that’s because the iPhone 13 was good and this is more or less an iPhone 13s for the really interesting new stuff you’ll have to step up to the iPhone 14 pro it has a new screen feature called the
dynamic Island a high-res camera sensor a really cool always on display that shows you your wallpaper none of that is here and it really feels like apple is putting more distance between the standard iPhone and the Pro Models this year there’s also the iPhone 14 plus which is coming in October now the standard iPhone will be available in the 6.7 inch size that’s historically been reserved for the Pro Series if there’s one thing that the great iPhone Mini experiment taught us is that people love big phones and the 14 plus is a very big iPhone
that’s relatively affordable it also comes with a bigger battery and apple says its battery life is the best of any iPhone a bigger screen and better battery those are the kinds of upgrades that a lot of people are looking for and it’ll probably appeal to plenty of people looking at the whole iPhone 14 lineup it also makes the standard iPhone 14 feel like even more of an afterthought especially while apple is still selling the iPhone 13 at a lower price with the Pro’s new display features and Next Generation camera it feels like kind of a
blueprint for the future of the iPhone well the regular 14 just feels like it’s stuck in the past Apple may have introduced it as far out but actually it’s pretty close to home thanks for watching that was the regular iPhone 14. if you haven’t already head over and watch the 14 pro review I know neilai and Becca have a lot to say about it there’s a ton of new stuff to talk about I’m just like a little jealous
