This isn’t an upgrading year for many iPhone customers, particularly if you’re coming from a 12 or a 13. However, if you need a new iPhone right away and want the greatest smartphone available, the Pro is the way to go. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max include several unique Apple concepts that the ordinary 14 does not, such as “Dynamic Island,” a creative mash-up of hardware and software that converts the notch into a shape-shifting status indicator. A new high-resolution camera and an always-on display are also included.
The iPhone 14 Pro, which begins at $999, is the most advanced iPhone available right now. However, it is a bit of an early adopter special. There’s a lot that’s nice, but Apple has a lot of potential to fine-tune and enhance these features in the coming years. If you don’t want to spend a thousand dollars on the initial generation of a new design, consider the iPhone 13 from last year. The regular iPhone 14 is a minor update over the 13 and does not provide much more; the 13 is still available and begins at $699. Most people will prefer that, but the 14 Pro has a lot to offer as well.
The 14 Pro features a 6.1-inch display, while the Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display. Like last year, they’re also ProMotion displays with adjustable refresh rates of up to 120Hz for smooth scrolling and animations. An always-on display is new this year: when you lock your phone, the screen dims and enters a low-power mode, with frame rates as low as 1Hz, but the clock, widgets, and wallpaper stay visible. This allows you to check the time or see if you have any alerts without having to wake up the display.
The second new feature of the exhibit is, of course, Dynamic Island. The notch — the portion of the screen that contains the front-facing camera and Face ID sensors — has been transformed by Apple into a pill-shaped cutout that seems to grow dynamically to display system indications and alerts. It’s a convenient spot to view what your phone is doing, whether it’s playing music, delivering files through AirDrop, or navigating. It’s wonderful, but it’s something that Apple and third-party developers will continue to improve over the next several years and it is not something to upgrade for right now.
The 14 Pro also includes a new 48-megapixel primary camera with pixel binning for maximum light sensitivity and 12-megapixel pictures. The real-world enhancements are slight, with more fine detail in shadows and low light, but the changes compared to the iPhone 14’s normal 12-megapixel sensor are difficult to discern unless you look very carefully. The higher-resolution sensor also allows for a 2x telephoto mode, which is basically a 12-megapixel cut from the sensor’s center. It’s the new portrait mode default, and it seems like a comfortable compromise between the broad and 3x telephoto views that were previously the only choices on iPhones.
