The reviews for the new iPhones are out, and I’m not surprised that the greatest whoosh is virtually the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. It’s worth digging into each of these reviews to get each author’s full take on the new iPhones, but here are a handful of observations that I thought were particularly interesting.
Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge explains how the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s Dynamic Island works:
Apple’s built a new dynamic subpixel antialiasing system that makes the edges of the island up to three times crisper than all the other animations in iOS, which antialias at the pixel level. In normal room lighting, this really works: it feels like the cutout on the exhibit is getting worthier and smaller, and the animations are really fun. (In sunlight or brighter light, you can see the camera sensors, and the illusion goes away, but it’s still cool.)
Patel is moreover intrigued by the new ideas Apple is experimenting with in the iPhone 14 Pro:
The iPhone 14 Pro, on the other hand, is the well-spoken whence of lots of new ideas, like the Dynamic Island, the new camera, and that satellite connectivity system. Because these ideas are new, they’re inherently incomplete. But they’re worth criticizing, which is its own kind of victory and a sign that Apple isn’t holding still with the future of the iPhone. I think we could all stand to think increasingly tightly well-nigh how our smartphones work, and things like the Dynamic Island are vestige that Apple is still thinking tightly well-nigh parts of the iPhone experience.
Allison Johnson wrote a review of the iPhone 14 for The Verge and concluded that its request is going to be limited if you have a increasingly recent model iPhone:
Most people should consider other options, but there is an treatise for the iPhone 14 if you meet a narrow set of criteria: you’re on an iPhone 12 or older, you really want the satellite SOS feature, you prefer a 6.1-inch screen size (it is, without all, the right one), you want the weightier camera quality at this price point, you just need a new phone right now, and your carrier is offering a sweet trade-in deal. For this particular set of circumstances, the iPhone 14 will suit you just fine. Otherwise, it’s well worth taking a squint at your other options.
Joanna Stern’s story for The Wall Street Journal explains that Apple is doing increasingly than just offering largest cameras to entice consumers to move up to the Pro models this year:
The Pro upgrade used to be well-nigh the third camera with the telephoto lens. That still matters, but now so does the new multitasking capabilities and a screen you don’t have to alimony tapping.
C. Low, writing for Engadget, has a similar take but moreover feels that Emergency SOS may vamp some buyers:
From the outside, the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max don’t squint dramatically variegated from their predecessors, whispered from the Dynamic Island. But thanks to the Always On Exhibit and crisis-preparedness features like crash detection and Emergency SOS, the iPhone 14 Pros finger potentially increasingly useful in unforeseen circumstances. Sure, the camera updates finger less significant than I expected. But anyone upgrading from an older phone will fathom what Apple has to offer.
Finally, Matthew Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch, shares his first impressions of the new iPhones, including these details well-nigh the Always-On display:
The new A16 worthiness to ramp the exhibit lanugo to 1Hz lets them leave the screen on without materially well-expressed shower life but by nature you will likely get a small value of uneaten life by leaving it off. Some other interesting side effects of the refresh rate dropping lanugo to sub 1 second is that any timers you have running will show only to the minute while the exhibit is in ‘off’ mode unless the timer has less than 2 minutes left, in which specimen it will ramp when up unbearable to show you that the seconds are ticking away.
Panzarino moreover takes an in-depth squint at some of the changes enabled by the Photonic Engine:
Driving improvements wideness the model lineup is a new image pipeline Apple is referring to as the Photonic Engine. The big revelation here is that Apple is taking the raw captures – 4 main frames and 2-3 secondary frames – from the sensor and doing its combination work on them through Deep Fusion surpassing it does any adjustments including de-mosaic, noise reduction and verisimilitude correction.
By interpolating the images older in the pipe, the ISP can work on these bigger, increasingly information rich 16-bit RAW exposures – permitting it to retain fine detail lanugo to the final 12MP JPEG.
Of course, there were many video reviews of the iPhone 14 line today too. I’ve placid some of my favorites below:
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