The newest iPhone is a pleasant step up — for those who want one

My private cellphone is the iPhone 13 Professional Max. For me, it is the right cellphone — it is quick and has an enormous display and nice cameras.

When Apple launched its new iPhone 14 fashions in September, I used to be curious to see how it could enhance on final 12 months’s telephones.

The brand new telephones look similar to final 12 months’s, however as standard, there are some good updates inside.

Apple despatched me an iPhone 14 Professional for this assessment, and it was fascinating shifting again to a smaller cellphone.

4 fashions

As a reminder, Apple has 4 new iPhone fashions: the 6.1-inch iPhone 14, the 6.7-inch iPhone 14 Plus and the 2 professional fashions, the 6.1-inch iPhone 14 Professional and 6.7-inch iPhone Professional Max.

The options and specs I am writing about listed here are for the 14 Professional and 14 Professional Max. The Professional iPhones are the identical aside from the display dimension and battery dimension.

The iPhone 14 fashions don’t use a bodily SIM card; they use an eSIM, which is a digital SIM card. Often, I simply pop my SIM card into a brand new cellphone and I am able to go. This time I needed to switch my quantity from my SIM card to the eSIM within the iPhone 14 Professional, which deactivates the outdated SIM card. I suppose I will need to get a brand new SIM card from my supplier when my testing is completed.

The 14 Professional has an always-on show, which is an adjustment for me. I am not used to seeing my cellphone’s display on on a regular basis. It feels prefer it’s losing battery life, however the brand new adaptive refresh fee runs at simply 1 Hertz (refresh per second). The display can refresh at charges of from 10Hz to 120Hz, relying on the content material on the display. In the event you flip it face down, the show will flip off.

The OLED display can also be tremendous shiny, as much as 2,000 nits open air.

Dynamic Island

The 14 Professional fashions do not have the standard display notch for the front-facing cameras. As an alternative, Apple builders turned the notch right into a characteristic referred to as Dynamic Island that strikes the outdated notch opening down a couple of pixels down from the highest of the display. The opening now has rounded ends, and it expands to turn out to be a spot to indicate issues like incoming calls, quantity adjustments, music playback info and notifications. The island is even obtainable for app builders to make use of.

I downloaded a sports activities rating app that exhibits reside sport scores within the Dynamic Island.

It’s a distinctive answer to an space of ​​the display folks used to complain about.

The primary digicam on the 14 Professional has a 24-millimeter wide-angle lens with a 48-megapixel sensor. That is fairly an enchancment over final 12 months’s 12-megapixel digicam.

The opposite two cameras are the just like final 12 months — a 12-megapixel telephoto digicam nonetheless has a 3x optical zoom and the 12-megapixel ultra-wide digicam. All three cameras have new lenses and higher sensors for actually spectacular low-light pictures.

General, the cameras are among the many greatest I’ve ever used on a cellphone, however I hoped for extra telephoto zoom vary.

The selfie digicam has a 12-megapixel sensor, and pictures and Facetime calls look improbable.

Oh, and the digicam lenses are fairly a bit bigger than final 12 months, making the digicam bump extra pronounced. Including a case helps reduce wobbling once you set it down on a flat floor.

Emergency SOS satellite tv for pc messaging

In the event you’re out of cell vary and need assistance, the iPhone 14 fashions can now ship textual content messages by way of satellite tv for pc.

Earlier than you ship the message, the cellphone will ask you a couple of inquiries to assess the scenario, then present you which of them option to level the cellphone for the satellite tv for pc connection.

When related to the satellite tv for pc, the cellphone will routinely ship your info, together with location, medical ID (for those who created one within the cellphone’s settings) and your cellphone’s battery stage to a dispatcher.

You do not get to textual content your pals by way of satellite tv for pc, simply the emergency dispatch service.

You do need to be outdoors with a transparent view of the sky, and messages can take as much as a minute to ship and obtain.

The Emergency SOS service is free for 2 years.

You too can use the Discover My app to share your location by way of satellite tv for pc with people who find themselves allowed to see your location.

Crash detection

There’s a new excessive g-force accelerometer that may sense excessive accelerations or decelerations. This new sensor and a few others work collectively to find out whether or not you’ve been in a crash.

There are sensors that may measure sudden strain adjustments within the cabin, abrupt adjustments in route and the loud sounds of impression.

If the cellphone thinks you’ve got been in a crash, you may see a display asking whether or not you are OK. In the event you do not acknowledge that you’re OK, a name will probably be positioned to native emergency companies giving your location and informing them of a necessity for assist.

There have been some false crashes detected for the reason that introduction of the telephones, particularly on curler coasters. I am positive Apple will probably be tweaking the settings sooner or later.

specs

The iPhone 14 Professional runs the brand new A16 Bionic processor with a six-core processor, five-core graphics processor and a 16-core Neural Engine.

It has Face ID to unlock the cellphone and for Apple Pay.

It has mmWave and sub-6 5G, in addition to Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3.

I had no bother getting a full day trip of the battery. Apple does not launch the battery dimension, however it does say the 14 Professional’s battery can stand up to 23 hours of video playback or 75 hours of audio playback.

It has wi-fi charging, together with MagSafe. It’s able to quick charging as much as 50% in half-hour with a 20-watt charger (not included).

The telephones are dust- and water resistant (IP68). They are often dunked in water as much as 6 meters deep for as much as half-hour.

The 14 Professional fashions can be found in House Black, Silver, Gold and Deep Purple with storage starting from 128 gigabytes as much as 1 terabyte.

Is it for you?

Must you replace to the 14 Professional or Professional Max?

If in case you have an iPhone 11 or 12 mannequin and also you’re prepared for a brand new cellphone, I might completely advocate upgrading.

House owners of the iPhone 13 Professional fashions (together with me) have a tougher alternative.

The 14 Professional fashions are a pleasant step up, however there’s nothing unsuitable with my year-old iPhone 13 Professional Max — in actual fact, I am nonetheless paying for it.

Subsequent 12 months guarantees to be an fascinating one, because the European Union has handed a legislation mandating that each one telephones offered in Europe will need to have a USB-C port, which Apple has acknowledged will probably be included within the iPhone 15 fashions.

I am unable to wait to see whether or not the 2023 iPhones will probably be extra of a redesign somewhat than a characteristic bump.

Jim Rossman is a tech columnist for Tribune Information Service. He may be reached at [email protected].