Apple may prefer a good "bug word". The fashionable "r character" can be said to be the most popular and concerned. Words such as reduction, reuse, repair, and recycling. But one of Apple's most environmentally friendly practices to date is to repackage and resell old designs as new products after updates. Whether it is the iPhone SE model or the Macbook, it has been done time and time again.
New iPhone 14 is suitable for this type of product. It's just a little bit, though, as Apple has redesigned the internal structure to facilitate easier fixes and so on. Also, you do get a new camera and some other new features. Externally, though, the iPhone 14 is basically the same as the iPhone 13, and so is the core experience these devices offer. If Apple still uses the “s” model in its naming scheme, the iPhone 14 might be the iPhone 13s.
unboxing
Before we really dig into the iPhone 14 to see how different it is and possibly better, let's start with its retail packaging. Apple has basically created new standards for "minimum" accessory packs and will not suddenly become more generous in the department.
We have typical Apple events – the least in and out. Two-piece white cardboard boxes are very small in every dimension.
In the packaging box, you will find a relatively short 1 meter long USB Type-Ch to Lightning data cable, SIM card ejection tool.
design
From the appearance, the iPhone 14 is the same as the iPhone 13. It has the same diagonal 6.1-inch display and the exact same groove. Its general shape and curve are exactly the same, and its feels the same.
The dimensions of iPhone 14 are 46.7 x 71.5 x 7.8 mm , slightly thicker than iPhone 13, and the other dimensions are exactly the same. In fact, the two are so similar that most iPhone 13 cases, except for the most precisely cut cases, actually fit the iPhone 14. The new model weighs 72 grams , 2 grams lighter than its predecessor. Anyway, it still manages to fit in the slightly larger 279 mAh battery (an extra 39 mAh).
iPhone 14 is available in a variety of colors. Midnight is a black one used by Apple, and Starlight is the company’s signature silver-white tone. There are also available product red finishes, new blue shades and a brand new purple, slightly different from what we’ve seen before. Our review unit comes in Apple's gorgeous baby or sky blue.
Create quality
In terms of impeccable build quality, Apple has an excellent record. The iPhone 14 is no exception. Like its predecessor, it has a "glass sandwich" body with scratch-resistant ceramic shrouds on the front of the device, an unnamed piece of glass on the back, and an aluminum midframe that holds everything together.
IP68 Protection level is still valid. It promises that the phone will work properly after soaking in fresh water up to 6 meters long for 30 minutes. Not shabby at all.
Back to the analogy of "glass sandwich", it can be said that it has never been more suitable than the iPhone 14. Apple did not elaborate on its announcement demo, but did mention that the internal structure of the phone has been redesigned, from the iPhone 13 to the iPhone 14.
In fact, this redesign is very important and very important. While the iPhone 14 looks exactly the same as the iPhone 13 in appearance, inside, Apple has done some major rearrangements, essentially flipping the internal structure by 180 degrees.
In short, Apple engineers put in a lot of effort to make the iPhone 14 easier to fix than its predecessors. The rear glass panel has always been one of the hardest parts to replace for several generations of iPhones.On the iPhone 14, it no longer sticks tightly to the internal parts, but instead falls off as a separate part like a display (with a little heat and a little "encouragement"). This makes it super easy to replace.
As for the part about the internal structure being flipped - this means that things like the battery can be touched from the back of the phone instead of the front. The photo above is provided by IFIXIT and perfectly illustrates this change.
deserves credit – Apple has indeed spent a lot of effort redesigning the iPhone 14 to a large extent, not externally. Better and easier repairability is a great benefit for users and a good environmental protection measure.
However, it should be clear that the annoying practice of Apple requiring official software to activate various replacement parts remains and appears on iPhone 14. Some reports even indicate that the glass may need to be activated after replacement. So, Cupertino still maintains its suspicious practices, and its repairability is not all sunshine and roses. There is almost nothing particularly interesting about the controls on the
control and connecting to the
iPhone 14. The layout is a typical Apple design. On the right side of the phone is the power button. The top of the
iPhone 14 is empty, and there is no antenna on the aluminum middle frame.
has a typical Apple Lightning connector on the bottom. It's disappointing that even in 2022, it's still only wired via USB 2.0 (maximum 480 Mbps) data transfer and lacks fancy features like video output . However, it can output audio and also supports USB Power Delivery 2.0 for charging.
Speaking of the front of the iPhone 14, its main and immediately recognizable fixtures are still quite a gap. Unlike iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, Vanilla 14 does not get a new dynamic island. However, what the traditional notch has is a new and improved 12MP selfie camera, now equipped with autofocus. The
FaceID technology was also stuffed there and it is as useful as usual. It's lively and very accurate, and in our opinion, it makes up for the shortcomings of fingerprint scanners.
If you want to know, there is no notification LED on iPhone 14.
From our tests, it seems that there is a suitable proximity sensor on the board, but it is likely to be placed under the display.
Given that the two share the same Apple A15 bionic chipset, the iPhone 14 naturally has a lot in common with the iPhone 13 in terms of connectivity. This includes SA/NSA 5G connection, Wi-Fi 6, GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS and QZSS, NFC and Ultra-Wideband (UWB).
iPhone 14 adds some new features, such as Bluetooth 5.3, and more interesting - Satellite connections for SMS-based emergency communication when out of grid and network coverage.
The familiar hyperretinal XDR OLED display
iPhone 14 has the exact same, fairly compact 6.1-inch display diagonal as the iPhone 13. In fact, judging from some performance characteristics and the Apple brand, the two phones are likely to share the exact same panel. Apple sells it as Super Retina XDR OLED with a resolution of 170 x 2532 pixels , pixel density up to 60 ppi.
This is a really gorgeous panel that gets very bright. By maximizing the brightness slider, we managed to get 04 nits from it. This is very respectable and very useful outdoors. Apple promotes the peak brightness of 200 nits , which is also technically correct, but can only be achieved if a small portion of the OLED panel is lit up.
However, it is worth noting that, like its predecessor, the iPhone 14 does not have any maximum automatic brightness mode, which cannot make it exceed the brightness that the slider can achieve. This feature is still reserved for Pro models. It is also worth noting that the monitor has very low minimum brightness and is very suitable for nighttime use.
In terms of color accuracy, iPhone 14 targets the sRGB color space in most applications, including the applications we use for testing purposes. The color accuracy of this panel is incredible. Absolutely good enough for color-sensitive jobs. The display of
iPhone 14 has also passed the HDR10 and Dolby Vision certification. As you might expect, this phone has all the necessary DRM certifications, allowing HDR streaming to be provided by third-party services such as Netflix or YouTube.
charging speed
Apple has not really announced the maximum charging power of their phones. However, compared to last year's iPhone 13, the maximum power of the iPhone 14 during the charging cycle should reach around 23W watts. So we paired it with an Apple 25W charger, which is purchased separately of course.
Apple iOS 16
All new iPhones come with Apple's iOS 16 out of the box. As usual, this is not a breakthrough update for iOS 15, but it does improve on lock screen, notification management, messaging apps, and privacy options. Moreover, in a typical Apple way, some features are left to be used later.
Now let's take a closer look at iOS 16 for iPhone 14 Pro. Its interface is still based on the home screen filled with apps and widgets, an app library for less important applications, and a notification and control center. The lock screen on
iOS 16 is the first thing to be overhauled, although it still follows the same logic – it is a lock screen with a notification center that contains your notifications (with privacy options available), as well as shortcuts for flashlights and cameras. For the first time ever there is also an always-on option, but it is only available on iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. If you have selected Security Unlock, you can cross the lock screen with your Face ID or PIN.
You can customize your lock screen by picking some cool wallpapers and adding a line of widgets (up to four). However, there can't be more than one row of widgets. Cleverly, you can build several different lock screens and switch them on the go (tap and hold, then slide). This way, you can easily change the appearance of the home screen/notification center anytime, anywhere, depending on your mood or work.
Comprehensive benchmark
iPhone 14 inherits Apple's previous generation A15 bionic chipset. Specifically, it is a "higher layer" variant with five GPU cores, as seen in the iPhone 13 Pro model. Therefore, we can expect a slight improvement in graphics performance for the iPhone 13 and its four GPU cores.
In the CPU section, the 5nm A15 Bionic has a six-core (2x3.23 GHz Avalanche + 4x1.82 GHz Blizzard) configuration - same as last year. Another difference between
iPhone 14 and iPhone 13 is RAM. The new model has 6GB of RAM, not 4GB. This should help with liquidity and keep the application alive in the background. So, physically, the iPhone 14 might be a copy of the iPhone 13, but internally it was borrowed from the iPhone 13 Pro. While you don't get the latest and best A16 Bionic, this is still a nice little episode on the hardware.
Although it is a bit old, A15 Bionic is still a very powerful chip. It performed well in CPU tests, second only to the A16 Bionic.
upgraded main camera and new autofocus selfie camera
iPhone 14 has a pair of cameras on the back. Neither of them seems new.In this case, main 12MP camera seems to have been removed from the iPhone 13 Pro. This means that it has a brighter f/1.5 aperture and a larger 1.9m pixel compared to the iPhone 13. So, the brighter sensor overall is probably comparable to the iPhone 13 Pro.
then 2MP ultra-wide-angle camera with 120 degree field of view and f/2.4 aperture. It seems to be the same as the ultrawide screen on the Vanilla iPhone 13, so we expect similar performance.
However, it is not necessarily the same, because Apple has prepared a new processing pipeline for the iPhone 14 generation. It is called photon engine . This is just a fancy name for Apple's latest HDR stacking technology. The old version was once called Deep Fusion. By contrast, the photon engine combines more images into one and uses uncompressed images during the merge process.
2MP Selfie Camera can be said to be the biggest innovation in the original iPhone camera setup, as it adds phase detection autofocus - a feature previously reserved for Pro models. Any of you video bloggers or “TikTok-ers” should be happy.
Camera Application and Functions
Since iOS 13 and iPhone 11, the viewfinder has been basically the same - thanks to the precise calibration of the two cameras, you can see what is outside the viewfinder and what is outside the frame in real time.
Apple Image processing includes all traditional features such as smart HDR, night mode on all cameras, and now photon engines.
When a low-light scene appears, the night mode icon will automatically pop up and a pseudo-long exposure shooting will be performed - of course, all are handheld. You will see the recommended number of seconds next to the Night Mode icon, but if you click on it you can change the long exposure of the simulated or disable it altogether. Typically it is between 1 and 2 seconds, but sometimes the phone allows you to last up to 30 seconds depending on ambient light or lack of ambient light. You can use this mode on your home screen, ultra-wide screen, or even on your selfie snapper.
As usual, all cameras communicate with each other, so when you switch between them, they already know the correct exposure and tone mapping settings. This works for still images and videos. The camera interface has basically not changed. You can swipe between modes and you can discover some settings by swiping up - flash, night mode, live photos, photo aspects, exposure compensation and filters. In video mode, you can change the resolution and frame rate from the viewfinder . Part of the charm of
iPhone 14 is definitely its size. Since there is no current "mini", it is the smallest iPhone in this generation. In fact, even its size is hard to get in the Android space, where the display diagonal has been growing steadily. Nevertheless, there are some viable options to consider.
iPhone 14 has undergone a major internal redesign to make it easier to repair, especially the rear panel or display replacement is now less painful. The iPhone 14's battery pack is only slightly larger, but the battery life is significantly longer and the charging speed is faster. The chipset is last year’s A15 Bionic, but has five GPU cores, 6GB of RAM (up 50%), Bluetooth 5.3, a more energy-efficient Qualcomm 5G modem, new satellite connectivity for SOS messages and new collision detection. The camera department has a new, larger 12MP main camera with a 1/1.65-inch sensor, 1.9 micron pixels, a new 12MP ultra-wide and a new 12MP, f/1.9 selfie camera now with autofocus. There are also new action mode video stability, 4K movie mode at 30 fps and a new photon engine for better low-light photos.
