Zhidongxi (public account: zhidxcom)
text｜Moying
This year is the 16th year of the launch of iPhone. I believe that Apple's smartphone product series has accompanied many people through different stages and different lengths of journeys in life.
The longer the life cycle of a product is, is more friendly to old users, like an old friend that is constantly evolving; and for manufacturers, how to maintain continuous upgrades and bring freshness to old friends is a challenge.
▲ A brief history of the evolution of the sixteenth generation iPhone
Especially the iPhone 13 series launched by Apple in 2021 has been jokingly praised by users in terms of reviews based on the "13 fragrances" law. How can the iPhone 14 series surpass it? As the highest specification representative of the iPhone 14 series, 14 Pro/Pro Max has surpassed itself through upgrades in four core functional directions.
▲ Simple iPhone 14 Pro Max packaging
These four aspects are: 1. It has an extreme brightness of 2000 nits and an always-on screen introduced for the first time in the iPhone. 2. The "Smart Island" interactive interface brought about by the upgrade of bangs. 3. For the first time, the shooting system has upgraded the 12-megapixel main camera that has been used for 7 years to 48-megapixel. 4. Apple’s self-developed A-series chips have evolved to A16 and are manufactured using the most advanced 4nm process for the first time.
As the performance of smartphones continues to improve, in fact, the replacement cycle of many people has been continuously lengthened. Especially brand flagship models can be used for 2 to 3 years or even 3 to 4 years. By upgrading every generation, you can experience the accumulation of upgrades brought by manufacturers in the past two or three years. For example, my previous main phone was the previous generation iPhone 12 Pro. When I got the 14 Pro Max, I could not only experience the iPhone 14 These major upgrades of the Pro series can also be combined with the movie mode, high refresh rate, ultra-wide-angle macro and other functions added for the first time from the 13 series.
▲From iPhone 12 Pro to iPhone 14 Pro Max
As an old user who has upgraded from generation to generation and an old friend of the iPhone series, after using it for a period of time, I have more feelings about the iPhone 14 Pro series, and I would like to share it with you.
1. The iPhone introduced the always-on screen
display screen for the first time, which has been one of the key upgrades of iPhones in the past. From the size, resolution, brightness, display panel material, surface solidity, etc., all aspects have been upgraded in the past ten years.
This time, the iPhone 14 Pro has implemented an always-on display for the first time. In fact, this feature allows us to feel the reincarnation of technological development. The and Nokia mobile phones many years ago also support always-on display, but they are usually monochrome and can only display a simple text or pattern, such as the time and remaining power.
▲Screen-off display has always been a common feature on Nokia mobile phones in the early years
In fact, it is not uncommon for smart phones in the Android camp to always display content on the screen, but this time when Apple launched the "all-weather display function", it adopted a completely different technical path.
▲14 Pro Max all-weather display status screen-off process
To put it simply, the "AOD (Always On Display)" function implemented by ordinary Android phones uses the self-luminous characteristics of the OLED display. When the screen is turned off, only part of the pixels that you want to display are lit to achieve AOD.
Apple's path is to turn off the screen. After turning on the all-weather display function, the entire screen displays content. How to ensure power consumption and damage to the screen caused by long-term display? There are two key technologies involved behind the scenes. One is ProMotion controllable brush efficiency, which can reduce the screen brush efficiency to a minimum of 1Hz. The second is Apple's LEPO, which is Low Temperature Polysilicon Oxide display technology. This display technology is equivalent to adding a layer of oxide on the OLED panel of polycrystalline silicon display material LTPS to reduce the energy consumption of stimulating display pixels.
Therefore, turning on the always-on display will of course increase power consumption, but through this combination of technologies, Apple has achieved the best possible state of energy consumption and display experience. The experience is that when the 14 Pro screen switches to the screen-off display state, the entire screen display becomes darker than the normal display, as if it has transitioned to a darker dark mode. Whether it is text or patterns, the entire display becomes a completely integrated display effect. The advantage of
always-on display is that you can easily see the time and see if there are any new important notifications with just a glance. I also found a detail that when listening to music, the lyrics will be scrolled when the screen is off, and the brightness of the lyrics display area seems to be the same as the brightness of the normal display, while the surrounding display brightness is darker when the screen is off.
On the other hand, it can be said that the all-weather display of the iPhone 14 Pro series is paired with the new desktop design of iOS 16 with richer display content and customizable content, which makes this technology more practical. Of course, if you feel that "all-weather display" is not strictly necessary for you, you can also choose to turn it off in the settings to save a certain amount of power.
2. The magic touch of iOS interaction: Lingdong Island
I have to say that the Chinese translation of "Lingdong Island" is very clever. The new interactive logic of
has been controversial since its release. Those who praised it said it was a breakthrough of Apple's iOS UI design , which was very innovative and eclectic; those who criticized it believed that Smart Island was a cover-up to make up for the hollowing out of the iPhone's proactive camera and FaceID components.
▲The "pill" area of iPhone 14 Pro Max becomes a smart island
It seems that both statements have some truth, but for ordinary users, the most important thing is to use it smoothly and conveniently.
To be honest, based on my usage process, I did not deliberately pay attention to the existence of Smart Island and this "pill". Instead, the interactive logic brought by Smart Island gives different experiences at different times, such as when answering calls, recording the screen, wearing AirPods headphones or even plugging in the iPhone charging cable. In these daily operations, the prompt screen that pops up from Smart Island can give just the right prompts without affecting the content being displayed on the phone, which is very convenient.
So in terms of interaction logic, the value of Smart Island’s interactive UI is to expand the interaction level of iOS. The previous two core layers were the desktop/App layer, the drop-down control center or the notification layer. Now, a dynamic notification interaction layer is added to the desktop or App display layer, which greatly improves the ease of interaction.
▲Smart island animation when connected to AirPods
So following this logic, even if the iPhone and later models really achieve a complete full screen and hide FaceID and proactive photography, I believe Apple will still retain this set of smart island interaction layers.
3. Fully upgraded four-camera shooting system
I have always thought about a question before, how Apple will break through the 12-megapixel main camera that has been used for iPhones for 7 years. I didn’t expect Apple’s method to be like this: increasing the sensor area and significantly increasing the total pixels to 48 million. At the same time, the default for users is still 12-megapixel four-in-one, and 48-megapixel is a more professional choice.
According to this latest parameter specification, it should be said that the iPhone 14 Pro already has the foundation for 8K video shooting. It depends on when Apple will provide it.
▲14 Pro Max’s shooting module has been enlarged overall
▲iPhone 14 Pro Max shot the same scene at different focal lengths
▲iPhone 14 Pro Max shot the same scene at different focal lengths
It is obvious that Apple’s choice takes care of the experience of most users. Four pixels in one can obtain better image quality while retaining a smaller file size.
But having said that, after seven years, the main camera of the iPhone has been increased by 4 times. Who doesn’t want to use it more? During this period of time, what I did after taking 48-megapixel photos was like this: I kept zooming in, zooming in, and zooming in again.
▲The original image of the 48-megapixel main camera is reduced.
▲The original image of the 48-megapixel main camera is enlarged.
The more details brought by the 48-megapixel camera are really visible to the naked eye, especially when shooting large scenes with rich details. Of course, shooting portraits can also satisfy the habit of many traditional photography "equipment enthusiasts".
In fact, in addition to the largest 48-megapixel main camera upgrade, the iPhone's four-camera system (including the front camera) has also been upgraded in many aspects. For example, the front camera supports autofocus for the first time, so all four iPhone cameras support autofocus. The ultra-wide-angle sensor area has also been increased, and the main camera has been extended to double the focal length. This is a bit like Nokia's 808 camera.
▲14 Pro Max wide-angle macro
▲14 Pro Max night scene shooting comparison 12 Pro
Comparing the night scene shooting samples, we can see that the 14 Pro Max is sharper and more transparent from the details, and there are more details. This is due to the new function "Light Image Engine" introduced by Apple in the process of optimizing computational photography, which can improve the performance of low-light shooting; during the process of shooting the above sample, the 14 Pro Max's exposure time is nearly twice as short, one is about 2 seconds, and the other is about 1 second.
In addition to the four optical focal lengths, the 14 Pro Max also supports a maximum 15x digital zoom. The equivalent focal length exceeds 400mm, while the iPhone 12 Pro supports a maximum 10x digital zoom, with an equivalent focal length of approximately 270mm.
Below is the effect of the iPhone’s zoom span from the widest 0.5x focal length (equivalent to 13mm) to the most telephoto 15x digital zoom. Isn’t it exaggerated?
However, the 48-megapixel main camera also has a disadvantage, that is, the file size is too large. A 48-megapixel Apple RAW photo is basically between 50 and 100 MB, and it can take dozens of ordinary 12-megapixel photos.
strongly recommends that Apple either reduce the size of the Apple RAW format , or provide an option that can output 48 million pixels in a non-RAW format; the RAW format of the iPhone is transferred to the Mac computer in DNG format. You can right-click the mouse and select Convert the image to JPG. After I tried to convert an 84.7MB photo to JPG, the size was 13.4MB. If it can be converted to HEIC format, the file should be much smaller.
▲The file size of a photo can exceed 100MB
There are always two sides to everything. Although the AppleRaw format has a large file size, it does bring a lot of room for adjustment. For example, in the picture below, the exposure can be almost changed from night to day.
This is a picture taken by the iPhone 14 Pro Max front-facing autofocus.
4. Further evolution of self-developed chips
When Apple introduced its A-series chip products, it said it was "several generations" ahead of its peers, which is enough to show its confidence.
This upgrade of the A-series chips is not as large as the upgrades of previous generations. However, it still uses the 4nm process for the first time to increase the number of transistors per unit area, reaching an astonishing 16 billion. At the same time, combined with a 50% increase in memory bandwidth, the overall processor performance is improved and the energy consumption performance is optimized.
▲Main Features of the A16 Processor
has little significance in improving the performance of Apple's CPU. In fact, the running score is of little significance. It serves more applications. Whether it is the system's own high-pixel photography, movie and video mode, or the high-definition game experience, this improvement can be felt best.
Thanks to the improvement in performance and overall energy efficiency of the A16 chip, the battery life of the iPhone 14 Pro is quite good. In high-intensity daily work, the daily power consumption ratio is mainly in the 50% to 75% range, which means that one charge a day is definitely enough. If the intensity of use is not high, it is not a big problem for a day and a half.
5. One more surprise in the next-generation upgrade
In addition to the above four major upgrades, as an old user who has transitioned from the iPhone 12 Pro to the next-generation upgrade. I also feel some of the upgrades that have been added since the iPhone 13, such as the super wide-angle macro shooting function after supporting autofocus, the movie mode for video shooting, etc., as well as the 120Hz high refresh screen experience. Compared with the iPhone 12 series, these are upgrades that are easy to intuitively feel.
▲14 Pro Max ultra-wide-angle macro shot of RMB
I believe there are many iPhone users like me who upgrade after one, two or more generations. You will feel that upgrading is more worthwhile and you get more, right?
▲240fps slow motion recording of 14 Pro high refresh screen
Conclusion: Breaking the "13 fragrance" curse
Nowadays, smartphones have become all-weather, all-round digital equipment that we can't live without every day. The experience mentioned above is actually based on the functions that I focus on personally. What impressed me most is not the Smart Island, but another substantial upgrade of the shooting system. You will find that Apple is now constantly raising the definition of Pro-level shooting functions and performance. I feel that next year's iPhone 15 Pro series is likely to support 8K video shooting.
In addition, there are many new functions and new experiences to be explored. For example, the new car accident safety monitoring function is a design that may save lives in emergencies.
iPhone 14 Pro should be said to have broken the "13 fragrance" curse very well, achieved its own transcendence, and brought great upgrades in several key aspects such as photography, display, processor performance, and interactive experience.
At this time we may have to think again, what changes will iPhone 15 bring? Please believe that technology and other advancements are always faster than we can imagine, and more hard-core and fun technologies and experiences are added to this small screen that we can’t leave every day.
▲iPhone 14 Pro Max
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