Wednesday, September 7, 2022

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max

Apple (MacRumors, Slashdot):

The Dynamic Island enables new ways to interact with iPhone, featuring a design that blends the line between hardware and software, adapting in real time to show important alerts, notifications, and activities. With the introduction of the Dynamic Island, the TrueDepth camera has been redesigned to take up less of the display area. Without impeding content on the screen, the Dynamic Island maintains an active state to allow users easier access to controls with a simple tap-and-hold. Ongoing background activities like Maps, Music, or a timer remain visible and interactive, and third-party apps in iOS 16 that provide information like sports scores and ride-sharing with Live Activities can take advantage of the Dynamic Island.

[…]

For the first time ever, the Pro lineup features a new 48MP Main camera with a quad-pixel sensor that adapts to the photo being captured, and features second-generation sensor-shift optical image stabilization. For most photos, the quad-pixel sensor combines every four pixels into one large quad pixel equivalent to 2.44 µm, resulting in amazing low-light capture and keeping photo size at a practical 12MP. The quad-pixel sensor also enables a 2x Telephoto option that uses the middle 12 megapixels of the sensor for full-resolution photos and 4K videos with no digital zoom. This delivers optical quality at a familiar focal length, which is great for features like Portrait mode.

[…]

With two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, the new 6-core CPU is up to 40 percent faster than the competition and easily handles demanding workloads.

They are comparing the A16, not with the A15, but with an unspecified chip that’s slightly slower than the A13 from 2019.

Marco Arment:

They turned the notch into a feature. That’s damn-clever design.

ok Alan Dye you win this one

Collin Allen:

The iPhone 14 Pro notch/pill design and animations look outstanding. Embracing the limitation instead of just tolerating it.

Craig Hockenberry:

Whoa. Safe area hell.

John Siracusa:

“Dynamic Island” may be the strangest Apple name in several years (and that’s saying something).

John Gruber:

Last year the iPhones started at these prices (128 GB):

13 Mini: $700 (+$30 bullshit carrier fee)
13: $800 (+$30 bullshit carrier fee)
13 Pro: $1000
13 Pro Max: $1100

Previously:

Update (2022-09-08): Sami Fathi (tweet):

A Geekbench test result for iPhone15,3, the identifier for the iPhone 14 Pro, shows the new iPhone with a single-core score of 1879 and a multi-core score of 4664. The iPhone 13 Pro scores 1707 in single-core and 4659 in multi-core, only being marginally slower than the latest high-end iPhone.

Federico Viticci:

I knew the Dynamic Island animations had a familiar vibe...

Apple’s WWDC 2013 promo video and iPhone 14 Pro Dynamic Island. A decade apart.

Nick Heer:

Apple’s advice to developers was to, in effect, simply ignore the notch and pretend it does not exist. But then WWDC this year brought a brand new HIG and, while we were all distracted by its redesign, Apple subtly updated its layout guidance to remove restrictions on how to deal with sensor housings. Now, Apple simply advises designers and developers to “[r]espect key display and system features in each platform” by following its recommended safe areas.

Marco Arment:

iPhone 14 Pro display resolution is very slightly larger than 13 Pro:

13 Pro: 2532 x 1170
14 Pro: 2556 x 1179

Both are 460 PPI.

Jonathan Deutsch:

The screen size is 8 pixels taller but the dynamic island takes 20 pixels more than the notch, losing you 12px of effective height.

Ryan Jones:

The camera bump march of time continues.

  • iPhone 14 Pro bump is 4.18mm total
  • that’s over half the thickness of the phone body
  • including bump, the 14 Pro is thicker than original iPhone

Sami Fathi:

Apple says the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max weigh 7.27 ounces and 8.47 ounces, respectively, which is only slightly heavier than iPhone 13 Pro models.

Sami Fathi:

Since the iPhone 14 Pro is the first iPhone to include an always-on display, there are several unknowns about how the feature will work, what it will look like, whether it will be customizable, and how it will impact battery life. We answer those questions and more below about the new feature of Apple’s highest-end iPhone.

Update (2022-10-13): John Gruber (tweet):

This means that Dynamic Island isn’t just a cooler-looking presentation of a feature on other iPhones. It’s an entire incredibly useful interaction model and set of features that are exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. If this remains the case, I’d say that the Dynamic Island alone is a reason to upgrade to a 14 Pro, and a reason not to even consider buying the 14 or 14 Plus. Would I pay $200 — the price delta between the same-sized Pro and regular iPhone 14 models — just to get the Dynamic Island? Yes.

[…]

The second super interesting thing about the iPhones 14 Pro is the always-on display. It is really weird. Not weird because it’s a bad idea, but weird because battery life has always been, and remains, a precious resource to be conserved on smartphones. […] I’m still not sure what purpose it serves. (The answer, I suspect, is Live Activities, which aren’t shipping until iOS 16.1. Being able to see updates to a Live Activity on an always-on display sounds potentially useful.)

[…]

The A16 chip in the iPhones 14 Pro seems, in my decidedly non-rigorous testing, to be about 10-15 percent faster than the 5-core A15, both in CPU and GPU processing.

Jason Snell:

At present, however, I have to say that the always-on lock screen feels… inessential. It’s a nice idea, but I have yet to feel gratified that I was able to glance at my iPhone and see something without reaching for it. It displays the time nice and big, which would be great if I didn’t wear a watch or find myself surrounded by other gadgets that also can tell me the time. iOS 16’s move to roll notifications up into a tighter bundle and place them at the bottom of the screen is a great organizational choice, but it also eliminates the whole idea of just glancing to see what’s come in since the last time I checked.

Beyond the ability to stay on all the time, the iPhone 14 Pro’s display has been upgraded to be brighter. HDR content can now peak at 1600 nits, and as a result, that dynamic range is very much higher. It’s an impressive, high-contrast display that I notice every time I am looking at HDR photos or videos.

Nilay Patel:

At long last, Apple added an always-on display mode to the iPhone 14 Pro, which, well, Android phones have had always-on displays for a long time now. It’s fine! The display refresh rate drops to just one hertz, and the brightness goes extremely low to save battery life. Apple’s done some nice work to keep wallpaper colors accurate in the low-power always-on mode, but honestly, I would prefer a Pixel-style black and white clock to something that sort of looks like my phone is awake all the time. I hope we see some customization options here in the future.

Joe Rossignol:

[The] first reviews of the devices have now been shared by select media publications and YouTube channels.

Juli Clover:

An early benchmark for the A16 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max suggested only modest speed improvements, but an additional score uploaded to Geekbench today indicates that we could see a more significant jump in performance compared to the A15 chip.

Keith Harrison:

Here’s a recap of what’s changed with the 2022 iPhone 14 screen sizes.

Sami Fathi:

The always-on display on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max will intelligently and automatically turn off when a user leaves their iPhone in a room and walks out while wearing an Apple Watch.

Sami Fathi:

Apple is investigating a bug that may cause iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models to freeze after customers transfer their data from an older iPhone, the company said today in an internal memo obtained by MacRumors.

Joe Rossignol:

Following the launch of the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max last week, some early adopters of the devices said they have experienced an issue that prevents them from being heard at a suitable volume during phone calls initiated via CarPlay in a vehicle.

Sami Fathi:

iPhone 14 Pro customers on the Verizon network in the U.S. are reporting issues with slow and unreliable 5G cellular connections and calls randomly dropping.

M.G. Siegler:

I simply cannot believe Apple didn’t come up with some kind of new case for the iPhones 14 Pro that allowed you to lay it flat, as the lord intended.

M.G. Siegler:

Someone who is updating from a several year old iPhone will notice a great leap in speed and capability. Perhaps a brand new size if you’re getting an iPhone 14 Plus instead of say, an iPhone 12 Mini. But for those of us who have had each and every iteration of the device, it’s a new haircut. A nice one.

Quinn Nelson:

Apple needs to add a “disable always-on display while charging” mode cause the iPhone 14 Pro’s AOD is way too bright for the bedside table.

Benjamin Mayo:

It’s such an Apple simplification to show the exact same lock screen whether the phone is awake or not. It’s so similar that it is a stretch to even describe it as a “mode”. It’s just your lock screen, dimmed.

[…]

Of course, personal preference matters a lot here. Indeed, it’s never a good look when a significant portion of the initial embargoed reviews mentioned they turned off the feature entirely — arguably disabling one third of the Pro-exclusive features this generation — because they found the permanent aliveness of Apple’s always-on implementation too distracting. Some people simply prefer a simpler, muted, always-on state.

[…]

As I already said, I happen to like the feature as-is — but I don’t want the screen to shine brightly through the night whilst I’m trying to sleep, if only to avoid unnecessary battery drain. As of right now, the only way to get the screen to turn off at night is to use the Sleep Focus mode.

Joe Rossignol:

Apple’s new A16 Bionic chip in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max costs $110 to produce, making it over 2.4× as costly as the A15 chip in iPhone 13 Pro models released last year, according to a Nikkei Asia report.

Previously:

Update (2023-09-15): Dr. Drang:

Your ability to manipulate a phone is based primarily on its mass, but also on its moment of inertia. And since the reduction in mass when switching from stainless steel to titanium is occurring almost entirely at the perimeter of the phone, the moment of inertia should be reduced more than if the mass were reduced uniformly.

Wally Nowinski (via John Gruber):

Here’s the full chart of every iPhone's retail price in 2023 dollars.

Matt Birchler:

This year every single phone in the iPhone 15 lineup costs the same as the equivalent in last year’s lineup. The one difference is that the 128GB iPhone 15 Pro Max doesn’t exist.

[…]

My prediction (based on zero inside info) is that next year’s iPhone 16 Pro lineup will further this idea. I expect the iPhone 16 Pro will start at $1,099 with 256GB as the base storage, with upgrade options for 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. […] If they do this, they will effectively have pulled off the $100 price increase by removing the lower storage options, but keeping the prices for each storage tier the same. “We didn’t raise prices, we just gave you higher end storage options.”

7 Comments RSS · Twitter

Jeebus. The low Canadian dollar is not helping. Canadian prices of the iPhones is brutal.

Daniël de Kok

Same in the EU. The iPhone 13 price in The Netherlands is the same as… it’s introduction price.

Beatrix Willius

The description of the "Dynamic Island" sounds like 200% bullshit bingo.

So are those new interactive indication icons only för the pro? They're fracturing iOS even further?

Dynamic island has Touch Bar vibes - a software and hardware combo for a pro device that never gains support from 3rd party developers.

Seems slightly odd to me to have a feature that encourages people to touch the area of the screen that has the front camera below it.

Now with startup and shutdown sounds, so if you're blind you can turn your phone on and off reliably, all by yourself. Amazing. It's the second Pro-exclusive feature alongside lidar with the potential to help us, that's not on the standard models. Obviously, here in the UK, where the pricing is already quite astronomical, I decline to upgrade from my perfectly good iPhone 13 Pro Max.

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