iPhone 14 Pro after 3.5 months

The buzz and over-excitement shrouding the new iPhones have died out and this is when we can ACTUALLY get a good look at the phone and assess if it is as great as people's first impressions or is just an expensive piece of hardware that just blows a hole in your pocket. My sister recently got the 14 Pro for 1060$ after using her 8 Plus for 4.5 years. It was a humongous upgrade for her and her experience with the phone is going to give me an insight into what it's like to use the 14 Pro according to a non-techy normal person. Let's just understand here that while we geeks may obsess over every minuscule hardware change, it comes down to the normal people. The difference needs to be felt by them.

There is no point in putting enthusiast features in a phone if 99% of the users just are not going to notice at all from a company perspective. Normal people also do not upgrade their phones as often as tech enthusiasts do. So, when people upgrade from a 3 or 4-year-old phone, the difference needs to be better than just a simple battery and camera improvement. The 8 Plus was probably one of the worst iPhones ever to be launched. It was old hardware in front of the X and everyone knew that nobody was going to buy the 8 Plus because the X was a revolutionary device. Coming from a phone with a chunky chin and head, my sister was blown away by the ultra-thin bezels and all-screen display of the 14 Pro.

The phone has an incredible 6.1-inch display that is larger than the 8 Plus's but the overall phone is a lot smaller. The display has a peak brightness of 2000 nits (automatic) and 1600 nits (manual). The iPhone 8 Plus had a peak brightness of 625 nits so naturally, the difference was conspicuous and apparent. The 14 Pro has the most color-accurate display in the business. The OLED display is sharp and has a 120-Hz refresh rate which feels very smooth to use. I bet one cannot go back to a 60-Hz phone after using a 120-Hz display. The Face ID works very fast and is the most secure in the industry.

The 8 Plus had a battery health of 78%. The battery was one of the biggest reasons to buy a new phone. The battery holds up pretty well. She is a college student so has to move a lot in the city. The 5G works well but I wish it had more range. The phone ends the day with 20-30% left after 4-5 hours of screen time which is pretty impressive but slightly worse than last year's Pro. Unless you are a Pro user like me, you would not be complaining about the battery life. One thing that bothers me a bit is the camera bump. If you think the 13 Pro had a big camera, you have the see the 14 Pro. The cameras are getting larger each year and the bump is more and more.

The phone rocks a lot on the table and I would not recommend using the phone without a case as then the camera would be the first point of contact which can potentially damage it. Even with a case on, the camera bump protrudes a lot and requires great care to keep it safe otherwise one may end up with a scratched or broken camera system. The camera is at least 4X better than the 8 Plus in every aspect and there is also an ultra-wide camera that was missing on the 8 Plus. The difference is night and day. The photos produced by the 14 Pro are consistent and do well to preserve skin tones. With the new 48MP camera and a much larger sensor, a lot more light enters the camera making low-light photography one of the best.

The camera overexposes a bit in harsh HDR conditions and there is still flaring but these are the only problems I have. The Macro mode is the best of any camera and cinematic mode, though not the best executed, is functionally sound. Video recording on the iPhone has been the best for over 5 years now and is great, especially for HDR videos. ProRaw photos can be captured using the 48MP camera but the files are too heavy for me to use it. You can shoot videos in ProRes but you would fill up the entire iPhone very quickly. 4.8/5 for the camera from my side. It could be better with nighttime sky photography. The phone does not get hot even under direct sunlight which was the case for the 8 Plus.

You cannot talk about the 14 Pro without talking about the Dynamic Island, baby. Dynamic Island is the perfect example of Apple's late-mover strategy. People had been pressing Apple for years to shrink the notch and they did but rather than it just being a hardware thing. They integrated a whole software around the pill cutout. They took what people thought was ugly and made it a functional part of the phone - one with which you can interact and one which is an integral part of the gestures. If you have the Pro Max, it is a bit hard to reach the Dynamic Island since it is all the way at the top but it is much more reachable in the 14 Pro. I think it can be defined as a multi-task panel on the top of the screen that also shows vital information at a glance. It takes a little bit of practice to get used to but is then easy as cake to use.

I can already imagine a lot of Android phones coming out with similar tech in the future, quite possibly 1+, Xiaomi, and Samsung. IOS 16 works very well on the 14 Pro and is smooth but I am noticing more bugs than usual on iPhones. There are minor software glitches but they hamper the experience, nonetheless. Software is Apple's backbone and I really hope they fix all the issues quickly to avoid any deterioration in consumer perception. I would recommend turning off the always-on display as it consumes more power than people expected and is too bright in my opinion. On a side note, I dig the black color this year. I am not so much of a man of the deep purple but the black is AWESOME!

The A16 chip is much faster than the A11 but since my sister does not do any editing or play games, the jump is not as drastic for her. It is just that all the hiccups and lagging have been eliminated. The touch and feel of the phone are also a lot different. It is thicker, heavier, shinier, and squarer. The frame is stainless steel as opposed to aluminum and the back glass is frosted instead of glossy. The camera housing is at least 6X bigger. Overall, the 14 Pro still feels fresh as new and my initial impressions about the phone still hold up pretty well even

today. Now is still a good time to buy the 14 Pro. If you are someone not loyal to Apple and don't mind jumping to Android, I would suggest waiting for a month or so for the S23 Series. I am sure Samsung will one-up Apple on everything. (This year was probably the first time Samsung copied features from Apple's iOS. It is nice to see once in a while how the tables have turned.) Email me what you guys think about the 14 Pro and if you have picked one up for yourself.

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