Apple Unveils iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max With Always-On Display, 48MP Camera, A16 Bionic SoC

What happened now? Apple just wrapped up its annual fall hardware event where it unveiled the new iPhone 14 lineup. As in years past, the new phone family is divided into core offerings and pro-level solutions. The latter tends to offer premium amenities like better cameras and more storage for a higher price, and the same is true this time around.

iphone 14 pro features a 6.1-inch OLED display (2556 x 1179 pixels, 460 ppi) while the larger iPhone 14 Pro Max features a 6.7-inch OLED panel (2796 x 1290 pixels, 460 ppi) ). Both models use stainless steel edges with a textured frosted glass back and a front ceramic protective coating.

In terms of specs, both offer 1,000 nits of typical peak brightness, 1,600 nits of HDR peak brightness, and up to 2,000 nits of peak outdoor brightness. They also use Apple’s ProMotion technology, which can automatically adjust the screen refresh rate from 1Hz to 120Hz depending on what’s being displayed, either to conserve battery life or for maximum fluidity.

New for 2022 is the always-on display, where the time, widgets, and other real-time activities are available at a glance. The notch is now a Dynamic Island, a software-driven interface that combines notifications, alerts, and actions into a single, fluid space that adapts based on the background activity using it.

Apple has also redesigned the TrueDepth camera, making it 31 percent smaller to take up less space on the display.

At the heart of the iPhone 14 Pro series is the new A16 Bionic with a six-core GPU (two high-performance cores, four efficient cores) that Apple claims is 40 percent faster than the competition. It is built on a 4nm process and contains nearly 16 billion transistors. At the same time, the five-core GPU has 50% more memory bandwidth than before, and the new 16-core neural engine can perform almost 17 trillion operations per second.

Notably, the A16 Bionic is only available in the Pro line. The standard iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus come with last year’s A15 Bionic processor.

The rear-facing Pro camera system on the phones consists of a 48-megapixel quad-pixel main camera that sits behind a seven-element f/1.78 aperture lens. There’s also a 12-megapixel 13mm ultra-wide-angle camera with a 120-degree field of view and af/2.2 aperture, a six-element lens, and a 12-megapixel 77mm f/2.8 telephoto lens with six lenses. -element lens with 3x optical zoom.

Apple is also touting a “fourth” camera, a 12-megapixel telephoto lens with 2x zoom, which can be used by cropping the quad-pixel sensor. The redesigned True Tone flash now features an array of nine LEDs that change pattern based on the focal length used for optimal results. A sapphire glass lens coating protects the rear elements.

On the front is a new 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera with f/1.9 aperture, a six-element lens that uses autofocus for the first time.

The new iPhone 14 Pro models also support Apple’s emergency SOS via satellite. Launched in November and free for the first two years, the service will use Earth-orbiting satellites to send emergency messages outside of cell or Wi-Fi coverage. This feature can also be used to manually share your location with Find My to provide a sense of security while hiking or camping offline.

Apple was expected to introduce this feature last year with the iPhone 13, but it never came to fruition. T-Mobile and Starlink jointly announced a similar feature just a couple of weeks ago.

Another new safety-focused feature is collision detection based on a dual-core accelerometer and wide dynamic range gyroscope for g-force detection up to 256G. Combined with existing components such as a barometer and microphones, this feature can detect an accident and automatically call emergency services on your behalf.

Battery life is rated for 23 hours of video playback on iPhone 14 Pro and up to 29 hours on iPhone 14 Pro Max. Both support fast charging and can get a 50 percent charge in about 30 minutes, and are IP68 rated against dust and liquids.

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are getting more expensive pre order September 9 to go on sale September 16. Pricing starts at $999 for the iPhone 14 Pro and $1,099 for the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the entry-level 128GB storage option. Each is offered in black, silver, gold, or purple color options with optional storage options of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.