It’s been 6 Months since I bought the iPhone 14
Pro and other than its Deep Purple Color and the new Dynamic Island,
It generally feels the same as my iPhone 13 Pro and that's certainly not a bad
thing. It's just getting harder for Apple to make every iPhone upgrade feel substantial.
So what do I like about the 14 Pro? First, the Dynamic Island. It's the best new feature of
this iPhone. Every time I use the Dynamic Island, one word comes to mind: context.
It gives you greater context for what's going on in the background of your phone.For example,
it’ll show you little album artwork and a waveform icon when listening to music,
and not just music on the iPhone itself, but if you’re playing music on a group of
AirPlay 2 speakers like HomePods, it’ll show that music as well.
The Dynamic Island, also, showcases Apple’s insane commitment to detail. tThe little waveform icon
you se is actually timed correctly to the media playing in the background and for phone calls,
they take this one step further by showing a green waveform timed to your voice and a
red waveform timed to the voice of the other person on the call.
Some other useful things the dynamic island shows are countdown timers,
the HomePod transfer icon, AirPod accessory connection and battery level information,
AirDrop, Find My notifications, and one of my absolute favorites, showing a phone
call I have going on, which gives me a clear place to tap and return to the ongoing call.
The Dynamic Island doesn't show you contextual information, but it also creates a persistent
shortcut that you can use to get back to the app running in the background.You can either
long press the Dynamic Island to bring up shortcut controls like to play/pause or
skip forward or skip back, or you can tap the Dynamic Island to go back into an app.
Another new thing you get with the iPhone 14 Pro is Emergency SOS and car crash detection.
And while thankfully I haven't had to use these features over the past six months. It
does give me peace of mind knowing that they're built into this phone. Car Crash detection uses
new hardware on the iPhone combined with software to detect when you’ve been in an
accident and automatically alert authorities if you don’t dismiss a notification on your phone.
Emergency SOS is a feature designed for when you need help from authorities and are somewhere
without cell service, like if you’re lost on a hike or need medical assistance. With this
feature your iPhone will use satellites to get a message out to the authorities.
Another new hardware feature with this iPhone, that I've really come
to actually enjoy is actually it's purple color and I know I've already,
already see the eye rolls. I can see them now. But having an exclusive color
each year does make the phone’s hardware feel a bit more distinct and more unique.
Even if it's purely, just an aesthetic change. Another thing I've really enjoyed with the iPhone
14 Pro is the 48 quad pixel sensor. The iPhone 14 Pro takes great photos and videos, though there
are some things I think Apple could improve that I’ll talk about in a sec, the two things the 48
quad-pixel sensor really gets you that I’ve really liked are better images in low light and you get
a full 48 megapixel large image that allows you to crop in way more when you use Apple Pro Raw.
Another feature I've really liked with this iPhone, though it's not necessarily unique to the
14 Pro, is its place within the Apple ecosystem. The iPhone continues to be the center of Apple's
universe. The new Gen 2 HomePods we recently did a video on, need an iPhone to do things
like set reminders, pick up phone calls or text someone. You need an iPhone for AirTags to work
which makes it easy to find my bag on a luggage carousel, after a flight. And it also makes it
easy to clear a dispute with somebody who accidentally picked up your bag thinking
it was theirs when you can clearly point your phone down to the bag and show them. I'm sorry.
Does your bag have my air tag in it? No, it does not. Please give me my bag back, sir.
My iPhone 14 Pro can easily pair to my AirPods Max, which remains my favorite pair of over
the ear headphones. Having an iPhone gets you iMessage, which here in the US is incredibly
popular. It also allows you to easily pick up where you leave off on your other Apple
devices and effortlessly transfer files between your iPhone, iPad, and Mac through AirDrop.
It also works seamlessly with my Apple Watch Series 8 which we’re also
reviewing which that tracks my fitness, sleep, shows me critical information,
and my favorite thing about it, gives me an easy way to control media playing on
my iPhone while I’m moving about my home listening to a Podcast.
And of course there's AirPlay. It’s one of the best things about having
an iPhone. AirPlay makes it easy to play audio to various speakers throughout my
home and control media easily through the Dynamic Island. Apple makes it also very
easy to AirPlay anything you’re seeing on your iPhone to a supported Display or TV.
A few more standout features for the 14 Pro for me include call quality, that's been excellent with
this phone, as it has been with previous iPhones I've used. the Pro line of iPhones continues to
get the Lidar, and while it’s not something I use every day, when I need to use one of iOS’
AR features like placing items in a room to view their size, the Lidar scanner helps the 14 Pro
do things like overlay real would subjects on top of virtual ones, which is very impressive.
Another piece of hardware the 14 Pro gets from previous phones is the telephoto camera,
which hasn’t felt like a significant improvement over the one in the 13 Pro, but nevertheless
I always think is worth having. So that's everything I've really liked about the 14 Pro.
Now, let's go through a few things that I'm a little bit more neutral on with this phone.
First is the always on display. This is another exclusive new
hardware feature with the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.
Because I always wear an Apple watch. I haven't really found the always on display
that helpful because of information like the time current weather conditions, all that stuff.
I can just see directly from the watch face in a more convenient place. Plus,
it hasn't been worth the extra battery drain. During our 6 Month Review period
Apple did at least change the Always On Display so you can set it to not show
the wallpaper or notifications, which I think does look better.
Another thing the iPhone 14 Pro boasts is 2000 nits of peak brightness in sunlight,
and while it’s viewable in sunlight, when comparing my 13 Pro. Both seemed fine in
direct sunlight. Last thing, i'm more neutral with this phone is battery life.
It's about as good or just slightly worse than my iPhone 13 Pro. I feel like there have been
more days with a 14 Pro where I've had to turn on battery saver but some of that could just
be attributed to I've been more active now that the pandemic isn't as big of a thing.
Now, let's talk about some of the things I don't like about this iPhone, first is autocorrect,
this remains an annoying part of using iPhones. Another major annoyance with
this iPhone and past iPhones is Apple’s instance on overprocessing photos. Photos
on my Pixel 7 Pro consistently look better to me than those on my iPhone.
This is especially true when you have photos with a good amount of light and people in them. Apple
just overprocesses the hell out of them, to the point where I don’t care for the look you get,
especially with skin tones. Overall, the camera system on the iPhone 14 Pro is good
but i wouldn't say it's a great camera system specifically for taking photos.
For video however, I still think its the best video you can get out of a smartphone,
and I don’t notice the overprocessing of images and blown out highlights as much here.
The only downside I've encountered with video is DHR and this isn't
specific to Apple and the iPhone, other smartphone makers have this issue as well.
And thankfully, unlike Google, Apple did not enable HDR video by default.
When you play them back on a Mac or view them from the YouTube app on an
iPhone, it JUST LOOKS AWFUL. These videos crank up the screen brightness to an annoying rate.
The problem here is Apple doesn't really do a good job of educating you as a user for
what situations HDR video is really good for. So, you've got all of these people
turning on this feature shooting video and the videos end up looking horrendous.
Now, another thing, I think Apple can improve with this iPhone and all
iPhones for that matter is blocking spam texts. You can choose whether
or not to allow notifications from unknown centers in message settings.
But I’d like Apple to scan text messages on device from unknown
senders for suspicious links and then warn a user when a suspicious link is detected.
The last thing I don't like about the iPhone 14 Pro is lock-in,
specifically the app store lock-in.
Now, I've already gone in depth on the monopoly and monopoly issues Apple faces,
and why users and app developers are suing them.
And governments are regulating them to open up the iPhone,
and I’ll link to that video at the end of this one, but purely from a user standpoint,
Apple's treatment of the iPhone is totally inconsistent with its treatment of the Mac.
I can download the Spotify app directly from Spotify on the Mac, or Fortnite directly from
Epic Games. And according to Apple’s own website, I can do this safely on the Mac.
So why can't I download these same apps from the same websites just to my iPhone.
Especially a Pro iPhone. Because Apple controls the only legitimate
way to purchase and download software for your iPhone through the App Store,
I constantly run into user experience issues where i'm trying to buy a digital good or
service through an app, but i can't because companies don't offer it through their apps
now because they're trying to avoid paying Apple a 15 or 30 percent commission, Like
not being able to sign up for Netflix or Spotify within their apps. Or one that really irks me,
not being able to purchase Kindle books from the Amazon app, you can only purchase them
from Amazon through the Safari web browser. And an even worse situation is when services
pass on that 15% or 30% commission, charging you more for the same service, just because you’re
buying it through an iPhone app. This has been by far the worst part of owning the iPhone 14 Pro.
So now after my rant and all the downsides, I've got to figure out how to transition to
tell you that. Yes, at the end of the day, I still do recommend getting the
iPhone 14 Pro. Even with all the downsides i just mentioned, the pro-motion display,
Dynamic Island, telephoto camera, and that deep purple color, certainly make the iPhone 14 Pro,
a better buy in my mind compared to the regular 14, which is why i went with it.
Now, if you have an iPhone 13 Pro, I don't think it's worth upgrading to the 14 Pro at this point.
You're better off just waiting another six months and getting the 15 Pro when that comes out.
And you don't always need to buy a new iPhone to make the iPhone experience feel fresh and new,
a lot of things i really liked on the 14 Pro this year were actually just iOS 16
features. To hear my thoughts on iOS 16 and all the new things you get with it,
check out our six months later review of it by clicking the little thumbnail here and for the
monopoly and monopoly cases against Apple and pending government regulations and how all of
that impacts iPhone consumers. Check out the explainer video I did on that issue here. And
i've left purchasing links in the description below and in this video, if you'd like to check
current prices for the 14 Pro, for six months later, I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.