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This Wednesday just passed saw Apple announce the 2022 iPhones, the not surprisingly named
iPhone 14s and iPhone 14 Pros. Note the plural in the name for both of those,
as we now have two types of iPhone, both available in two different sizes.
In a lot of ways, it makes the prospect of choosing a new iPhone a little bit easier, but
there are still questions to consider if you’re debating whether or not to get one for yourself.
In this video, I’m going to try and help you with that decision. We’ll talk about what Apple
announced, discuss which iPhone 14 you should consider from all of the different options,
as well as trying to answer whether an upgrade is right for you right now,
or whether you should hold off. OK, let’s get into it.
So, we now know that we have 4 iPhones to choose from, and we can broadly break that down into 2
products, both with 2 sizes. The iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro, both available in a regular
and a Max configuration. It’s a clever strategy by Apple. The last few years, you could argue
that Apple have been testing the market in terms of phone sizes. At one end of the iPhone range,
the iPhone 13 Mini, and at the other end, the extremely expensive IPhone 13 Pro Max. You
would think that the cost of the Pro Max would put a lot of people off, but Apple’s decision
to essentially discontinue the Mini phone, and at the same time creating a cheaper ‘Max’ model, the
iPhone 14 Plus, shows that the opposite must have been true, people have clearly taken to owning a
larger iPhone, more than a small one. Previously, if you wanted the physically largest iPhone,
you also had to go for the most technically capable and therefore expensive Pro model,
but not any more, now regular iPhone purchasers can enjoy that 6.7 inch display on the iPhone
14 Plus, whilst also saving a bit of cash. So, I guess the first question is do you choose
the regular iPhone 14, or the Pro iPhone 14? That’s going to come down to how much you care
about the features that the Pro model has, that the regular doesn’t, so let’s break that down.
There are now two models of iPhone 14, the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Plus,
with that plus essentially being a large iPhone 14, instead of a Mini one, like we had last year.
And while there are a few things to talk about in relation to the iPhone 14,
one way to look at it, is this is essentially an iPhone 13 Pro Light. You’re getting everything
good about last year’s iPhone 13, some of what was good about the iPhone 13 Pro, plus a few new
features, although no real innovation to speak of. In fact, the easiest way to explain what you’re
getting in the iPhone 14 this year, is probably to tell you what’s different when compared to
last year’s 13 Pro. You’ve got the same A15 Bionic chip inside powering it all, so Apple essentially
reusing the same chips from last year and extending their lifespan out by another year.
That’s no bad thing by the way, the A15 Bionic is an outstandingly powerful chip, but it does mean
that the phone you buy this year may not be any more powerful than the phones we bought last year,
including budget devices like the 2022 iPhone SE, which also runs on an A15 Bionic.
You don’t get Pro Motion, essentially the variable refresh rate that allows for silky smooth screen
animations on your iPhone. I’m now fortunate enough to have that feature on almost all my
Apple devices, and it’s one of those features that you’ll really miss if you’ve gotten used
to it and then lose it, but for many people this isn’t a big deal. You’re getting two cameras,
a wide and an ultra wide, and you’re getting Crash Detection,
a new feature being rolled out across all of Apple’s new iPhones and Watches.
Essentially, a combination of accelerometers and force detection technology can identify if you’ve
been involved in a serious collision, the kind of crash where a car’s airbag would have gone off.
Your phone will immediately begin contacting the emergency services for you unless you stop it from
doing so, which could be a life-saving feature in certain situations. You’re going to get autofocus
on the selfie camera which, honestly, I didn’t realise we didn’t already have, and you’re going
to get the Photonic Engine, which is essentially a very Apple way of saying that improvements
in both hardware and software mean that your iPhone 14 is going to be much better at taking
low-light photos than previous year’s iPhones. You also get Action Mode, which I can’t wait to
try out, this is essentially a gimbal level of smoothness built right into your phone.
OK, so that’s the 14, let’s talk about the Pros now.
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Not entirely surprisingly, Apple saved their biggest and best for the Pro lineup of iPhones,
and I have to give it to them, their strategy of holding back the regular
iPhones whilst also pushing forward the Pros has worked really well this year,
for the first time, there’s a clear difference between the two devices,
and a real buying decision if you’re debating which one to go for.
The first thing that’s going to hit you when looking at the 14 Pro is the ‘new notch’,
or as Apple are calling it, and I hate myself for actually calling it this,
the Dynamic Island. Basically, the notch at the top of the display is gone, replaced by
a small pill cutout, which has been rumoured all year, with lots of people, myself included,
saying that they’d have preferred to stick with the notch, until Apple could remove it altogether.
But, in typical Apple style, they had a trick up their sleeve, and have turned this hardware
limitation into a breathtaking software feature. That small dark pill, which houses a huge amount
of tech, and so is definitely needed, now morphs and changes form depending on what you’re doing,
creating a beautiful little visualiser that can show all kinds of information. I’ll be able to
talk more about it next week when I’ve got a new phone to play with, but for now, check out some of
the footage from the event. This could genuinely change the way that you use your iPhone 14 Pro.
But the changes don’t end there. The Pro models now come with an always-on display,
like your Apple Watch, where the phone will be in a low-power mode when not in use,
giving you visibility of things like the date and time, plus any Home Screen widgets you might have
added. The new display gets even brighter this time around, and the camera system now offers
48 megapixel photos along with a larger sensor, meaning that you can capture the kind of sharp,
high resolution images you’d usually only associate with a dedicated SLR camera. The
telephoto lens on the Pro now offers both 2x Optical Zoom and 3x Optical Zoom, giving you
more framing options to play around with. And running all of this, is the brand new
A16 Bionic, Apple’s newest and fastest iPhone silicon. In short, the Pro iPhones
this year are looking to be incredible phones, albeit with hefty price tags to go with them.
So, which one should you choose? Budget should absolutely be your first consideration
when choosing a new iPhone, if you can only afford a certain model, then your decision is
essentially made for you, and Apple have kind of made that decision easier this year, by widening
the price gap, certainly in some markets. Here in the UK for example, the iPhone 14 starts at £849,
while the Pro starts at £1,099, a £250 price difference, which is pretty significant.
If you can afford the Pros, and all of those Pro features sound good to you, I do think that the
Pro model this year is going to be a compelling choice, it offers a LOT for the money, especially
when compared to the 13 Pro, which felt a bit more of an incremental upgrade from the previous 12.
So, I’m happy with the iPhone 14 Pro this year, it’s actually the iPhone 14 which I’m just not
sure about. It’s a nice phone, no doubt about it, but by holding back on technology improvements,
to better differentiate the Pro from the non-Pro, I think Apple have made the value proposition of
the iPhone 14 Pro and last year’s iPhone 13 even greater, and weakened the proposition of the 14
in the process. Compare the two side by side, and they are almost identical, save for a few
features which you might not care about. Crash Detection, the Photonic Engine and Action Mode,
oh and an extra GPU core. Besides that, they’re the same, although the 13 is £100 cheaper on
Apple’s website, which means it could be even cheaper elsewhere. Are a handful of pretty minor
improvements worth £100 to you? If no, then get an iPhone 13, and look, if you’ve been considering a
Mini iPhone in the past but held off, now’s your opportunity, because the Mini phone is gone, so
pick up a 13 Mini at the best price that you can. The iPhone 13 Pro has quietly been removed from
Apple’s website, but there will still be units out there from other retailers, and given the choice,
I’d choose a 13 Pro over a regular 14 any day, so again, keep your eyes open for bargains.
With the decision of which model to choose figured out, we now need to think about storage. I covered
this last year in a dedicated video, but I think it’s worth revisiting, you are going to have to
try and establish how much space you need, as Apple do give you a pretty wide range of options
to choose from, and getting the balance of space vs cost right is going to be really important.
For example, an iPhone 14 Pro with 128GB of space is going to set you back $999, while a 1TB model
of the same phone is $500 more. That’s a lot of extra coin for a phone that does exactly the
same thing, just with more space to hold digital content. You ideally want to avoid the situation
that I’m in, where I purchased a 256gb iPhone 13 Pro last year, yet am only using about 70gb of
that space, so just over a quarter. Essentially, I’ve wasted money on space I simply don’t need.
But at the opposite end of the scale, keep in mind that Apple don’t let you upgrade space
at a later date, so if you buy too little, and fill it up too quickly, you’re stuck.
Figuring out what you use your phone for is going to be a good starting point.
Are you a 100+ photos and videos a day kind of person? If yes, chances are you’re going
to be using up a tonne of space that most other users wouldn’t be using, and whilst services like
iCloud will help to manage your phone’s storage, those photos and videos will add up quite quickly.
Other common causes of filling up storage quickly are downloading lots of large apps,
so if you use your iPhone as a gaming device, this might be applicable to you, or downloading lots of
content from services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple Music or Spotify for offline consumption.
If you’ve not already, I’d definitely recommend going to Settings, then General, then iPhone
Storage, to see how much storage you’re currently using, and what that storage comprises of.
There are other things to think about too. How long do you plan on keeping the phone for?
I’m pretty fortunate, because of what I do for a living, I can justify buying a new iPhone each
year, but most people can’t, most people will need to keep their phone for 2, 3 years, maybe longer.
A few years ago, 128gb felt like a huge amount of phone storage, but now it’s the
smallest configuration you can buy, so it might be worth figuring out how much you think you need,
then looking to the next tier up, if you can afford it. Doing this is more likely to future
proof your investment, and give you a phone that you can rely on for a number of years,
rather than just one or two. Keep in mind too that iPhones with larger storage capacities do
have a slightly higher resale value, which could of course help you out when you come to sell.
Ah, the age old question. Do you actually need a new iPhone this year?
This is tricky to answer, because the answer is going to be unique to each
person, but fundamentally, everything we’ve discussed thus far might be irrelevant to you,
if you decide you don’t need to upgrade. So, let’s try and break it down as best we can.
I think there are a few things to consider when deciding whether or not to upgrade. Firstly, let’s
think about how your current phone is performing. There are two areas where you can get some
statistics about this. The first, I’ve already mentioned, storage. You would head to Settings,
then General, then iPhone Storage, and see how much of your current phone you’re using up.
There are things you can do to reduce that figure, I made a video entirely about that subject
recently which I’ll link to in the description of this video, but it could also be the case that
you need more storage, and so an upgrade to the latest phone would be a sensible way to both get
you a nice, new phone and upgrade your storage. The other thing to look at is your battery health.
Again, I’ve made a dedicated video about this topic too, but let’s head to Settings, then
Battery, then Battery Health, and look at this figure here. Your battery health is essentially
the maximum capacity of your battery. A figure of 95% essentially means that, even with a full
charge, the battery will only provide 95% of the capacity that it would have when it was new.
This is normal for lithium ion batteries, they do degrade over time.
I was pretty proud to have kept this figure at 100% for around 9 months, but I’ve noticed it’s
dropped a bit in the past month or two. I can live with 95%, that’s still a good capacity,
but if this figure was down at 80%, or 75%, I’d be starting to feel some limitations. You could
of course go to an aftermarket company and have them put a new battery in for you, that would
be much cheaper than buying a brand new phone, but again, you might see this as an excuse to upgrade.
The other performance related question is more anecdotal. Does the phone feel sluggish to you?
Depending on how long you’ve had your phone, you might say no, Apple are very good at making phones
that feel really nippy for years. I only got rid of my iPhone XS last September, and right up until
the point where I got rid of it, it performed really, really well. My current phone, an iPhone
13 Pro, runs as fast as the day I bought it, but again it’s something for you to think about.
I guess then, the other question is, how much do you care about all those new features?
So, lots to think about, and ultimately you’ve got to decide what’s right for you, but hopefully this
video has helped. For me, I’m going for an iPhone 14 Pro this year, but if I were on a budget,
I’d be picking up the best 13 model that I could afford, I’m really not convinced on the regular
14 model this year at all. What about you, are you upgrading? If yes, what are you considering?
Drop me a comment, and let’s talk about it. And as ever, if you found this video useful,
do please consider leaving me a like, and subscribing to my channel for more content
like this in the future. See you on the next video.