iPhone 14 Pro Review: I wish it did just a little more

Is Dynamic Island ready for the real world, or is it just a marketing term worthy of a widget?

At its core, the iPhone 14 Pro isn’t a bad phone. It’s a really good one. It finally shows that Apple has the guts and the willpower to compete with Android flagships — something they haven’t done (and have been ridiculed for not doing) for years. But more and more as I use this phone, I keep hitting roadblocks and finding flaws that make me question its value. Is Dynamic Island the next gotta-have-it feature? Does the “new” Always On Display Apple just barely touched on during the keynote follow the Apple approach of “take a thing, make it better, and ship it 5 years later?” And most importantly, is it worth upgrading to it if you have an older iPhone, or moving to iOS from an Android phone? These are all good questions that I’ll answer in this review, but it’s important to think about where this phone stands — it’s expensive, but not the top-end phone. It’s a flagship, but who shall we compare it against? Where’s the benchmark here? How “good” is the iPhone 14 Pro relative to other brands it’ll be cross-shopped with? I came into the event a couple weeks ago excited to finally get a phone that had the potential to be great, and as I watched it, I got even more excited to try out Dynamic Island. Imagine this: a widget that morphed into whatever you wanted, that showed notifications and Siri and phone calls, etc. It could be so powerful yet hide away like a notch. I was really excited about the potential of this feature, but the more I used it, in practice, I was more disappointed. Turns out, that theme is applied to every new feature on the 14 Pro — That isn’t to say this phone is bad or boring (I can’t reiterate this enough) — it’s an iPhone, a modern one. It does a lot right and not very much wrong. But I feel like this phone didn’t reach the mark — that Apple tried to do something innovative but stopped at the last minute. With that being said, I’m going to go into this review positively — I like this phone, I just wish it did a little bit more. That it didn’t regress from last year’s model in places that it chose to. Its biggest improvements are in the display and cameras, but it makes notable steps backward in design and battery. Let’s talk about that.

Okay, we’ve got to talk about the big new feature first, and that’s the Dynamic Island. You don’t have to be an Apple hater to know that the notch was controversial, to say the least. I mean, it was fine. But was it all that great either? It cut into video, was a general eyesore, made the phone look more outdated, made the bezels thicker, and cut into the top “menu bar,” which pushed a lot of important data into the Control Center. The notch has gotten better over the years, though — last year, the notch became “20% smaller,” and I praised it like many others. However, it still looked weirdly old when put alongside Android phones of the same price range. So here comes Dynamic Island, and silly name aside, it comes years after Android introduced the hole punch. As you could tell during my event recap, I was really excited about the potential of this feature. I mean, it was basically an always-on widget that could make a significant difference in the way the phone was interacted with and used in general. It did something we hadn’t seen before — using a hardware disadvantage as a software feature. When the iPhone 14 Pro was announced and they showed the flashy supercut of everything the Island could do, I thought that it would expand and contract in those views automatically — that if you triggered something in an app, the Island would open up for more controls. I also thought that notifications would come through it as well, alleviating annoying pop-ups and banners. It made sense, right? Why have extra banners when it can all be consolidated? With all these fancy promos, I was excited — but only part of my dreams came true. From afar, the Dynamic Island is a really cool feature — it lessens the number of popups you deal with in this beautiful way that morphs depending on what you’re doing. And app developers should (in theory, we’ll talk about this shortly) also be able to harness its capabilities.

The Dynamic Island.

So then, what’s the deal? Well, in practice, the Dynamic Island doesn’t seem to be doing all that much for me. Apple said that it, in its current iteration, uses the CallKit and NowPlaying APIs, and in iOS 16.1, will be able to use the new ActivityKit API that powers Live Activities. Developers will have to put in extra work to make their apps compatible with Dynamic Island, though. Apple says that in addition to making the card view on the Lock Screen previewed at WWDC22, developers will have to make their Live Activity specifically for the Dynamic Island, constructing 4 views: a compact leading view, a compact trailing view, a minimal view, and an expanded view. The leading view is the view on the left of the sensor array and the trailing one is the one on the right. The minimal view is what happens when a more important thing is taking up space on the Island. When listening to Vergecast, Nilay Patel of The Verge made me question how this would work; who decides what’s more important and takes the main stage in the Island? Is it Apple, or is it developers? An example is when you are playing music and have a timer running simultaneously: the Music takes up the main view and the timer gets pushed to the minimal view, just bubbled up at the side. When the timer rings, the timer, and music “widgets” swap positions. When Live Activities come to iOS, who makes the decision? Is an Uber more valuable than a phone call or timer? Does the system get priority over the Island? These are all questions that are sure to be answered in the future, but certainly not now, since developers can’t implement these APIs now, even in TestFlight Applications. However, Apple sure can and they already have in the TV app. I didn’t test this, so I can’t answer the big question, unfortunately. But, it did give me a sense of how useful the developer implementation could be — it seems oddly limited. All it does is show the score in a game you “follow.” I was hoping for something bigger, like play-by-play details in the Island. Maybe tapping on the Island could show you a replay of what happened? I don’t know what developers will be able to do with this, or if it will prove to be a valuable asset at all, but I’m just not seeing the vision yet. If Apple themselves isn’t doing much with the Island, I don’t see why developers would.

This is the expanded view for the Dynamic Island.

I read a thread by designer Parker Ortolani earlier where he suggested a couple of things Apple could do to make the Dynamic Island more useful, and I wanted to highlight some that stood out to me — for one, I really think notifications should come in from the Dynamic Island. In my experience living with the 14 Pro for a week, notifications look out of place. They intrude into your content way more than the notched phones and feel archaic. I would much rather the Dynamic Island be used for notifications instead of just being a widget for glanceable, non-interactive information. Siri should also be incorporated into the Island — Siri isn’t doing anything important, so why not put it in the Island? Apple Pay sheets could go in, Quick Note could go in, even parts of system apps could go in. Heck, I’d love a way for HomePod timers to also show up within Dynamic Island. I’d recommend checking out Parker’s thread for more examples and mockups, but you get the idea. Dynamic Island should be the place where all system pop-ups go. All alerts, dialog boxes, notifications, etc should all be in the Island. It just makes sense.

With that all said, here’s a list of things the Dynamic Island currently does:

• Shows a call UI for apps that use CallKit, like WhatsApp, Zoom, FaceTime, and regular cellular calls.
• Shows what’s playing on your device from apps that use the NowPlaying API, like Music, Spotify, Overcast, and YouTube.
• Shows AirPods connection and low battery alerts, replacing the CompactUI introduced in 2018.
• Shows turn-by-turn directions only using Apple Maps.
• Shows active timers.
• Shows low battery alerts, replacing the dialog box.
• Shows Focus mode changes.
• Shows screen recording alerts.
• Plays an animation when silent mode is turned on/off.
• Plays an animation when the device is plugged into power.
• Indicates when a Shortcut is being run.

All the Dynamic Island actions.

Even though it doesn’t do much, the way it does it is really fun. It’s like a little breathing bubble that jumps around when things get thrown in it. When you swipe up from an app, the app window jumps into the bubble and kicks things out of the status bar before slowly bringing them back in. When you press on it when there’s nothing happening, it sends haptic feedback and does a little bloop. The physics of it all is so elegant and so… Apple. It’s whimsical and so fascinating to watch. It’s like a game, almost; so lifelike and perfected in every way. Additionally, the anti-aliasing that they’ve applied here is fantastic, so much so that it’s basically impossible to think it’s just playing fancy animations. It feels… oddly real. It’s a really fun toy to just watch.

AirPods connection alert in the Dynamic Island.

But “being cool” isn’t enough of a factor to warrant an upgrade — believe it or not. And that leads me to my complaints about the Dynamic Island. I’ve noticed many oddities just using it day-to-day. For one, most of the time, I’ve felt like it just sits up there and does nothing useful. When audio is playing, it just shows album art and a waveform (which I personally find distracting), which isn’t useful. I wish there were some buttons up there that didn’t require interacting with the Island in a bigger way to trigger; a skip track button that I could just push whenever would be really handy. Speaking of pushing buttons, I echo the aforementioned Nilay Patel in that I wish the Dynamic Island would show the pop-out view with all the controls with just a tap of the Island, and not a haptic press. The point of this always-on widget is that it’s meant to be interacted with, right? Why hide that behind a complicated action? In the keynote, they made it feel like it would be dancing around and showing information all the time, and that hasn’t happened in my time with it. It mostly just sits there, alone, distracting, and static. It also cuts into videos that aren’t in 16x9. When watching 21x9 content, the Island dips into the video more than the notch ever did — it’s terrible and ugly and just plain bad. Please, YouTubers, stop uploading in 21x9. Finally — it’s also quite slow at times. When swiping up to the Home Screen from the Lock Screen with audio playing, the data takes a little while to populate. Part of me thinks this is intentional to make the bubble feel human, but it’s odd.

I don’t hate the Dynamic Island. In fact, I think it makes the phones look modern. But it isn’t without its quirks, (and features) and overall, I don’t think it’ll make that much of a difference in the way you use your phone. They could do so much more with it and make it more useful, and they probably will. But like the wise Marques Keith Brownlee always says, “Don’t buy a piece of technology based on the promise of future software updates.” This feature sets the phone apart from every other phone. It’s fun and it’s fascinating, but it needs improvement.

You can see the individual cutouts in the Dynamic Island.

Speaking of things that are in need of improvement, I hate to say it, but the battery on the iPhone 14 Pro is an utter disappointment. I tested the 14 Pro’s battery for 4 days under a variety of circumstances, and I can confidently say, without a doubt, that the 14 Pro battery is a regression from the 13 Pro — and a severe one at that. The battery life on the 13 Pro was absolutely stellar — after a year of bad battery life on the iPhone 12, the iPhone 13 breathed new life into the iPhone battery. It handily beat every single phone on the market with hours to spare — my 8% degraded 13 Pro battery would hit 8 hours on the iOS 16 beta constantly. I could never say that about any other phone I’ve ever used, ever. I was expecting the 14 Pro to have the same, class-leading battery life — after all, the phone got heavier, slightly thicker, and the battery capacity increased on most models (with the exception of the Pro Max). All of this should mean good battery life across the board, right? Wrong. After waiting for the phone to index files and restore from an iCloud Backup, I was barely pushing 7 hours of SoT just doing normal tasks — no camera testing or video watching. When I incorporated those activities, I was getting 5.5 hours at the most, with a mid-day juice-up required. It’s safe to say that this phone won’t last most people a whole day after degradation — it almost feels as bad as the iPhone 12. I never had to charge my phone mid-day on my 13, and I’m slowly getting used to it on the 14. All of the odds were in favor of the 14: larger battery capacity, 4nm A16, new OS update, a fresh battery, etc. But if you’re upgrading from the 11 or 13 and have a new battery, your current phone will lap circles around the 14. The only slight exception is if you have an XR or 12: the 14 will be marginally better, but mostly negligible in most circumstances. I wouldn’t buy this phone for battery life at all. Now, I did have the Always On Display turned on, but that shouldn’t matter, especially since the display only refreshes at 1 Hz. Charging speeds remained the same during my testing, both with MagSafe and wired “fast” charging, which didn’t help either. This phone is a power-hungry boy, and I really don’t like it.

Here’s the breakdown:

• On day 1, I used the Camera, YouTube, and Safari heavily. I got 6 hours and 21 minutes of SoT on the first charge and 45 minutes with an extra 30% in the tank. 130% juice, 7 hours and 6 minutes.
• On day 2, I used Safari, Reeder, sat on calls, and took notes using Craft. I got 7 hours and 54 minutes on a single charge and needed an extra 20% to get me through the day.
• On day 3, I used YouTube, Safari, Reeder, and iMessage, and got 6 hours and 56 minutes. I needed an extra 30% to get me through the day.
• On my last day, I used YouTube, Camera, Safari, Reeder, and Apollo, and got 5 hours and 55 minutes. Again, I needed an extra 30%.

Most days landed between the 7 and 7.5-hour mark — which is average. If this was the normal iPhone, I’d be fine with it. But this is the premium iPhone, and this isn’t premium battery life. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement.

That camera is huge.

Apple touted its camera for the 14 Pro more than it ever has in recent history — bringing long overdue features to the iPhone, like a 48mp sensor, better processing, and new video stabilization. So, let’s talk about that camera. Over the past week, I’ve taken hundreds of photos and videos in different camera modes, in different lighting scenarios, and of different subjects. It was exhausting, but it taught me a lot more about where the iPhone stands and if it can indeed compete with a professional mirrorless camera. The result? I can say, without a doubt, that the iPhone 14 Pro has an amazing camera. So good, that I claim it’s the best smartphone camera on the market. It’s a tough one to beat.

I mean, that’s a meaty boy.

The new 48-megapixel sensor (now called the Main Camera, which was long overdue) is the biggest upgrade to the camera in the history of the iPhone. It makes images feel more true-to-life, bright, and sharp — even with zooming in. Even when binned, photos turn out crisp, to the point where you can read text from afar and see texture in shadows. But it really shines in RAW, where the sensor uses the full 48mp — the pictures are absolutely breathtaking in ProRaw. Every leaf and cloud and raindrop is represented clearly. Previous iPhone cameras applied a weird smoothing effect to textures that the phone deemed ‘unimportant’, but that doesn’t happen anymore. It feels like shooting on film — it’s so fun! It’s a night-and-day difference between the 12mp sensor on previous iPhones — the 4x multiplication of megapixels makes an astronomical difference. When getting close to a subject, bokeh is elegant. It’s not quite as good as the shallow depth of field you’d get with an APS-C sensor on an actual camera, but darn is it impressive. It gives images this sense of professionalism and clarity that previously was impossible with smaller, lower-quality sensors. I wouldn’t even recommend the use of portrait mode anymore since the bokeh is so natural. Oftentimes, portrait mode will screw something and it makes the image look bad, which isn’t ideal. Another improvement comes in color reproduction: remember when I scoffed at the new Photonic Engine during my event recap? It turns out that the improvements come in the colors because everything seems more natural and less processed. I’ve noticed that since the iPhone XS, iPhones have applied a “beauty filter” to every image, making for oddly bright images with off colors. Photonic Engine seems to have fixed this oddity, which was one of my biggest complaints with the iPhone. Images have no noise (even in Night Mode, which I’ve found takes shorter exposures this year), distortion, grain, or any other weird quirks. It’s just a really great lens that has nearly no shutter lag and puts out crisp images, and you’ll notice the difference.

Here’s another shot of the iPhone 14 Pro’s camera mesa.

The new 2x cropped lens (48mm) is also awesome. If you’re into cameras, you might have heard of the term ‘Nifty Fifty.’ 50mm is the best focal length because it matches what the eyes can see — when Apple switched over to a 3x telephoto last year, I was really disappointed because 50mm is the best focal length. What makes this even better is that it’s the best quality ”telephoto” Apple has ever shipped. Why? Because it’s just the 48mp sensor, but zoomed in to make a 12mp image, which was the standard previously. This results in a sensor that produces beautiful images, has the same great aperture and shallow depth of field as the main sensor, but with a better focal length. I’ve been using this lens more than I’ve used any other lens this year, and I highly recommend you do too.

The zoom modes on iPhone 14 Pro.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about the Ultra Wide (13mm) and 3x telephoto (77mm). Both lenses are honestly laughable when compared to the main one, and I’ve found myself using them less and less. They both look basically the same as the 13, even with the Photonic Engine, aside from color reproduction improvements — but I still think that the 3x telephoto is the worst lens. Not only is 77mm a bad focal length to shoot in, but the sensor itself is old, bad, and takes soft photos. They lack clarity, depth, and texture — and oftentimes, the system knows this and crops into the main lens aggressively, which leaves us with a 9mp sensor that looks straight out of GTA 5 in low light. I never tap the 3x button now, especially since we have a 2x. One quick side note: Apple said that the phone would be able to crop in 15x digitally, but we didn’t know which lens it would use. Turns out, it’s the main one, negating the telephoto further. The Ultra Wide is also meh, albeit not as terrible at the telephoto. It still looks grainy in low light and lacks clarity. Oftentimes, the colors look washed out and it kind of looks like I smeared finger goop on it when the lens is, in fact, perfectly clean. The selfie camera gains autofocus now, but it doesn’t look any sharper in my opinion unless you’re really zooming in and picking those nits. But mostly, it’s really hit or miss — and that goes for all other lenses.

The Action Mode toggle in the camera app.

Everyone knows that the iPhone is always video king, and this one is no different. Normal video hasn’t changed all that much — it’s still good, shoots at the same resolution, has better bokeh, and better colors. Not much of a difference that you would notice day-to-day. Unfortunately, they haven’t fixed the weird light orb reflections that are shown only in video mode that first plagued the iPhone 12, which is the only real issue. Other than that, ProRaw remains the same as previously found on older phones. No resolution bump like the rumors suggested, which I’m fine with. It seems like they’re binning the video from the main sensor in all video modes, which leads to a clear image with good colors and detail, as usual. All of the telephoto modes work as well, so you can zoom 2x with no issues when shooting video. I’ll admit it, it’s a little less useful when shooting video, but it works. The new “2nd generation Sensor Shift” didn’t seem to make a difference in video stabilization. My assumption is that they’ve made it slightly better to handle the larger, heavier sensor, and that’s it. What has been changed, or rather, has been added, is the new Action Mode, which is supposed to crop in to create a digitally stabilized video that should be more intense than Sensor Shift. In practice, it sucks. I’ve had the same issue MKBHD ran into where the mode won’t even work because there’s “not enough light,” and that caused all of the issues. I have 2 burning questions:

• Why does this need light?
• Why didn’t it work when I blasted 3 flashlights at the camera?

Eventually, I did get it to work after shining a flashlight at it while outside, and it did basically nothing. Oftentimes, it just cut the resolution in half while looking artificial and bad. I wouldn’t use Action Mode ever — it’s worthless. Something else that’s worthless? Cinematic Mode. This year, Cinematic Mode records in 4K 24fps, which is the superior frame rate and resolution combo. Unfortunately, I’m going to reiterate the same thing that I’ve said about Cinematic Mode last year — it doesn’t do a good job. It looks fake and object detection is still terrible. It’s like portrait mode — which I touched on earlier — but worse. I don’t like Cinematic Mode, and even with these “improvements,” I’ll never use this feature. I didn’t use it with the 13 Pro, and I certainly won’t with the 14 Pro. It makes me cringe every time I look at a video shot in Cinematic Mode. It’s bad, please don’t use it.

Finally, let’s get to the samples. I took my 13 Pro and 14 Pro on an adventure around the lake behind my house, so let’s talk about these pictures:

• The first image is taken with the main sensor, and there’s a lot going on — at first, the 13 Pro (left)’s image looks more vibrant. It looks like the shadows are less fuzzy, right? Zoom into the stucco at the top right and… look at that noise! On the 14 Pro (right), the stucco has more detail and is better exposed, so you can see the pattern and color. Zooming into the houses in the distance, you can make out the bench and even the windows inside. Detail is impressive here.
• The next shot is taken from the same place but is at a different angle and orientation. This was taken with the telephoto camera, which has the same sensor. The differences are less noticeable here, but look at the colors on the 13 — notice how they’re brighter and more punchy? That’s not how it looks in real life — the tones are much more muted because of the clouds. You can also see the difference in the shadows, where the 14 Pro does a better job of exposing the shot. Slight, but existent. Both are bad though — check out that stucco! Noisy, blurry, and horribly exposed. The 3x telephoto is a bad lens.
• The next one is taken using the Ultra Wide, so even more is going on. Check out the stucco roof in the foreground patio: notice how much better the 14 Pro does in the right corner, next to the door. It’s much better exposed, and you can make out the pattern. The image is also brighter and weirdly sharper — it’s subtle but existent.
• This one was taken with the main camera, and both of the shots look identical to me. I really couldn’t the difference. I mean, maybe the trees look slightly better on the 14 Pro, but it really is a toss-up with just a bit brighter of a scene.
• The next shot is also taken with the main camera, and you can see the difference in HDR by looking at the street light. The 14 Pro handles it much better with less of a green tint. However, the 14 Pro did struggle with the sunset in the background, whereas the 13 Pro exposed the sky correctly. I’m going to have to hand the victory to the 13 Pro strictly because of that, but if you take a look at the grass, you can tell the 14 Pro is significantly sharper.
• The last shot is indoors, and you can really see the larger sensor shine on the 14 Pro here. Look at the depth of field difference between the two! Also, I personally find the colors more pleasing on the 14 Pro compared to the 13 — the latter looks more sterile and colorless.

Round #1

Round #2

Round #3

Round #4

Round #5

Round #6

And here are some stand-alone shots shot with the 14 Pro to get an idea of what this camera is capable of:

Pictures taken with the iPhone 14 Pro.

To conclude, the iPhone 14 Pro’s cameras are stellar. They really do produce breathtaking shots in nearly every lighting condition. Many people have said that they can’t tell the difference between 13 Pro and 14 Pro shots, and I disagree. The 14 Pro adds depth and clarity to images to an extent we haven’t seen from an iPhone, and I’m thoroughly impressed. The cameras are definitely the highlight of this new phone.

Camera chungus.

Another feature that’s been talked about ad nauseam is also one that was just briefly touched on during the keynote, and that’s the new Always On Display. I’m going to be honest in saying that I have mixed feelings about the AOD, specifically on Apple’s implementation. On one hand, I’m glad Apple has finally brought an AOD to iPhone — I mean, who wouldn’t be? But on the other hand, the AOD on iPhone is just plain bad. I heard this on Upgrade earlier, but it seems like Apple thought “Always On Display” meant that the screen had to be “Always on,” not “always displaying ambient information.” All the AOD does is dim your Lock Screen and turn down the refresh rate to 1hz. The problem with this is that it’s oddly distracting: Android phones make the background black and make notifications compact for a reason — having your Lock Screen photo, full notifications, and widgets up on the AOD is not useful. The goal of an AOD is to show you information that is glanceable, without the need for interaction or distraction. The Apple version laughably fails at this. It ruins the utility of an AOD while making the Lock Screen actively worse. How does it make it worse? The AOD uses auto-brightness and dims the screen more than it already does when in AOD mode when you’re in a dark environment. This makes the AOD hard to read and has the unintended side effect of basically becoming the normal Lock Screen when you’re in broad daylight. In my opinion, the AOD should have a black background with slightly dimmed widgets, and favicons for notifications, similar to Android.

The Always On Display active on iPhone 14 Pro.

But if Apple is set on their current approach of making the Lock Screen dimmer and calling it an AOD, I have a couple suggestions: for one, make Shortcuts actions to toggle the AOD. It would be great if there were automation triggers and Shortcuts actions we could use to turn off the AOD entirely, like when in a Focus or on a specific Lock Screen. How about settings to pick specific Lock Screens just for the AOD? Imagine this: we already have Lock Screens and Home Screens, but what if we also had AOD screens where we could add widgets and change the background to black (or whatever color/picture)? We could then link these to Lock Screens which would then link them to Focus modes. Right now, the way I’ve been doing it is setting up Low Power Mode as a Focus Filter system action for certain Focus modes, which turns off the AOD. This is janky, and we need a better way to deal with it. I also think they should allow us to have more widgets and Live Activity information on the AOD. Right now, if there’s a widget or Live Activity that has second increments (10:01, 10:02, etc), it’s replaced by a placeholder that looks odd — why can’t we have second increments? It’s refreshing at 1hz and wouldn’t affect the battery life at all. This AOD needs a lot of work because, in its current iteration, it’s just not useful.

There’s more janky stuff too:

• The AOD always darkens notifications and the Now Playing platter, regardless if you’re in Light Mode or Dark Mode. If you’re in Light Mode, the notifications jump into Light Mode from the “dark state” when you tap the screen, which is disorienting.
• Sometimes, the AOD will freeze on the widget page and darken. I assume this is a bug, but it’s hilarious.
• The clock font thins when the AOD is active, and it looks weird.
• In order to interact with your Lock Screen, you must first tap on the screen to activate the real display before interacting. A single tap won’t do, you have to tap twice.
• Touch sensitivity is decreased on the AOD to prevent false taps, but that also makes it harder to get to the Lock Screen if you’re a “light tapper.”

I still keep the AOD on and don’t see myself turning it off, because I bought the phone and want to use all of its features. I’ve been begging for this feature for years, but it needs some serious work — because right now, it’s plain useless and unusable. It lacks functionality and puts design over utility in typical Apple fashion.

This phone has a face only a mother could love.

Let’s talk about design and repairability since I have some really mixed thoughts on the (mostly unchanged) design this year. Since the iPhone 11, I’ve reiterated that the iPhone has… an ugly build. The frying pan camera mesa, the horrible colors, the smudgy sides, and the weight. The iPhone used to be a really attractive phone, but it isn’t anymore and hasn’t been for a long time.

I’m mixed on the new Deep Purple color. The color looks completely different depending on the lighting. Sometimes, it’s very elegant — the light bounces off the phone beautifully, creating this attractive dark purple color that looks awesome. Other times, it’s a black, grayish-purple. It looks like a grape that went bad — it looks boring, serious, and is no fun. But mostly, it’s a fine color. I’d recommend it if you don’t want a neutral color like white or the new black since the gold is bleh. But just a heads up: it’s a dark color that doesn’t look good sometimes. If you don’t like muted colors, don’t buy it.

This color looks pretty good in the right light.

Color aside, I want to touch on the camera mesa: it’s too big. I picked up my 13 Pro to compare it to the 14 the other day, and I thought to myself, “wait, why is this camera bump so small?” I couldn’t believe it — just days ago, I called the 13 Pro bump massive, and now it looked small! I picked both up and looked at them and at the surface, they didn’t look super different. But once I flipped them to the side, I immediately noticed what changed; the steel part that connects the glass to the lens is significantly thicker. Putting the phone on a table and poking the corner makes the phone rock more than a seesaw. It’s terrible. I hate the camera bump and it’s the reason I can say that this is one of the ugliest iPhones ever. It looks too industrial and the camera bump makes too much noise and… yeah, I hate it.

I like the purple more than Sierra Blue.

The corner radius also changed, which makes a huge difference: I picked up my 13 Pro after a day of using the 14 Pro, and immediately noticed that the 13 Pro felt more squared off. The bezels also felt significantly more chunky, which was odd since the difference was only in millimeters. Nevertheless, you’ll notice the difference — I love the new display design on the 14 Pro.

The new corner radius and screen look on the 14 Pro vs the 13 Pro.

But, design is subjective and I can see a lot of people liking the stainless steel that scratches like no other — and the camera mesa, or disliking the new corner radius, but the weight is undebatable. This phone feels ridiculously heavy — much heavier than last year. It feels like a brick in your hands that you get tired of holding after a while. And this isn’t even the Pro Max, this is the regular Pro. And to add insult to injury, I can confirm that this phone is a slippery boy — I don’t know what they did with the PVD coating on the “Surgical-grade Stainless Steel” (bad marketing name) this year, but the sides seem to be less smudgy and more slippery, unlike the 13 Pro and 12 with the “Aerospace-grade Aluminum.” This phone doesn’t feel as good as the 13 Pro — designs change, but this design feels like a regression from the last one.

Smudgy sides, featuring no SIM tray.

Repairability-wise, the 14 is the same as before. iFixit’s teardown shows that the Pro phones don’t have the new back glass that the regular 14 models do. If you aren’t caught up on this, here’s a quick explainer: previous iPhones required an entire back housing assembly (including frame) replacement if just the back glass broke. The 14 now opens from the back and the glass separates from the frame. This makes repairs cheaper, easier, and better. Unfortunately, the 14 Pros don’t have this new design and they open up like a book, the way previous iPhones always have. We haven’t seen repair manuals or parts go up on Apple’s Repair Store yet, but I’m guessing it’ll be the exact same as the 13s, which is disappointing.

All of this is to say that I feel the iPhone 14 has gotten way too bulky and heavy without adding features like better repairability and a larger battery. It’s a fine-looking phone — but it’s just that, fine. I think there are much better-looking phones out there, but that’s just me personally.

The Island, in it’s idle state.

Alright, it’s everyone’s favorite part of every review; it’s lightning round time. 2 topics, 2 paragraphs. Let’s go through everything nobody cares about but I have thoughts on:

iPhone performance is so good that it doesn’t need an explanation, so I’m going to be quick with this section: there are negligible performance differences between A15 and A16. A16 is built on a 4nm process, which should make it more efficient and run cooler, but we’ve already debunked that in the battery comparison. Opening apps is equally snappy between the phones, but of course, I ran my little benchmark that I always do where I opened a bunch of apps in sequence and see which one did it faster. I’m not going to get into the apps, but they’re the usual productivity apps. The totals: the iPhone 13 Pro completed the test in 36 seconds, and the 14 Pro completed it in 32 seconds. Wow, big whoop — 4 seconds is surely going to make a huge difference! Unless you have something like an iPhone XR, you won’t notice this phone to be any faster than your old one. I won’t even bother doing Geekbench scores here, because the reality is, Apple Silicon is leagues ahead and the 4% difference in some weird nerd number isn’t going to change the way you use your phone. Modern iPhones are more than fast enough and performance shouldn’t play a factor in a purchase decision at all.

The new phone doesn’t have a SIM tray.

Let’s talk eSIM: I was originally very skeptical of eSIM, but wanted to see how things would pan out on launch day. eSIM makes things more complicated for average consumers, takes more work to set up, involves carriers, invites more activation issues, and limits carrier choice — all while making it more difficult to leave the Apple ecosystem. eSIM sucks. Yet, I was hopeful — maybe Apple would figure things out? I was wrong. eSIM activation issues on Visible, T-Mobile, and other MVNOs and smaller carriers made headlines — with thousands reporting their bugs. Personally, my experience was fine, though it did take a while. And by “a while,” I mean 20 minutes. Yikes. However, I didn’t get charged an upgrade fee, which was nice. I’m still not a fan, but we’ll have to see how normal people react to this change and if/how it pushes carriers to push eSIM. I’m guessing it won’t bode well. I can’t give eSIM the green light in fair consciousness, still — it needs work and Apple shouldn’t have switched to it so fast.

Look, I like the iPhone 14 Pro. It’s a really good phone with an awesome screen and Dynamic Island, groundbreaking performance, a state-of-the-art camera, and software that’s finally getting there. It’s an all-around amazing device. However, it makes regressions in places that it just shouldn’t have: the battery life is sub-par, the Always On Display is disappointing, and it’s way too heavy with poor color choices. Am I going to be returning it? Of course not. But do I think it needs work? Absolutely. It doesn’t do enough and made mistakes other iPhones didn’t. If you’re on something older than an iPhone 11, green light the upgrade and go for it: this phone is fantastic and will blow your mind. But anything newer and I’d express caution. Do you want the new phone with all the cool features? I do, and I’d upgrade for that. But chances are, if you’re that person, you’ve already bought the phone anyway. iPhone 14 Pro is the best iPhone Apple has ever offered, but it’s just that — the best of this generation. Unless that speaks to you, you’re fine with your current phone.

This review was produced following 1 week with a retail version iPhone 14 Pro 128 GB Deep Purple pre-ordered by me. Apple did not send me this video, they didn’t have any editorial or copy approval rights, and they’re seeing this for the first time you are. Stay safe and mask up when around others to prevent the spread of Coronavirus, and hopefully, I’ll be back soon, because it’s Techtember 2022.