Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple iPhone 14 Pro Review – Overhyped & Underrated!”.
Yo Jonathan here – and this is my review of the iPhone 14 pro cess. So if you caught my health update video, I missed the iPhone event launch day pretty much all of it. So I’m a little late to the party. But here we are the one point that I want to make clear throughout this video is that if the iPhone 14 pro didn’t exist – and I was still using the 13 Pro – I would be completely content. Sometimes I feel like the hyper focus on the year-to-year upgrade. Can almost be a disservice because, like most things in life, if your focus is here, sometimes by simply taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture, that will almost certainly give you a better perspective with that said, they were absolutely things about the iPhone 14 Pro that surprised me upgrades that felt bigger than I thought they would, and while I will touch on those first, I wanted to break down the newest and most polarizing features because, without a doubt, number one gots to be dynamic Island.
The name is a choice and it’s a very Tim apple one at that, but I think it’s, the one thing announced at the event that no one expected and the one thing that was executed extraordinarily well. For me, it’s how smooth and how fluid it is, how it reacts and interacts, and the attention to detail is kind of wild with music. For example, you get this Rey mysterio-sized icon of the album artwork, but then next to that the visualizer portion, the way it breathes and reacts to the dynamic of the song and then parallel to that matches the album artwork color is such this subtle nuanced detail that I love when you’re on a phone call it’ll display the length of that call in the top left and then moving to the right visualizer portion, the way that reacts and adapts to voice in real time and then beyond that changes color from Green when the person On the other end is talking to Orange when you’re talking is like damn. That is impressive. You then have implementations like said in a timer airdrop status, screen, recording status or something as simple as airpods connecting which are all extremely useful.
On the other hand, I could see why some people might be turned off by this, because, with the previous Notch that we’ve grown and been accustomed to over the last few years, that was kind of out of sight out of mind to where you didn’t interact with It and you almost didn’t really think about it: Dynamic Island. On the other hand, even though it is smaller, it is designed to pay attention to and to interact with. So at that point it almost becomes the question of is that increased functionality worth the trade-off of having something more front and center? The one thing that took me a second to get used to is I am someone who uses tap to top of iPhone to scroll up a lot and with this it felt clunky like I was always dancing around the island. Alternatively, though, if you tap towards the top left or right, it works just as well. So for me, I think it was more of a muscle memory thing.
Overall, I think Dynamic Island was probably a little over hyped out of the gate because of how much it surprised everybody after the dust is settled. I think it’s a really well done really clever implementation. I’M excited to see where it goes always on display with that. One since I was out it almost felt like I was Troy coming back walking into a dumpster fire, because it was so split down the middle, where either people enjoyed it and used it or they hated it with a passion to the point where they turned it Off altogether, for me, I don’t mind it. I’Ve actually enjoyed it and I’ve left it on.
I am also someone, though, who is kind of always in Do Not Disturb mode and someone who tries to keep their phone out of sight out of mind for as much as I can to the point where. If I really don’t want to see anything, I’m going to flip it upside down anyways. So when I want to see something, it doesn’t feel overbearing to me, but at the same time I can see why it might feel like too much for some people, and I 100 agree there should be more control of how much of the stuff is always on. You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops and use a dark blank wallpaper as a workaround. You should simply just get the choice of hey. Do you want everything always on, or do you just want text? The other topic that the always on display naturally leads to? Is battery life and while it’s not something that’s going to completely obliterate your battery life, it 100 sips at it and in general, that leads to a giant lukewarm battery life is not better on the 14 pro.
For me, it’s been about the same as the 13. Pro but for others in different use cases, I can absolutely see it being slightly worse again. Most people aren’t jumping from a 13 Pro to a 14 pro, but if you are battery, life is not one of the reasons why you’re doing so now. The other heated topic with the 14 pro the pro Max, as well as the regular iPhone 14 pro lineup, is esim to where, at least on the US versions of the phones, Apple decided to ax the physical SIM card tray to where it is only electronic.
I am not someone who swaps devices or platforms frequently and, to my surprise, it actually went completely smooth to the point where not one thing went wrong. Conversely, just because it went smooth for me doesn’t automatically guarantee that it’s going to go smooth for the next person. So if you are someone who jumps from device to device or platform to platform, I could absolutely see why this move would be frustrating for you. Ultimately, it is definitely a case-by-case situation and down to the carrier that you use, but hopefully with time everyone gets that smooth, seamless experience. So I ended up going with a 14 pro in space black, which I think looks incredible.
The pro Max is just too ridiculously big as much as I loved the 12 mini. I ended up not going for a 13 minute because of the strong rumor. That Apple was going to omit the mini from the 14 lineup, which they have since done so rip to the mini. I think the other deciding factor that made things easier for me is now more than ever, there’s a clear distinction between the pro and non-pro lineup and not just Dynamic island or the cameras or the 120 hertz display, but a different chipset altogether.
Now touching upon the things that stood out to me, I’m not sure if this is in my head or a combination of a16 iOS 16, the inclusion of Bluetooth 5.3 in both the iPhone 14 pro and airpods pro 2. But the spatial audio experience is shockingly good and better than anything else, I’ve tried in my airpods Pro 2 review. I talked talked about how good the spatial audio improvements were, but together paired with the iPhone 14 pro.
It feels like it’s on a different level. There’S a track that I mixed for Julia wolf, where this percussive element circles around your head, the depth and the space there, along with the background, vocals kind of blew me away and again. To my surprise, the combination of airpods Pro 2 with the 14 pro has been one of my favorite things so far. Speaking of music and spatial audio, I want to give a quick shout out to today’s sponsor distrokid. I’Ve used them to upload my own music and, while I was initially drawn to them because of how quickly they supported Dolby, Atmos and spatial audio, the entire experience with them across the board has been amazing, they’ve recently rolled out a new service, distro vid, which, if You’Re, a musician is the easiest way to get your music video onto Apple, music, Amazon, music, title or even Vevo, and keep a hundred percent of the earnings. It’S only 99 bucks a year which gets you unlimited video uploads, which is kind of wild, and again you get to keep a hundred percent of those earnings.
Probably one of my favorite features here is that it supports high def video. So not only can you upload your music videos in glorious 4K, but you also have access to tools like custom thumbnails. So if you’re, an independent artist they’re putting the power into your hands, everything from Custom upload dates to that Vivo Watermark, which is immensely helpful. They’Re. Bringing record label features for a fraction of the price and, more importantly, you keep your earnings. It really is that simple.
So if you want to learn more on distrovid or even distro, kid check out the links down below from there. What really kind of surprised me, even as a 13 Pro user was the camera specifically 48 megapixels and pro raw cinematic mode, which now shoots 4K and the front-facing camera as a whole. So one of the biggest upgrades here is autofocus, which applies not just to the 14 pro and pro Max, but the entire 14 lineup across the board.
That’S going to help out not just with video but photos as well, and this case 4K. Cinematic mode also applies to the front-facing camera as well. So with that, that’ll be a good chance to showcase the front-facing camera and give a little update on how things are going for me.
Health-Wise, it’s been a very slow drawn out long, tedious process, but there definitely has been Improvement, which is amazing. A lot of the blur has subsided and that initial wound has shrunk from about 100 down to like 15 or 20.. So with things in this stage, just kind of this back and forth dance of steroid eye drops and antivirals, the steroid eye drops effectively suppress your immune system, which the point of that is to prevent long-term scarring, which is going to be that permanent aspect of things. At the same time, though, when you’re suppressing your immune system, you also run the risk of having a setback or getting things reinfected, which is what we don’t want again. One of the biggest challenges here has been the mental aspect of everything, because there’s good days and better days and there’s bad days and frustrating days, especially when you feel like you, make progress and then some days you feel, like you, take step back that initial 100 To 20 percent is definitely easier than going from that final 20 to zero.
So I feel, like I’ve had more frustrating days the last week where that initial progress felt like it was a lot faster than what’s going on now, but again still very grateful to be making progress at all. There are moments where your mind and your brain forgets. Anything’S wrong and then your body or your eye doesn’t react how it normally would and that’s where that frustration kicks in, but again just trying to take things day by day, trying to keep myself occupied and busy and have fun creatively like we’re doing here with cinematic Mode on the iPhone 13 Pro I’ll be the first to admit it was a very cool. First gen feature implementation. That was better than I thought, but far from perfect. You could only shoot in 1080P at one frame rate, and I was excited to see where Apple would take this. I knew it was going to get better. I just didn’t think it would get this much better. As quick as it did, I got a chance to shoot an acoustic performance of fly by midnight were one of my favorite groups shout out to Justin slavo. The location, though, where we shot at, was on the wrong side of sunset, so the lighting wasn’t the best, but I think the end result kind of shocked us all. I think a lot of that has to do with the a16 paired with the bigger sensor on the iPhone 14, but man that main lens in cinematic mode in 4k is impressive. The sharpness, the dynamic range, how quickly it locked onto faces the background depth, which is definitely more organic if you roll it off to something like five. Six is all wildly impressive, but what stood out to me was the foreground depth we’re getting closer and closer to how bigger cameras perform, we’re of course dealing with smaller sensors than a traditional camera, but as that, continues to get bigger and improve, and you pair that With better processing and computational video, that is extremely exciting. If you want to check out that full performance of it linked up here and down below now the 48 megapixel aspect of the iPhone 14 pro camera definitely comes with pros and cons one. You are only getting that with Pro raw, which is going to equate to bigger file sizes again, for reasons that I cannot comprehend or explain. Apple still has USB 2.0 speeds here on the iPhone 14 pro I get that airdrop is awesome, but it’s not the answer for pro raw or prores video. So, if you’re not using Pro raw you’re, not getting 48 megapixels, and in that case, if you’re just shooting standard photos, you’re not going to see a drastic jump from the 13 Pro to the 14 pro with that said, if you are shooting Pro raw and taking Advantage of those 48 megapixels, the results are very, very impressive. I’Ve seen some Wild results in terms of what you can retain and preserve from that image. In my case, what I really noticed was the sharpness and the detail that Pro raw 48 megapixels got you and not from an over sharpened, smartphone kind of way, just from a really good image kind of way again. Does that make the 13 Pro obsolete or suddenly not good? No, it just means if you’re someone who shoots it’s a lot of things with their phone. In my case I do happen to shoot a lot of stuff with my phone, so it’s valuable. So that applies to you and you can get past certain frustrations like USB 2.0. Then it’s a pretty substantial upgrade so, overall as a whole, I feel like the iPhone 14 pro and pro Max Were Somehow both over hyped and underrated.
At the same time, if that makes sense, certain things like Dynamic island or the always on display caught so much of the headlines and the discussion and the controversy that I think it kind of overshadowed the really good upgrades with the phone like the camera, you then Have things like a brighter display up to 2000 nits outside which is actually very useful, and all these upgrades start to add up, there’s no denying that this absolutely feels more like an S upgrade than a giant leap from the 13 Pro. But if any of this sounds useful to you and you’re, coming from something like a 12 Pro an 11 Pro or earlier, it’s going to be a huge enjoyable upgrade at the same time time, if the things I showcase or talked about, aren’t compelling or don’t improve, Your day-to-day then wait. Obviously next year’s phone is going to be better than the current. That is how it works, but I think more than ever, the decision is pretty easy. So hopefully you enjoyed the video if you did and you are feeling like being awesome, make sure you guys drop a like down below.
This is Jonathan and I will catch you guys later. .