Apple iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max arrive with pill notch, Always-On Display, and new cameras

Apple iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus was a much expected showoff yesterday. And also, showed off its updated Pro line of smartphones. The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max have new cameras, a new design for the notch, and a new chipset.

You can also contact emergency services via satellite if you are “off the grid” but have a clear view of a satellite or are in an area with “light foliage.” This service will start in November, but only in the US and Canada. For the first two years, it will be free.

The pill-shaped cutout at the top of the screen is the main change you’ll see. It is smaller than the old notch, which is because the cameras inside are now 30% smaller.

To help, the proximity sensor has been moved under the display. Apple couldn’t help name the cutout, so it’s called “Dynamic Island.” Apple is making some dynamic effects with the black pixels around the actual cutout.

The space around the cutout changes to make it easier to use controls for things like Maps, Music, or a timer that are running in the background. This area can also be used by apps from other companies. For example, you could get sports scores there.

The display itself, which is 6.1″ on the Pro and 6.7″ on the Pro Max, is now brighter, up to 2,000 nits peak for HDR content, and has a new controller that supports refresh rates as low as 1Hz. This means that Apple’s Always-On Display feature is finally available on a product, and it’s only on these Pro phones. The Always-On Display makes it easy to see the time, widgets, and Live Activities at a glance.

The main camera on the back has something called a “quad-pixel” sensor. This is a first for Apple, but it’s been around for a while in the Android world. The sensor has a resolution of 48MP, but the phone is set to shoot in 12MP by default.

The camera has an aperture of f/1.78 and pixels that are 1.22m before binning and 2.44m after binning. You also get full focus pixels and second-generation sensor shift stabilization.

By cropping from the middle, the high-resolution main sensor lets the camera app add a new 2x zoom step in the middle. This is perfect for Portrait Mode shots.

There is a new 12MP ultrawide camera that comes with it. It has large 1.4m pixels that make images sharper and more detailed and also improve macro shots. Lastly, the 3x telephoto camera is still there, and it has image stabilization that works with light.

The A16 Bionic chip is at the heart of both devices. It has two performance cores and four efficiency cores, making it a six-core CPU. Overall, the CPU is said to be 40% faster than the competition, and its two high-performance cores use 20% less power than the ones in the A15.

The A16 has a 16-core Neural Engine that can do 17 trillion operations per second. The 5-core GPU, on the other hand, has 50% more memory bandwidth.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max arrive with pill notch, Always-On Display, and new cameras

The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max will come in space black, silver, gold, and deep purple, and they will have 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB of storage, respectively. Friday, September 9, is the first day you can place a pre-order, and you can get it on September 16.

The price in the US is the same as it was last year: the iPhone 14 Pro starts at $999, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Like the cheaper iPhone 14 models that aren’t Pro, these don’t have a SIM tray for the US market. Instead, they only work with eSIM.