WRT AOD: I thought I wouldn't need it and would immediately disable it - after all, I have an Apple Watch. Nevertheless, I then found it cool and useful (the time can be read from far afar) so I won't disable it, after all.
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Video Review: Four Days With the iPhone 14 Pro Max
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Excellent initial review!
I've been enjoying my 14 ProMax since Friday. Updating from my 12 Pro went smoothly.
Initially I was looking forward to the Always On Display feature. But in the end decided I liked it better off. I'm getting two full days of regular use on a fully charged battery. That's great! I also like being able to ramp up the brightness outside. The phone feels fast and experience no delays.
I'm really looking forward to making some photos with the new cameras - the main reason I purchased the ProMax. Maybe in a few more days when the rain stops.
Here's a snap I made in the neighborhood a couple days ago before the Sun came up, as an experiment. Shot in RAW yielding a 79.7 Mbyte image.
I've been enjoying my 14 ProMax since Friday. Updating from my 12 Pro went smoothly.
Initially I was looking forward to the Always On Display feature. But in the end decided I liked it better off. I'm getting two full days of regular use on a fully charged battery. That's great! I also like being able to ramp up the brightness outside. The phone feels fast and experience no delays.
I'm really looking forward to making some photos with the new cameras - the main reason I purchased the ProMax. Maybe in a few more days when the rain stops.
Here's a snap I made in the neighborhood a couple days ago before the Sun came up, as an experiment. Shot in RAW yielding a 79.7 Mbyte image.
Apple could implement the same "Dynamic Island" tech for the notches and that would essentially solve the notch issue. That being said, the software update would eliminate the main reason people are upgrading to the 14 Pro. Very brave of them! So....there you go.
Cos we expect that a new sim standard should make life easier.
I had a esim for 2 years with Telekom in Croatia but when i switched from XS to 13 i had to go to the shop so that they could print me a new QR code.
The transfer option was blocked.
I guess Telekom is to blame but Apple soon forces all to esim and the customer just has to swallow.
Like before with dongles on their MB line
That is essentially what the video review here said. All I can do is hope for the best. Hoping it's better as I am with Verizon and not a MVNO like the reviewer.
I've also had my iPhone 14 Pro Max since Friday and I've noticed the Dynamic Island isn't all that dynamic for me. But the biggest thing I've noticed is the battery life isn't as good as the iPhone 13 Pro Max I had before it. It's slightly worse, but noticeable. Not sure what's going on there. I turned off the haptic keyboard and turned off the always-on display and it helped a bit. But it's still not as good. Maybe because of the much more powerful 5G modem? 🤷♂️
You do realize that other people have different experiences than you do, right?
I view the esim comments as the carrier's responsibility. They knew it was coming and some did a better job than others preparing for it. I had a good experience fortunately but am sorry that your carrier didn't do a better job for its customers.
Roll out of the software has been a little rough this time. Concerns rolling in over the camera vibrating in some circumstances with doing videos, calls through CarPlay not being able to be heard at full volume on the other end, etc. I'm sure Apple will address in future software updates but it does make me wonder...don't they test/see this stuff before launch?
I had the iPhone 13 Pro Max...I'm not really seeing the full benefit yet of upgrading and hoping the dynamic island will play more of a role. I did decide to turn off my "always on." I just didn't find it much help or necessary and my battery does drain slightly faster with this phone and the new software. I like the home screen customization and hope they will allow for more widgets to be added than what it currently provides.
Roll out of the software has been a little rough this time. Concerns rolling in over the camera vibrating in some circumstances with doing videos, calls through CarPlay not being able to be heard at full volume on the other end, etc. I'm sure Apple will address in future software updates but it does make me wonder...don't they test/see this stuff before launch?
I had the iPhone 13 Pro Max...I'm not really seeing the full benefit yet of upgrading and hoping the dynamic island will play more of a role. I did decide to turn off my "always on." I just didn't find it much help or necessary and my battery does drain slightly faster with this phone and the new software. I like the home screen customization and hope they will allow for more widgets to be added than what it currently provides.
Great video, Dan.
I as well had a terrible eSIM migration. Already on eSIM from 13PM last year on ATT. Activated successfully out of the box, updated the 14PM to 16.0.1 then Erased for Restoring from Backup. After that, Cellular service never came back. Took me about 6 hours on the phone with 5-6 different levels of ATT Tech support and about 24 hours without any cellular service. Finally got back online after doing a second full Erase and Delete all eSIMS, and getting another eSIM pushed from ATT.
I as well had a terrible eSIM migration. Already on eSIM from 13PM last year on ATT. Activated successfully out of the box, updated the 14PM to 16.0.1 then Erased for Restoring from Backup. After that, Cellular service never came back. Took me about 6 hours on the phone with 5-6 different levels of ATT Tech support and about 24 hours without any cellular service. Finally got back online after doing a second full Erase and Delete all eSIMS, and getting another eSIM pushed from ATT.
I don't have a problem with him sharing his experience. My issue is that he basically attributed his troubles to Apple switching to E-sim only, when really it was his carrier that was the issue.
Also... do you play COD vanguard?
The size/popularity of his carrier is completely irrelevant. He’s a customer, not a shareholder…if he was led to believe the transfer would go alright and he paid the money to get it done, there should be nothing for the customer to worry about.
I thought it was an excellent review and one of his better ones. I appreciated his telling of sim transfer problems. And I agree on the Deep Purple not so purple statement and lack of bolder colors on the Pro's.
Thank you Dan!
Thank you Dan!
It's why LUFC always avoid winning any silverware, for fear of not being able to lift it.
It is good you got it done easy but others didn't including myself with Verizon. It was a real nuisance and some of their reps don't know what to do. It was basically a lottery to get one that knew what to do and got it done after a failed original try.
Have been testing out the 48 mp raws in daylight - and they are absolutely amazing. Better than I expected. Interesting you were able to get a good shot at night too - where I would expect the 12mp binning etc to do better.
It's very satisfying, you don't want that to be over too quick ;p
Actually, I love the ease of eSim whilest traveling abroad! Just enter the code or use the app and I’m up and running in a literal minute. Before I had to search for a store (that is open!), fill in a lot of forms, wait for the sim, use the sim tool (which you always lose) to replace the sim card, activate it... All in all it took many hours to get things going. I am glad those days are over. It does of course depends on which countries you vist. But for those ‘sim-only’ countries I carry a cheap spare Pixel from a few year’s ago🤓
The eSIM controversy is just another convenient dead horse to beat. Whenever a new iPhone comes out there has to be SOMETHING to flog, another whatever-gate for the critics to pound on. But then the sales results come in and the critics wonder why their tales of horror didn’t slow the uptake down. Happens every time.
Nice Fireside Chat, dude. Look, to begin with, you complained about issues with the eSim with a company I have never heard of. Sure its a Verizon spin off, but it probably would have been a lot easier if you had a bigger company behind your switch. Second, I believe that your frustration with that issue bled into your crappy review. Battery life? There were so many things you didn't get to because you spent a lot of time in your "Fireside Chat" bitching.
Take it easy. It's only a phone.
Take it easy. It's only a phone.
Transcript (automated, so there will be typos):
This video is sponsored by Rockform.
This is the promax. This is what I've been using since Friday, so for like the last 72 to 96 hours or so. And I do have a lot of thoughts, and some thoughts have changed since my initial hype from the announcement from Apple last couple of weeks, since we've known about all the official features for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. And so I wanted to get my thoughts out there and then in the comments, please let me know your thoughts. And of course, subscribe if you want to see more videos, we still have so much more to test with this phone.
But one of the first things I do want to start off with is eSIM. I put out a tweet the other day that says eSIM sucks. And yes, that was just me being frustrated in the moment. I do think that eSIM as a whole, the concept, the technology, whatever, yes, it's fine. Let's move forward, let's progress. I really do believe in that. I'm not trying to hold it back, but I don't think a lot of carriers, specifically some of the smaller carriers that people belong to, myself included, or at least I did, those carriers were not ready for the amount of people that were trying to transfer from physical Sims to eSIMs all in one day, all at one time.
And even the big carriers, Verizon, AT&T and T Mobile, even those larger carriers had some issues. Now, I know a lot of people tweeted at me and said, oh, it took three minutes, and I wonder how many of those people were already on an eSIM to begin with.
Yes, it's true that one's a lot easier to manage. But when you're transferring from a physical SIM card to eSIM, yes, some people had a great experience. It took a couple of minutes. It was fine, it was seamless. And there were a lot of others, like myself, who did not have a good experience.
And I'll try to make it brief, but I was on Visible, which is a subsidiary of Verizon. It is an all digital company, which sounds great, but when you need to get a hold of them, using the chat inside of the app is not great, especially when there are thousands of people trying to do the same thing.
So on Friday, I transferred over my physical SIM, or at least I tried to. It had an error, and then it actually took my iPhone 13 Pro and it got rid of the SIM and the number from it because it no longer works with the physical, and it's stuck somewhere in between physical and the eSIM portion, and it never actually fully transferred. It's just kind of hanging out there in limbo. I never really got to talk to Visible because whenever I went on the chat service inside of the app, I was in a large queue.
And then whenever I got a number finally assigned to me and I got all the way down to two a couple of different times, I was two people away from being the next person to actually talk with a representative. The app would sign me out or crash, and I'd have to get back in line.
And honestly, after a full 24 hours of trying to do that, I got frustrated and I went to Verizon Proper and I started a new account and they gave me a temporary number while they port the number from Visible, which is actually not an easy process as well. And I'm still, without my actual phone number that I have a lot of people actually trying to call and text me and are concerned that I'm just not answering the phone.
So personally, I would have liked Apple to kind of not rush into this, or maybe they didn't rush into it, I don't know. But there are a lot of phones out there that have not rushed to just all eSIM with no physical SIM. And this kind of reminds me of the Nano SIM day where that didn't really take off as much as people wanted it to.
So those are my thoughts on eSIM, and I would love to hear yours in the comments down below. But then let's move on to the rest of my thoughts on the iPhone.
Let's start with the two biggest features, and that's the Dynamic Island and the always on display. Now I was super Hyped for dynamic island. Apple did a really good job with its presentation of Dynamic Island, and all of the commercial and marketing videos that they have for it are really cool, and I still think it's really cool.
But after using the phone for four days, dynamic island is something that you don't really notice as much, especially since a lot of the developers out there do not have Dynamic Island kind of set in the apps yet. They're working on it. There are some things out there. Apparently Apollo has this really cool cat or something that goes around it, and there are some games that take I haven't seen them first hand, but that all sounds cool.
But I'm looking for third party apps to have some actually useful functionality. Now, I know Spotify, which is third party, it's up there and that works, and there are some that do work, but I'm looking forward to the day where we have more functional uses from other apps.
Right now, it's been fine. I don't use it as much, I haven't had the need, but it's definitely cool. It works really well.
I will say there is one thing that's kind of strange that I noticed, and that's the little microphone dot that lets you know that your microphone is in use. That for some reason is not in the Dynamic Island, it would make sense for it to be, but in certain use cases here, it's not. And it's all the way off to the right and it almost looks like it's not supposed to be there. It's like off to the right and then down a little bit and it's so close to the edge that it just looks like something that wasn't supposed to be there. I'm guessing that's a bug, but if it's not, that's a little weird.
But overall, everything has been fluid, it has been dynamic in some instances, but I'm just looking for a little bit more functionality. Otherwise, I think this is going to be something that you just kind of have and that it exists, but it's not something that maybe we were kind of like, oh, you should run out and get the pro because the Dynamic Island is really cool.
I think there are other reasons why this is just kind of a bonus nice to have. As of right now, those are my last three to four day impressions on Dynamic Island, and I think we can kind of say the same thing for Always On Display, though I do see far more functionality in it now.
My main concern with the Always On Display is that whenever I'm using the phone, maybe I'm texting somebody and then I'm done. I put it on my desk and it goes down into Always On Display mode and it kind of dims the screen and drops to 1 Hz.
If I get a text or another notification immediately, it will bring that screen back up to its full brightness as if I picked it up and was trying to interact with my phone. And it'll do that for a little while. And I think that's what's contributing to the larger than normal battery drain than what you would get with the Always On Display, just kind of sitting here all day.
There have been tests out there where people have said it's relatively minimal, maybe five to 10% throughout the day. For me, it's been fine. I think battery life has been pretty much in line with how it was with my iPhone 13 Promax, and so I'm not really noticing a major drain.
I think that if we can get the battery life to kind of stay at that 5% range, five to seven throughout the course of the day, I'll take that hit to have the convenience of being able to see my phone and lock screen and see what's coming in.
Now, one of the features that actually surprised me when it comes to display is that 2000 nits of outdoor peak brightness. So if you're out in bright sunlight, which over the weekend I was at a football game and it was just super bright sun for four plus hours, I've got weird tan lines going on here.
But yeah, I mean, it really helps to have that. my wife has an iPhone Twelve Pro Max, and I have obviously the 13 Pro Max before I switched here. And I had them both outside kind of hand in hand, looking at it, just doing a test. And you could really see a difference here when it goes from 1000 to 2000, I mean, you literally see that double of screen brightness automatically just kind of kick on.
And it is mind blowing how much better you can see your phone compared to somebody else's. I was looking at her phone, I had sunglasses on too, which got, if you know what I'm talking about, you know that if you have sunglasses, you're looking at another phone outside. Good luck trying to see anything.
And I couldn't see anything on her device, and I could see everything clear as day. On mine, it was super bright. I could even turn the brightness down if I wanted to and it would be just fine. But it was really good. So something to keep in mind as well, especially if you are outside a lot when using your iPhone.
And honestly, if you want to make things even more magnetic, which I didn't think you could do with these cases, but you can, you can use the special plug that comes with this rugged case from Rock Form out of the box. The case comes with a standard plug that works really well with MaxIf compatible products, including chargers. But if you pop it out and insert the magnetic plug, you can get even more magnetic strength. And let me tell you, I could barely get this Magsafe wallet off of my phone. I'm shaking it as hard as I can, I'm pulling it as hard as I can, and it's really stuck on there.
Even the company's Crystal case takes around 25 newtons to remove the wallet from the back of this case, which is quite a bit. These cases are obviously very well made, they're incredibly durable, and they protect your phone like no other.
So for more information about these iPhone 14 cases from Rock Form, visit the link in the description down below.
And then one of the last major new features, aside from the A 16 bionic, which I don't really think we need to talk about a whole lot, I haven't noticed any difference in performance between, honestly, between the 13 Promax and the 14 Promax. They both work really well, they've continued to work really well. So that's really all you need to know.
Thermal efficiency, I feel like it's been a little bit better, especially when I'm outside. Like I said, before with that screen brightness all the way up, my phone wasn't as hot as I might have anticipated it to me. So maybe the thermals are a little bit better with a 16, but I have no way of really actually quantifying that right now. So just kind of take my word for it, I guess.
But performance has been great, but the camera system is the biggest change. And you get that 48 megapixel wide angle sensor. It's so much larger, like 65% larger than the 13. We're going to do a full video, so please, if you want to see that subscribe, we'll be comparing the iPhone 13 Promax camera and maybe some other phones in the future to the 14 Promax.
But that'll be the next one. It'll be coming up very, very soon.
But I did snap some photos over the last few days of using it and I've been happy. If you're outside in the bright sun, you got good light around you, it's going to look good. It's always looked good. So I don't think there's a huge difference in that range. I think a lot of it is going to come in that low light, which I haven't really had a chance to test out a whole lot.
But my biggest thing that I really like with the 48 megapixel is if you take a photo, because it's going to default to twelve megapixels with pixel binning. So if you actually turn on Pro Raw, which is what you need to do to get 48 megapixels and you take a photo, it is going to be great.
When you crop in, it's not going to lose hardly any resolution or it's going to be a really good option for someone who wants to take a nice large file photo because that's what it's going to be and be able to crop in quite a bit and not lose out on any quality. It's very sharp. And again, we'll do more testing here soon. But the other thing that's really nice is having the ability because of that sensor, to have a near optical, like 2x zoom available again.
And so now whenever you open up the camera app here, you'll see you have your .5 ultra wide camera and then you have 1x, 2x, and 3x. Technically, that 2x isn't an optical zoom, but because of that 48 megapixel camera, you won't notice a difference in quality loss, that's for sure.
So you have those four optical like zoom ranges at your ready down there at the bottom, and you can choose between the four. And it's been a really nice addition.
And then the last thing I want to talk about are the color options. I'm not going to go too in depths on why Apple still continues to leave out bold color options for Pro users. If you want those color options, you need to go with the 14 and 14 plus.
But I do like the two newer options. And that's this new black, which is technically space black before it was graphite and then space gray. This one is definitely the best out of the previous gray black options that Apple has ever offered. I love the black stainless steel. I love this kind of space black option that they give you. It looks really clean. It's my personal favorite.
And then I'm kind of disappointed in the Purple, even though I'm going to tell you right now. It is definitely the next best color option in my opinion. I mean, it's just something that it's very boring most of the time. Like, sometimes it's going to look blue, sometimes it's going to look navy.
I'm trying to look at the camera here. Right here. It looks kind of like the space black. And then when I turn it towards the light, it's got a purple. But it's not a lot of purple. So, I mean, maybe you might like that. It is very subtle.
The stainless steel purple is very nice. So color options are kind of meh as always, but if I had to pick, it's going to be one of these two. And my ultimate favorite choice here right now is the Space Gray or Space Black. So, yeah, overall, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below, which color you like, what you thought about my thoughts as I've tested these phones for the last three to four days.
Now, my kind of conclusion right now is that I don't think maybe the 14 Promax or the 14 pro is as much of an upgrade as I thought it might have been over the 13 pro and 13 Promax. Obviously, if we get any older than that, I do start to see where the value lies. Maybe the camera might be better again. We're going to be testing that very soon. So you can let me know in the comments which tests you want to see. And please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss those videos. This is vibe with Mac rumors. Thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next video.
This video is sponsored by Rockform.
eSIM Frustrations
So we're gonna do things differently for this video. We're gonna have just kind of like a relaxing Fireside chat about the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.This is the promax. This is what I've been using since Friday, so for like the last 72 to 96 hours or so. And I do have a lot of thoughts, and some thoughts have changed since my initial hype from the announcement from Apple last couple of weeks, since we've known about all the official features for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. And so I wanted to get my thoughts out there and then in the comments, please let me know your thoughts. And of course, subscribe if you want to see more videos, we still have so much more to test with this phone.
But one of the first things I do want to start off with is eSIM. I put out a tweet the other day that says eSIM sucks. And yes, that was just me being frustrated in the moment. I do think that eSIM as a whole, the concept, the technology, whatever, yes, it's fine. Let's move forward, let's progress. I really do believe in that. I'm not trying to hold it back, but I don't think a lot of carriers, specifically some of the smaller carriers that people belong to, myself included, or at least I did, those carriers were not ready for the amount of people that were trying to transfer from physical Sims to eSIMs all in one day, all at one time.
And even the big carriers, Verizon, AT&T and T Mobile, even those larger carriers had some issues. Now, I know a lot of people tweeted at me and said, oh, it took three minutes, and I wonder how many of those people were already on an eSIM to begin with.
Yes, it's true that one's a lot easier to manage. But when you're transferring from a physical SIM card to eSIM, yes, some people had a great experience. It took a couple of minutes. It was fine, it was seamless. And there were a lot of others, like myself, who did not have a good experience.
And I'll try to make it brief, but I was on Visible, which is a subsidiary of Verizon. It is an all digital company, which sounds great, but when you need to get a hold of them, using the chat inside of the app is not great, especially when there are thousands of people trying to do the same thing.
So on Friday, I transferred over my physical SIM, or at least I tried to. It had an error, and then it actually took my iPhone 13 Pro and it got rid of the SIM and the number from it because it no longer works with the physical, and it's stuck somewhere in between physical and the eSIM portion, and it never actually fully transferred. It's just kind of hanging out there in limbo. I never really got to talk to Visible because whenever I went on the chat service inside of the app, I was in a large queue.
And then whenever I got a number finally assigned to me and I got all the way down to two a couple of different times, I was two people away from being the next person to actually talk with a representative. The app would sign me out or crash, and I'd have to get back in line.
And honestly, after a full 24 hours of trying to do that, I got frustrated and I went to Verizon Proper and I started a new account and they gave me a temporary number while they port the number from Visible, which is actually not an easy process as well. And I'm still, without my actual phone number that I have a lot of people actually trying to call and text me and are concerned that I'm just not answering the phone.
So personally, I would have liked Apple to kind of not rush into this, or maybe they didn't rush into it, I don't know. But there are a lot of phones out there that have not rushed to just all eSIM with no physical SIM. And this kind of reminds me of the Nano SIM day where that didn't really take off as much as people wanted it to.
So those are my thoughts on eSIM, and I would love to hear yours in the comments down below. But then let's move on to the rest of my thoughts on the iPhone.
Dynamic Island
Let's start with the two biggest features, and that's the Dynamic Island and the always on display. Now I was super Hyped for dynamic island. Apple did a really good job with its presentation of Dynamic Island, and all of the commercial and marketing videos that they have for it are really cool, and I still think it's really cool.
But after using the phone for four days, dynamic island is something that you don't really notice as much, especially since a lot of the developers out there do not have Dynamic Island kind of set in the apps yet. They're working on it. There are some things out there. Apparently Apollo has this really cool cat or something that goes around it, and there are some games that take I haven't seen them first hand, but that all sounds cool.
But I'm looking for third party apps to have some actually useful functionality. Now, I know Spotify, which is third party, it's up there and that works, and there are some that do work, but I'm looking forward to the day where we have more functional uses from other apps.
Right now, it's been fine. I don't use it as much, I haven't had the need, but it's definitely cool. It works really well.
I will say there is one thing that's kind of strange that I noticed, and that's the little microphone dot that lets you know that your microphone is in use. That for some reason is not in the Dynamic Island, it would make sense for it to be, but in certain use cases here, it's not. And it's all the way off to the right and it almost looks like it's not supposed to be there. It's like off to the right and then down a little bit and it's so close to the edge that it just looks like something that wasn't supposed to be there. I'm guessing that's a bug, but if it's not, that's a little weird.
But overall, everything has been fluid, it has been dynamic in some instances, but I'm just looking for a little bit more functionality. Otherwise, I think this is going to be something that you just kind of have and that it exists, but it's not something that maybe we were kind of like, oh, you should run out and get the pro because the Dynamic Island is really cool.
I think there are other reasons why this is just kind of a bonus nice to have. As of right now, those are my last three to four day impressions on Dynamic Island, and I think we can kind of say the same thing for Always On Display, though I do see far more functionality in it now.
Always On Display / Battery Life
My main concern with the Always On Display is that whenever I'm using the phone, maybe I'm texting somebody and then I'm done. I put it on my desk and it goes down into Always On Display mode and it kind of dims the screen and drops to 1 Hz.
If I get a text or another notification immediately, it will bring that screen back up to its full brightness as if I picked it up and was trying to interact with my phone. And it'll do that for a little while. And I think that's what's contributing to the larger than normal battery drain than what you would get with the Always On Display, just kind of sitting here all day.
There have been tests out there where people have said it's relatively minimal, maybe five to 10% throughout the day. For me, it's been fine. I think battery life has been pretty much in line with how it was with my iPhone 13 Promax, and so I'm not really noticing a major drain.
I think that if we can get the battery life to kind of stay at that 5% range, five to seven throughout the course of the day, I'll take that hit to have the convenience of being able to see my phone and lock screen and see what's coming in.
Display Brightness
Now, one of the features that actually surprised me when it comes to display is that 2000 nits of outdoor peak brightness. So if you're out in bright sunlight, which over the weekend I was at a football game and it was just super bright sun for four plus hours, I've got weird tan lines going on here.
But yeah, I mean, it really helps to have that. my wife has an iPhone Twelve Pro Max, and I have obviously the 13 Pro Max before I switched here. And I had them both outside kind of hand in hand, looking at it, just doing a test. And you could really see a difference here when it goes from 1000 to 2000, I mean, you literally see that double of screen brightness automatically just kind of kick on.
And it is mind blowing how much better you can see your phone compared to somebody else's. I was looking at her phone, I had sunglasses on too, which got, if you know what I'm talking about, you know that if you have sunglasses, you're looking at another phone outside. Good luck trying to see anything.
And I couldn't see anything on her device, and I could see everything clear as day. On mine, it was super bright. I could even turn the brightness down if I wanted to and it would be just fine. But it was really good. So something to keep in mind as well, especially if you are outside a lot when using your iPhone.
Rock Form midroll Ad
Now, before we continue on, if you did just pick up a new iPhone 14 or 14 Pro and you're looking for a really good way to protect your shiny new device, you should definitely check out today's sponsor, Rock Form. Rock Forms new lineup of cases have some of the strongest magnets for maximum compatibility that I've ever seen or used.And honestly, if you want to make things even more magnetic, which I didn't think you could do with these cases, but you can, you can use the special plug that comes with this rugged case from Rock Form out of the box. The case comes with a standard plug that works really well with MaxIf compatible products, including chargers. But if you pop it out and insert the magnetic plug, you can get even more magnetic strength. And let me tell you, I could barely get this Magsafe wallet off of my phone. I'm shaking it as hard as I can, I'm pulling it as hard as I can, and it's really stuck on there.
Even the company's Crystal case takes around 25 newtons to remove the wallet from the back of this case, which is quite a bit. These cases are obviously very well made, they're incredibly durable, and they protect your phone like no other.
So for more information about these iPhone 14 cases from Rock Form, visit the link in the description down below.
Performance / Efficiency
And then one of the last major new features, aside from the A 16 bionic, which I don't really think we need to talk about a whole lot, I haven't noticed any difference in performance between, honestly, between the 13 Promax and the 14 Promax. They both work really well, they've continued to work really well. So that's really all you need to know.
Thermal efficiency, I feel like it's been a little bit better, especially when I'm outside. Like I said, before with that screen brightness all the way up, my phone wasn't as hot as I might have anticipated it to me. So maybe the thermals are a little bit better with a 16, but I have no way of really actually quantifying that right now. So just kind of take my word for it, I guess.
Camera
But performance has been great, but the camera system is the biggest change. And you get that 48 megapixel wide angle sensor. It's so much larger, like 65% larger than the 13. We're going to do a full video, so please, if you want to see that subscribe, we'll be comparing the iPhone 13 Promax camera and maybe some other phones in the future to the 14 Promax.
But that'll be the next one. It'll be coming up very, very soon.
But I did snap some photos over the last few days of using it and I've been happy. If you're outside in the bright sun, you got good light around you, it's going to look good. It's always looked good. So I don't think there's a huge difference in that range. I think a lot of it is going to come in that low light, which I haven't really had a chance to test out a whole lot.
But my biggest thing that I really like with the 48 megapixel is if you take a photo, because it's going to default to twelve megapixels with pixel binning. So if you actually turn on Pro Raw, which is what you need to do to get 48 megapixels and you take a photo, it is going to be great.
When you crop in, it's not going to lose hardly any resolution or it's going to be a really good option for someone who wants to take a nice large file photo because that's what it's going to be and be able to crop in quite a bit and not lose out on any quality. It's very sharp. And again, we'll do more testing here soon. But the other thing that's really nice is having the ability because of that sensor, to have a near optical, like 2x zoom available again.
And so now whenever you open up the camera app here, you'll see you have your .5 ultra wide camera and then you have 1x, 2x, and 3x. Technically, that 2x isn't an optical zoom, but because of that 48 megapixel camera, you won't notice a difference in quality loss, that's for sure.
So you have those four optical like zoom ranges at your ready down there at the bottom, and you can choose between the four. And it's been a really nice addition.
Color Options
And then the last thing I want to talk about are the color options. I'm not going to go too in depths on why Apple still continues to leave out bold color options for Pro users. If you want those color options, you need to go with the 14 and 14 plus.
But I do like the two newer options. And that's this new black, which is technically space black before it was graphite and then space gray. This one is definitely the best out of the previous gray black options that Apple has ever offered. I love the black stainless steel. I love this kind of space black option that they give you. It looks really clean. It's my personal favorite.
And then I'm kind of disappointed in the Purple, even though I'm going to tell you right now. It is definitely the next best color option in my opinion. I mean, it's just something that it's very boring most of the time. Like, sometimes it's going to look blue, sometimes it's going to look navy.
I'm trying to look at the camera here. Right here. It looks kind of like the space black. And then when I turn it towards the light, it's got a purple. But it's not a lot of purple. So, I mean, maybe you might like that. It is very subtle.
The stainless steel purple is very nice. So color options are kind of meh as always, but if I had to pick, it's going to be one of these two. And my ultimate favorite choice here right now is the Space Gray or Space Black. So, yeah, overall, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below, which color you like, what you thought about my thoughts as I've tested these phones for the last three to four days.
Conclusion
Now, my kind of conclusion right now is that I don't think maybe the 14 Promax or the 14 pro is as much of an upgrade as I thought it might have been over the 13 pro and 13 Promax. Obviously, if we get any older than that, I do start to see where the value lies. Maybe the camera might be better again. We're going to be testing that very soon. So you can let me know in the comments which tests you want to see. And please subscribe to the channel so you don't miss those videos. This is vibe with Mac rumors. Thanks so much for watching and I hope to see you around in the next video.
I ordered a 14 Pro the morning of day-one and won't getting it til 10/10-17. Been on Total Wireless family plan w/ my wife and kids for years and it's been excellent and really cheap, like only $25 a month for me and the coverage and data is just fine. NOT looking forward to finding and switching to an eSim carrier that is not the monthly price of the big three. On that note, any suggestions for a good value that works with eSim? Really wish Apple would have not jumped the gun on this point, but hey, that's Apple for ya: Way out ahead on things that aren't that important, and missing the boat on others.
While I sympathize with having eSim issues in general, this doesn't seem like the video to complain about it since as others mentioned it has more to do with the carrier than the phone itself. A friend of mine was complaining that no SIM card might be a problem when traveling but someone else addressed that earlier as well. As for me, it was 100% seamless but I was going from eSim to eSim. Last year I had problems with the transition, but that was completely because of Best Buy's ineptitude. But similarly it makes no sense for me to spend a bunch of time complaining about that here.
Other comments:
I never viewed dynamic island or always on as features that would make me want to upgrade, but more as "nice to haves." And I would say so far they have both exceeded my expectations so I'm happy with the updates. I like being able to just glance over at my phone at any time (whether I had turned it on or off) and see the time, as well as the widgets like number of steps that I added. The island is kind of fun to see what will happen with it, but doesn't really change my day to day usage (aside from the pong game which is a pretty fun diversion).
I haven't had a chance to test the camera yet, but I assume it's going to be a win. Battery life definitely seems better; I saw a review from Tom's Guide saying something like 2 hours better in testing but I haven't experienced anything like that. But even with Always On, I seem to be getting slightly better life so far. Oh - 5G - I read about the chip improvement the other day and didn't think much of it, until I was in the bathroom at work yesterday and got a remarkable 1492 Mbps on Speedtest. I was really surprised; that's the fastest download speed I've seen on my phone ever, including WiFi. I did another test in a conference room and got 947 so I don't think this was a fluke. If this holds up in other locations, that would have been worth the upgrade for me personally.
Oh and about the color. I guess since I'm always using a case (even clear ones), it doesn't matter much to me any more which one I get, but I went with the Space Black, and I do really like it. The purple looked nice to me as well but I'm glad I went with black.
Other comments:
I never viewed dynamic island or always on as features that would make me want to upgrade, but more as "nice to haves." And I would say so far they have both exceeded my expectations so I'm happy with the updates. I like being able to just glance over at my phone at any time (whether I had turned it on or off) and see the time, as well as the widgets like number of steps that I added. The island is kind of fun to see what will happen with it, but doesn't really change my day to day usage (aside from the pong game which is a pretty fun diversion).
I haven't had a chance to test the camera yet, but I assume it's going to be a win. Battery life definitely seems better; I saw a review from Tom's Guide saying something like 2 hours better in testing but I haven't experienced anything like that. But even with Always On, I seem to be getting slightly better life so far. Oh - 5G - I read about the chip improvement the other day and didn't think much of it, until I was in the bathroom at work yesterday and got a remarkable 1492 Mbps on Speedtest. I was really surprised; that's the fastest download speed I've seen on my phone ever, including WiFi. I did another test in a conference room and got 947 so I don't think this was a fluke. If this holds up in other locations, that would have been worth the upgrade for me personally.
Oh and about the color. I guess since I'm always using a case (even clear ones), it doesn't matter much to me any more which one I get, but I went with the Space Black, and I do really like it. The purple looked nice to me as well but I'm glad I went with black.
Moving forward with eSIM (for what reason I'm still not sure) and screwing out tons of customers who were perfectly happy with their cheap carriers, shows IMO, Apple's lack of interest in the real needs of their customer base. For lots of us, paying a ton of money for a premium iPhone, and then being forced (once again, like when AT&T was the only iPhone carrier) to pay those higher monthly fees to the big three really stinks. Been a devoted Apple fan since 1990 and the pessimism grows a liiiiittle more each year.
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I think RAW helps a lot there; especially on exposure latitude. At 1/30th of a second the image stabilization no doubt helped some keeping things sharp. Here's the exif: