With this in mind, what upgrades and features are the standard iPhone 14 models expected to offer later this year?
Take the iPhone 13 Pro and strip off the telephoto lens/camera and LiDAR. That gets a list of upgrades .
Step 0 is that Apple could not raise the price , but bump the 'Pro' models with inflationary price hike they want to slap on it. ( e.g. , iPhone SE 3 .. got a price bump).
1. a 'full' A15. [ The 13 'regular' is stripped of a 1GPU core. Put it back at the lower price . ]
2. screen nit bump.
3. the 13 Pro has a bump in battery (has longer video battery play time)
4. dribble ProMotion down ( don't recall if Apple used slowed down screen refresh to save battery life. )
5. Aperture and lens upgrades ( 1.6 -> 1.6 Wide 2.4 -> 1.8 Ultra Wide )
6. Apple ProRaw ( like the fused off GPU core .. this was capable before. )
7. Night Mode Portraits ( again was there but 'market segmented turned off' . If no critical LiDAR dependency here . There are some but if lean on more computation photo improvements could have "a bit less than complete night" mode improvements..)
8 RAM upgrade. ( probably enables ProRAW and Night Mode more smoothly )
9. Macro Photography
Throw on top better 5G Radio; newest Qualcomm . ( last before "version 1.0" Apple radio). [ If Apple is penny pinch on bill-of-material and development support costs then same radio as iPhone 13 Pro to minimize R&D and component costs. ]
So can markets as "iPhone 13Pro at regular new iPhone prices". That isn't going to 'hurt'. Can get a 'Pro' iPhone for $200 less in 2022. That should work pretty well. Even more so in the inflationary pricing on everything else.
( Apple uses components with R&D paid off by iPhone 13 to lower the delivery price point. )
If a while the iPhone 13 Pro sold in numbers about as high as the regular iPhone. It is popular, Apple could continue to sell it for another year with a 'new' badge at about at higher numbers. (minus the mego fans of the telephoto lens)
The 14 Pro takes on 48Mp for pixel doubled better sensor output ( 48-> 12Mp) than 'plain 14'. Still will have telephoto. If the computational photography from 48 pixels to 24 RAW is really good then has better ProRes RAW also. Pro has a new Soc (A16). Faster storage read/write. If emphasizing more better ProRes and RAW capture then could start storage baeline higher ( 256GB) . Still have all the focus and depth gaps enabled by LiDAR. Perhaps a next gen cellular radio advantage if Apple leaves the 'plain' 14 on iPhone 13 Pro parts. Ditto on WiFI 6E.
For the folks buying the Pro model as a better camera it would work. The hipsters who just gotta have the latest A-sereis SoC. Again, it would work. For folks that need 1+ TB storage it would work (as previous year Pro models generally disappear from sale... so can't buy "last year's" model from Apple at cheaper price. Same issue of iPhone Pro 13 versus an almost same feature set iPhone 14; old Pro is gone. ).
If had some reduction in PWM effect on screen that would be selling point too.
Rise and repeat in 2023 where the iPhone 14 Pro has largely paid for the R&D in initial ramp component costs for iPhone 15 (except perhaps radios if Apple is in hurry to dump Qualcomm).