Apple iPhone 14 review: Is an upgrade from last year’s phone justified?

Standardization is a particular aspect of the industrialization of product design. On the one hand, it should assure you of a benchmark that you can expect from a product. On the other hand, the standardization of a product can also make it appear lukewarm in terms of its level of innovation. Evidence of this is India’s increasing smartphone upgrade cycle – while the average smartphone usage time in 2015 was estimated at around six months, the same time span is currently around 30 months.

Factors include the fact that users today don’t see any features that would compel them to switch to a new phone, making buying new phones a purely voluntary expense – something users would choose from a lifestyle standpoint . The new Apple iPhone 14 is the embodiment of that.

Also read: Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: Is the new display a ‘dynamic’ new step?

At first glance, the iPhone 14 is an incremental upgrade as it could have been. It uses the same processor as before, the A15 Bionic – a sign that Apple itself doesn’t particularly see it as some kind of real “upgrade”. It uses the same display – still without a fast refresh rate that you’d find in even the cheapest Android smartphones today. The cameras retain the same sensor as before and the battery is 1.2% larger than the iPhone 13.

With that in mind, users who upgraded to the iPhone 13 last year would do well to avoid upgrading again — at least not to the iPhone 14.

But since the iPhone still retains a desirable label, unlike most other (even premium) smartphones, it’s still getting users who are at least curious about the new generation of the lineup.

Then the looks come first. The iPhone 14 looks identical to the iPhone 13 on the outside, unless you keep a very close eye on the iPhone colors. If social credibility is something that appeals to your gadget purchasing decision, you wouldn’t really draw envious looks from your neighbors with the iPhone 14.

Apple this year swapped out the green and pink options for a purple, while replacing the dark shade of blue with a light and rather pleasing shade of blue that I really like. Other than that, the diagonal camera layout looks the same, and the new notch design is only coming to the “Pro” model this year. The thickness differs by a tenth of a millimeter – and honestly you’ll be kidding yourself for saying you can tell the difference.

The iPhone 14’s display feels smoother as the new phone has more memory to handle heavier apps and games. The difference isn’t really that big and you’ll only feel it if you compare it to an iPhone 12. For convenience, the iPhone 13 feels just as smooth. It feels faster when gaming, and even without a new processor Apple seems to have achieved marginally better performance thanks to more memory available.

In terms of performance for most mainstream games and photo/video editing apps, the iPhone 14 feels as smooth as the iPhone 13 Pro. This is perhaps the biggest win for the iPhone 14, but the lack of a fast refresh rate “ProMotion” screen on this device means that once the iPhone 14 is at least over a year old, the small flickers and stutters will start to appear.

However, this also means that the iPhone 14 could well be a prudent purchase when upgrading from an iPhone 11 or iPhone 12. Developers have yet to create use cases for the Dynamic Island notch on the iPhone 14 Pro, and for most the quality of the main camera should be enough for both developers and hobbyists.

This brings us to the camera, where you’ll likely feel a difference from before. Apple’s use of an overhauled machine learning technique it calls “Photonic Engine” will give you significantly brighter and sharper photos at night. However, the cost of those brighter images falls on image noise – large and prominent grains that completely eat up darker shadows in a dimly lit photo.

The main camera lens is slightly faster and uses an aperture of f/1.5 this year. Simply put, this means your new iPhone will be able to take more stable photos at the same brightness level as older “vanilla” iPhones. You’ll notice this difference most clearly when you hit grungy bars every weekend and really want to show off how better the new iPhone is. It’s clearly better, but could improve its noise reduction algorithms.

What’s also better is the front camera, which now has a noticeably faster lens that can capture more light in the dark, and also has autofocus. As a result, self-portraits are generally sharper and retain better detail when partying.

The new “action mode” in video is trying to conquer action camera territory, and companies that have tried to miniaturize video stabilization to pro levels have usually had to either make a device very expensive or use a miniaturized gyroscope motor use the a phone, or the video quality is degraded.

While cost isn’t really a factor here, Apple hasn’t topped its phone. Instead, it uses an age-old trick of cropping into a sensor while using software to adjust the video to a horizontal plane. However, the results in terms of video fidelity are not really convincing, because objects in a stabilized video appear rather blurred.

“Action mode” also constantly challenges you to find a brighter environment – ironically even in very brightly lit offices. This essentially proves that Action Mode, like Cinematic Mode, remains a work-in-progress project. They have tremendous potential and hopefully a future software update will improve the mode as well. But they are not yet ready to be the compelling buying factors for the mighty iPhone.

So how is the iPhone 14 and who is it really for? First off, if you’re looking for a bit of social glamor and panache, nothing below Apple’s triple-camera “Pro” models would work – which makes the iPhone 14 a moot point anyway.

But if you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking about the iPhone 14 anyway. If you’re upgrading from the iPhone 11 or iPhone 12, the new iPhone 14 will feel significantly smoother and one with a better camera. iPhone 13 users will do well to skip this one (or the iPhone 14 Pro for that matter), and for first-time iPhone buyers the price point of €79,900 makes it a new good reliable phone to buy.

Of course, it’s the iPhone that offers all of its improvements in the fine print. But for what it’s worth, its incremental improvements feel like a new phone – as long as you’ve had at least two or more years with your older iPhone.

Also read: The Apple MacBook Air conundrum: M1 or M2?