We are on the eve of the new Apple phone launches, at the time of writing, iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Series will be released tomorrow.

This year Apple opted to stagger their smartphones. Instead of a full menu, the iPhone 14 Plus is still cooking in the kitchen and wont be available for a a few weeks.

But why would you want one anyway?

The iPhone 14 Plus is just an enlarged iPhone 14. And what is the iPhone 14? A reskinned iPhone 13 – with Crash detection.

Sure it’s an excellent feature, that I don’t dispute and think it should be on all smartphones, and my guess is that’s exactly what will happen eventually.

But Apple have spoken to their fanbase and said this year we are going to give you what you love most. Aged technology.

Apple has always lagged behind. They used to be the front runners.

The likes of Samsung, OPPO and Xiaomi have trail blazed camera and phone inner specs for a few years now on Android OS.

Huawei were at one time the lead in what they were releasing, at cut throat pricing… until the U.S. Govt. stepped in.

It seems as though this year Apple are herding their users to go Pro.

And honestly, it is a case of Go Pro or go… Android?

The Pro Series has finally had an upgraded main camera – to 48MP. Now this is a huge thing for Apple to do, who has largely not upgraded their camera’s – only confused their fans by adding new modes, making them blind to the fact they hadn’t had a proper camera upgrade since 2015.

The Pro series no longer has a notch. But wait – it still kinda does.

The ‘Dynamic Island’ is unfortunately not a trancey party island – it is a cut out notch, essentially, that can also double as an indicator for various apps. I’m told there will be ‘Dynamic Island’ games coming to the Apple app store. I won’t need to remind myself to ignore those.

Apple have mentioned that they cannot fit their facial recognition tech inside a small punch out lens. Yet manufacturers of flagship Android phones have been able to do this for some time.

On all new iPhone 14 models comes iOS 16. The notoriously fenced Apple mobile operating system.

Sure this is Apple. They like to control the user experience. And control what their paying customers can and can’t do.

And once you’re within their eco-system it’s hard to break out of it. Like a bad addiction.

While Apple put on a show as they do, with great pomp and circumstance – there was no denying the fact that they were selling to us media a concept that was so last year.

Apple blew everyone out of the water when Steve Jobs infamously introduced the world to iPhone in 2007.

This left other phone manufacturers bewildered and scrambling to compete.

So did Apple, a multi-trillion dollar company, just get too comfy and turned a blind eye to what their competitors are doing?

We will never really know – as Apple are very secretive.

But what we do know is tomorrow Apple will launch three new models – favouring the Pro series and hoping the ‘Dynamic Island’ will win over new and existing folk.

If you’re looking to upgrade from last year’s iPhone 13 – I’d suggest holding off paying a premium for the world’s most expensive smartphone series until Apple have fully caught up – or maybe take the leap out of the Apple eco-system and embrace the future with a flagship (and cheaper) Android.

But if Apple juice is in your blood give the iPhone 14 a miss. You’re paying for 12 month old technology and get straight to the Pro models.

The post Apple iPhone 14. Go Pro or go Android appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Apple today revealed their iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, featuring the Dynamic Island, a new design that introduces an intuitive way to experience iPhone, and the Always-On display.

Powered by A16 Bionic, the fastest chip ever in a smartphone, iPhone 14 Pro introduces a new class of pro camera system, with the first-ever 48MP Main camera on iPhone featuring a quad-pixel sensor and Photonic Engine, an enhanced image pipeline that dramatically improves low-light photos.

These groundbreaking advancements make iPhone even more indispensable for everyday tasks, creative projects and now even emergency situations with features such as Crash Detection. iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max will be available in four new finishes: deep purple, silver, gold and space black.

“Our customers count on their iPhone every day and with iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, we’re delivering more advancements than any other iPhone. iPhone 14 Pro introduces a camera system that empowers every user — from the casual user to the professional, to take their best photos and video, and innovative new technologies like the Always-On display and the Dynamic Island, which offers new interactions for notifications and activities,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Groundbreaking safety capabilities bring users even more security, offering help when they need it most. And with the incredibly powerful and efficient A16 Bionic chip and all-day battery life, this is the best iPhone yet.”

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max feature a beautiful surgical-grade stainless steel and textured matte glass design in four stunning colours.

Available in 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes, both models include a new Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion that features the Always-On display for the first time ever on iPhone, enabled by a new 1Hz refresh rate and multiple power-efficient technologies. This makes the new Lock Screen even more useful, keeping the time, widgets and Live Activities available at a glance. The advanced display also brings the same peak HDR brightness level as Pro Display XDR and the highest outdoor peak brightness in a smartphone: up to 2000 nits, which is twice as bright as iPhone 13 Pro.

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max also continue to offer industry-leading durability features with the Ceramic Shield front cover, tougher than any smartphone glass, and are protected from common spills and accidents with water and dust resistance.

The Dynamic Island enables new ways to interact with iPhone, featuring a design that blends the line between hardware and software, adapting in real time to show important alerts, notifications and activities. With the introduction of the Dynamic Island, the TrueDepth camera has been redesigned to take up less of the display area. Without impeding content on the screen, the Dynamic Island maintains an active state to allow users easier access to controls with a simple tap-and-hold. Ongoing background activities like Maps, Music or a timer remain visible and interactive, and third-party apps in iOS 16 that provide information like sports scores and ride-sharing with Live Activities can take advantage of the Dynamic Island.

The pro camera system on iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in a smartphone, empowering every user, casual or professional, to capture the best photos and video.

iPhone 14 Pro takes computational photography even further with Photonic Engine, offering a giant leap for mid- to low-light performance in photos across all cameras through a deep integration of hardware and software: up to 2x on the Main camera, up to 3x on the Ultra Wide camera, up to 2x on the Telephoto camera and up to 2x on the TrueDepth camera. Photonic Engine enables this dramatic increase in quality by applying Deep Fusion earlier in the imaging process to deliver extraordinary detail and preserve subtle textures, provide better colour and maintain more information in a photo.

For the first time ever, the Pro line-up features a new 48MP Main camera with a quad-pixel sensor that adapts to the photo being captured, and features second-generation sensor-shift optical image stabilisation. For most photos, the quad-pixel sensor combines every four pixels into one large quad pixel equivalent to 2.44 µm, resulting in amazing low-light capture and keeping photo size at a practical 12MP.

The quad-pixel sensor also enables a 2x Telephoto option that uses the middle 12 megapixels of the sensor for full-resolution photos and 4K videos with no digital zoom. This delivers optical quality at a familiar focal length, which is great for features like Portrait mode. The quad-pixel sensor also brings benefits to pro workflows, optimising for detail in ProRAW. And with a new machine learning model designed specifically for the quad-pixel sensor, iPhone now shoots ProRAW at 48MP with an unprecedented level of detail, enabling new creative workflows for pro users.

The entire iPhone 14 line-up introduces groundbreaking safety capabilities that can provide emergency assistance when it matters most. With a new dual-core accelerometer capable of detecting G-force measurements of up to 256Gs and a new high dynamic range gyroscope, Crash Detection on iPhone can now detect a severe car crash and automatically dial emergency services when a user is unconscious or unable to reach their iPhone.

These capabilities build on existing components, like the barometer, which can now detect cabin pressure changes, the GPS for additional input for speed changes and the microphone, which can recognise loud noises typified by severe car crashes.

Advanced Apple-designed motion algorithms trained with over a million hours of real-world driving and crash record data provide even better accuracy. When combined with Apple Watch, Crash Detection seamlessly leverages the unique strength of both devices to get users help efficiently. When a severe crash is detected, the emergency services call interface will appear on Apple Watch, as it is most likely to be in closer proximity to the user, while the call is placed through iPhone if it is in range for the best possible connection.

The A16 Bionic chip in iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max is generations ahead of the competition and unlocks unparalleled experiences like the Dynamic Island, powers all-day battery life and delivers impressive computational photography capabilities.

With two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, the new 6-core CPU is up to 40 per cent faster than the competition and easily handles demanding workloads. A16 Bionic features an accelerated 5-core GPU with 50 per cent more memory bandwidth — perfect for graphics-intensive games and apps — and a new 16-core Neural Engine capable of nearly 17 trillion operations per second. Using Apple’s best-in-class fusion architecture to combine performance and energy savings, the chip delivers more performance with a fraction of the power compared to the competition.

Fundamental to the pro camera system, A16 Bionic powers incredible computational photography features. The CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and image signal processor seamlessly work together to support the new camera hardware and perform up to 4 trillion operations per photo.

iPhone offers users super-fast downloads and uploads, better streaming and real-time connectivity with 5G to help them stay in touch, share and enjoy content. Support for 5G on iPhone now extends to over 250 carrier partners in over 70 markets around the world, with expanded support for standalone networks. eSIM allows users to easily connect or quickly transfer their existing plans digitally, is a more secure alternative to a physical SIM card and allows for multiple mobile plans on a single device.

Later this year, for the first time ever Apple Fitness+ will be available for all iPhone users to subscribe to and enjoy in the 21 countries it is offered in, even if they don’t have an Apple Watch. iPhone users will have access to the entire service featuring over 3,000 studio-style workouts and meditations, all led by a diverse and inclusive team of trainers.

Fitness+ users will see onscreen trainer guidance and interval timing, and estimated calories burned will be used to make progress on their Move ring. Fitness+ will be fully integrated with the Fitness app coming with iOS 16 and located in the middle tab, where users can stay motivated to close their Move ring through awards, activity sharing and more. Users only need an iPhone to sign up (coming soon) and can then experience Fitness+ on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

Designed to take advantage of the new capabilities of iPhone 14 Pro, iOS 16 features a reimagined Lock Screen along with new communication, sharing and intelligence features that together change the way users experience iPhone.

The Lock Screen is more personal, beautiful and helpful than ever with a multilayered effect that artfully sets subjects of photos in front of the time and newly designed widgets that offer information at a glance. For Lock Screen inspiration, the wallpaper gallery offers a range of options, including Apple collections, a Weather wallpaper to see live weather conditions as they change throughout the day, an Astronomy wallpaper for views of the Earth, moon and solar system and many more.

With Messages, users can now edit or recall recently sent messages and mark conversations as unread to revisit them later. iCloud Shared Photo Library makes it even easier to share a collection of photos with family.

Live Text gets more powerful with the ability to recognise text in video and quickly convert currency, translate text and more, and Visual Look Up adds a new feature that allows users to tap and hold on the subject of an image to lift it from the background and place it in apps like Messages.

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max are designed to minimise their impact on the environment, with 100 per cent recycled rare earth elements used in all magnets, including those used in MagSafe, and 100 per cent recycled tungsten in the Taptic Engine. Both models also include 100 per cent recycled tin in the solder of multiple printed circuit boards, and 100 per cent recycled gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards and in the wire of all cameras.

iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max will be available in deep purple, silver, gold and space black in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB storage capacities. Customers in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the UAE, the UK, the US and 30 other countries and regions will be able to pre-order iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max beginning at midnight on Saturday 10th September 2022 with availability beginning Friday, 16th September 2022.

The post Apple debuts iPhone 14 Pro & iPhone 14 Pro Max appeared first on Shane the Gamer.