Apple has announced the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus, with a familiar iPhone 13 looks — including the previous-gen A15 Bionic chipset. This year, there is no Mini option, so your options are big or bigger. Unlike the global version, Apple is removing the physical SIM tray from the US models in favor of the eSIM. The standard iPhone 14 model starts at $799, and the 14 Plus starts at $899 before taxes.
Both models support Emergency SOS, which will support emergency messaging via communication satellites when you’re out of range of a cell signal. Apple has created a new service around this feature and will be free for the first two years for users in Canada and the USA. The company says it can take less than 15 seconds to send a message with a clear view of the sky, and the interface guides users to point their phone in the right direction and walks them through the steps to connect with emergency service providers. It’s also possible to use the Find My app to share location without sending a message. It’s free for two years with iPhone 14 models.
The iPhone 14 sticks with a 6.1-inch screen, while the 14 Plus offers a big 6.7-inch screen. The 14 Plus model claims to offer the best battery life of any iPhone. Both models continue to offer last year’s A15 Bionic chipset — a major shift for Apple, which has typically introduced a new processor to be used by its entire iPhone portfolio every year.
On the camera front, there’s an ultrawide and a new 12-megapixel main camera with f/1.5 aperture and sensor-based stabilization. Apple claims there’s a 49 percent improvement in low-light image quality and says that Night Mode is twice as fast now. There’s also a new 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera with autofocus around the front. Apple says it’s also applying its Deep Fusion image processing earlier in the image pipeline, improving low-light performance and color rendering, a technology it’s calling “Photonic Engine.” Video recording also gets a new stabilization mode called Action Mode that uses the whole sensor for gimbal-esque steadiness. The iPhone 14 prices seem to be high and debuts at a time when inflation is high.
