Tech Review: The new iPhone 14 Plus backs up its street cred with some solid attributes

Steve Jobs was not a technocrat; he was a marketing genius. There, I’ve said it — what I consider to be the truth, albeit a controversial one, given the legion of fans of i-devices.

But why would I start a review of an iPhone of all devices — that darling of the tech-savvy and the hip, with-it crowd — with such a polarising declaration? Just to establish that I do not belong in the Apple camp and any unsubstantiated negativity in this review could just be my bias speaking. But then, who better to review an iphone than an i-device agnostic? If this piece of kit manages to sway me, then that’s probably a big win!

So, to dive into it, our test mule this weekend is the iPhone 14 Plus. And a very smart and appealing red — nay, crimson — one at that. But we will come to the looks presently.

The iPhone 14 Plus sports a 6.7-inch screen, compared to the 6.1-inch of the base iPhone 14. The ‘Super Retina XDR’ display, as Apple calls it, is a 4K OLED, designed for “an incredible HDR experience for photos and videos”. In my experience, the video playback, while detailed and sharp, lacked the vibrancy of my Moto G 5G Plus (blasphemy!), although I was able to watch videos indefinitely without eye fatigue, owing probably to the brilliant contrast, which was among the best I have experienced on any phone.

Compared to videos, still images were markedly better and definitely in the league of the iPhone 14 Plus’ biggest rival, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra — or even marginally better.

The 5G iPhone 14 is powered by the A15 Bionic chip with a 5-core GPU and a 6-core CPU, speeding up its performance by 18 per cent over the iPhone 13. Apple explains that with the chip using 5nm technology and nearly 15 billion transistors, it is capable of up to 15.8 trillion operations a second, equipping the phone with machine learning to speed up all its tasks.

But such geeky technical details are only for the hardcore Apple fans, and if you are one, then I’m only preaching to the converted — for, you know what the iPhone is all about after using it through several iterations.

Improved features

Let me, rather, highlight some new and improved features, the first of which is the camera. The iPhones have established a reputation for returning great images, and this new one is no exception. The twin 12MP lenses on the rear main camera have larger sensors, larger pixels and faster apertures for a 49 per cent increase on the already impressive low-light performance. Add in optical image stabilisation and an ‘Ultra Wide’ camera that uses Apple’s Photonic Engine, and we saw pictures that exceeded expectations on every shot.

For selfie buffs, the front camera gets autofocus for the first time. A Cinematic Mode now supports 4K resolution and 30fps, and records in Dolby Vision HDR, while modes such as Action aid creative control.

Supporting all your clicking is a long battery life, the best yet on an iPhone. We consistently got over two whole days of extensive use on a full charge.

anirban@khaleejtimes.com