iPhone 14 series pre-orders start 16 September from RM4199 in Malaysia

Say goodbye to the iPhone mini and re-welcome the iPhone Plus, as Apple finally introduces the iPhone 14 series. We now have two 6.7″ iPhones: iPhone 14 Plus and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and two 6.1″ ones: iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro. Apple is offering fans of larger displays more options, while leaving those with smaller hands with none. Or perhaps Apple wants you to get the Zenfone 9? Well…

Photonic Engine: Deep Fusion brought earlier in the pipeline

Computational photography is the name of the game when it comes to smartphone cameras, and Apple is already the apex predator in this field. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to further up the ante, with them introducing Photonic Engine. What Photonic Engine does is apply Deep Fusion’s algorithms earlier in the imaging pipeline to deliver even better images.

Apple claims up to 2.5X improvement in mid to low-light performance on the main camera, and 2X for the selfie camera and ultra-wide shooters, on the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus. Meanwhile the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max delivers the biggest improvement on its ultra-wide shooter at 3X, and 2X across the rest of its cameras. It is worth noting that this figures also include the improvements yielded by the upgraded hardware as well, which is definitely worthy of mention.

12MP no more, at least for the iPhone 14 Pros

Apple has finally moved past their obsession with 12MP cameras that started way back in 2015. At least for the main camera on the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. The Pro duo will now tout a 48MP f/1.78 main camera, with huge 1.22µm pixels. This new sensor is reportedly 65% larger than the one in the iPhone 13 Pro. Similar to every Android smartphone camera out there, Apple will make use of pixel binning, combining four pixels for an equivalent pixel pitch of 2.44µm, resulting in 12MP images in normal use cases. Apple will allow you to shoot 48MP raw shots as well, if you so desire.

Taking advantage of the high resolution is sensor crop zoom, something which has seemingly been lost to the industry since the ill-fated Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020. The center 12MP of the sensor will be used to shoot 2X telephoto shots without resorting to digital zoom, essentially giving you “optical zoom” without any moving parts. Speaking of moving parts, the main camera features a second-gen sensor shift OIS system.

Also featuring OIS is the 3X telephoto camera, which didn’t seem to see any upgrades coming from the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. The ultra-wide camera continues to feature macro focusing capabilities, and also received a larger sensor with larger pixels (1.4µm vs 1.0µm) in exchange for a slower aperture (f/2.2 vs f/1.8).

The iPhone 14 series’ selfie chops are upgraded too, with a 12MP selfie camera, now featuring autofocus. Oh, did I forget to talk about the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus’ camera upgrades? Well, the only upgrade you are getting here is Apple lifting the main camera from the iPhone 13 Pro and slapping it into the iPhone 14s. They didn’t even improve the ultra-wide camera, FFS.

New chip, but only for the iPhone 14 Pros

As plenty of rumors predicted, Apple reused the A15 Bionic for the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus. It is worth noting that it is the beefier A15 Bionic from the iPhone 13 Pro, so there’s technically an upgrade here, albeit a very minor one. But do you really need a faster CPU, when the A15 Bionic still eats any chipset Qualcomm, Samsung or MediaTek has to offer for breakfast? Well, then you can check out the A16 Bionic in the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max.

The A16 Bionic features the same basic core configuration — six CPU cores, 5 GPU cores and a 16-core Neural Engine. Interestingly enough, Apple doesn’t quite compare this against the A15 Bionic, instead picking a fight with the “nearest competitor” which is supposedly 40% slower, and also significantly less efficient. The A16 Bionic is also manufactured on a new 4nm process node, which is probably shared with the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 and Dimensity 9000 chips.

New notch, but only for the iPhone 14 Pros

Or should I say, Dynamic Island? Apple is implementing the new pill-shaped notch, once again something which have been hinted at repeatedly by the rumor mill. Apple is taking advantage of this quite well in software though, with deep integration into software to incorporate more information and serve a much bigger purpose than just a hole in the screen. This is only available for the iPhone 14 Pros though, as the iPhone 14 gets the same notch that the iPhone 13 had.

Always-On display, but only for the iPhone 14 Pros

Finally. Apple will equip the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max with Always-On display functionality. The iPhone 14 and 14 Plus will still miss out on this. Apple claims that this is due to the new display going down to as low as 1Hz and other efficiency improvements, but the iPhone 13 Pro’s ProMotion displays already go down to 10Hz and yet Apple deemed them unworthy of AOD? Oh well… Apple’s implementation of Always-On display is quite different from Android’s though, being significantly more functional and visually interesting than what most Android smartphones have, backed by a desaturated and dimmed lockscreen wallpaper as well.

Wallet-breaking price tags, for all iPhone 14s

It is worth mentioning that Apple kept the price tags pretty much the same across the board in the US, although the starting price did go up a tad due to the fact that the mini is replaced by the pricier Plus model. However, thanks to our weak ringgit, we are quite literally F-ed. Prices start from RM4199 for the iPhone 14, and it just goes up from there.

iPhone 14 Series Price in Malaysia

The iPhone 14 series will be available for pre-order starting 16th September in Malaysia, with the first sales expected to be on 7th October.