iPhone 14 Pro Review

Three years of the same notch ended with a pill-shaped cutout that Apple animated into a status area, and the trick was that the Dynamic Island made the hole feel deliberate. Behind it the 6.1-inch 2556 by 1179 LTPO OLED ran from 1 to 120 Hz, stayed lit on the lock screen for the first time on an iPhone, and hit 2000 nits outdoors, the brightest panel on a phone in 2022.

The camera got its first real sensor change since 2015: a 48-megapixel quad-pixel main at f/1.78 that bins to 12 or shoots the full 48 in ProRAW, plus a usable 2x crop, a 12-megapixel ultra wide with macro and a 12-megapixel 3x telephoto. It matched the Pixel 7 Pro on stills and beat everything on video. The A16 Bionic on 4 nm, with 6 GB of RAM, was the fastest phone chip of the year and ran cool.

Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via satellite were the features nobody bought it for and a few people were saved by. Launch bugs were software: a camera that shook and buzzed in TikTok and Snapchat until iOS 16.0.2, and the always-on display eating more than it should until people turned it off. The 3200 mAh cell managed a full day, not more. Stainless steel and glass kept it heavy at 206 g and expensive to repair. US units went eSIM only. It shipped on iOS 16, runs iOS 26 today, and held at $999 for 128GB.