Literally just had to leave a comment on this blog post after reading because he talks about how he's going to start leaving his Garmin InReach Mini at home because he can now use the satellite feature on his iPhone when he's out hiking in the Scottish mountains. As far as I'm aware, the satellite functionality is currently strictly for the US and Canadian markets only. I get that it's a big deal and a great technological achievement they want to brag about but I hope they are making it abundantly clear in other countries that this functionality is not available. If they're glossing over it, they're going to end up with a lot of people going into potentially dangerous situations with a false sense of security like this guy with potentially tragic consequences.
Another good reason not to give up the Garmin just yet is having two-way communication on your emergency beacon too. It's not really confirmed or known what Apple is offering here and if there will be any way to communicate with rescuers if you have to initiate a rescue.
With Garmin devices you can text both ways and it has been shown in many rescues to be a huge advantage at getting the right search and rescue or other team to you faster--they can find out what the situation is and if they need to skip right to a helicopter rescue for example. If I were an avid hiker I wouldn't ditch the Garmin just yet (but hopefully in a year or two we'll see if Apple and others try to compete in the satellite rescue beacon world and offer comparable features).
It's two way but predefined messages only. This way apple Apple has a map of messages to some minimal bit value and saves on bandwidth. Garmin InReach allows for predefined messaging too and custom as a pay per message option, it can take 10 minutes or more to send a custom InReach message. Also, InReach uses iridium satellite network which has true global coverage whilst Apple is using Globalstar, which doesn't.
The more I read about the new functionality the more it seems you not only send predefined messages to start the conversation with emergency services but you can send arbitrary text as well.
Inreach is awesome for general communication, coordination for non-emergency where there is no cell reception. I've used it at ski resorts and national parks to meet up with people.
Don't forget you'll likely have your iPhone out a lot when taking photos etc, which means it's at greater risk of being lost or damaged or the battery running out, rendering the satellite features useless. Having a Garmin in your pocket that you never take out has its advantages therefore.
Or let’s talk about just how about the Garmin is actually a rugged device and usually clipped directly to an individuals clothes/pack. I can’t imagine iPhone is as durable and that typical protective case can be or will be attached to the individual hiking.
There are still situations I think sos on iPhone 14 does make sense. Like driving in middle of nowhere without signal and having car troubles.
I would also though agree people may get this false sense of safety, but I’m sure having something is better than nothing and having 2 options is better then 1 and maybe someone else hiking may find an someone who needs emergency help and doesn’t have inreach and able to help. The iPhone isn’t useless as sos device, but I will know I’ll be counting on my inreach on my adventures as my emergency beacon even if I did have iPhone 14.
It’s not active yet, the speculation is roughly November. Knowing Apple they will be VERY clear about this when the time comes. Since you have to sign up for service (free for the first two years) that would be a good time to make you go through the limitations.
> he can now use the satellite feature on his iPhone when he's out hiking in the Scottish mountains
He does not say this. He explicitly says he did carry his garmin when in Scotland. From the article:
> (for the last week in Scotland, we’ve not had cell service), so I have a Garmin inReach MINI I carry with me
The author's point was that he travels a lot in the US and abroad, and that he will keep his Garmin but use it less and pause his subscription more often.
This is a blog post about the iPhone being reflected upon whilst in Scotland, which makes it a good read. If it were an advertorial, I see how you could jump this critique on it. But it's not.
The author stated:
> Now, with the release of Emergency SOS via satellite on iPhone 14 Pro, I don’t plan to carry the inReach nearly as often, and I’ll pause the subscription to save the monthly fee, with the added benefit of weight savings in my pack. Keep in mind, the Garmin has its advantages with super long battery life and an extremely durable build made to withstand the rigors of multi-day expeditions, so I think it’s worth keeping around.
But probably the most exciting aspect of satellite connectivity being built into iPhone 14 Pro is that loved ones like my wife, Esther, will have it with them all the time. It’ll be ready for them to use whether they’ve planned for it or not.
The author has also replied to my comment saying he wasn't aware that the satellite service was North America and Canada only and that he will make sure to take his Garmin on international trips. My critique was not aimed at the author, but at the marketing materials which need to hammer this point home, even for North American residents such as this author. Based on this evidence, I think it was a pretty justified comment.
The Verge also mentioned that Apple goes overboard when it comes to noise reduction lately with their phones. It becomes really obvious when you compare an iPhone 13 with say a Pixel phone and there have been many complaints about it. Instead it looks like they continued to double down with it on the iPhone 14. It's a shame since they have such good hardware and ruin the pics with their photo processing pipeline.
Is that why my wife has been complaining all her pictures make her look like she has a smooth/filter-applied face? She just switched from Android to Iphone 13. I tried playing around with the settings but couldn't make it look 'normal'.
It's certainly a part of it. A comment I left 4 months ago[0]:
"After watching far too many videos comparing the iPhone 13 Pro Max, Samsung S22 Ultra, and Pixel 6 Pro, I decided against the iPhone because of the automatic skin smoothing.[1]
The iPhone 13 Pro Max removed wrinkles, sun spots, moles, hair, etc to the point where the results looked like overprocessed, manually edited photos. This wasn't subtle -- the reviewers commented on it as well.[...]"
[1] A responder in that thread took issue with my calling this skin smoothing. Whether this is intentional skin smoothing or overly aggressive noise reduction, the impact on the image is noticeable.
They probably run a bilateral filter [0] to get rid of sensor noise, but the settings are way too aggressive. Bilateral filters aren't there to explicitly smooth out skin, but they do this very well by being edge preserving and noise removing.
The article actually offers a solution that you can try:
> I do feel many of the images I’ve shot are a bit too processed and/or over-sharpened. When this happens, I’ve been bringing the ProRAW files into Lightroom CC and adjusting the “Apple ProRAW” profile slider to the left to reduce the HDR/sharp look if it’s too much for me.
Now you have to explain what exactly ProRAW files are, how to import them to Lightroom, and how to find the right slider to reduce that effect. What happened to the It Just Works™ simplicity?
Do you really think that the intersection of folks who are going to notice that images they've shot are over-processed/sharpened and folks who know how to get ProRAW files into Lightroom isn't a circle?
Not necessarily. Mostly. But people are sensitively to the result (too smooth) without knowing how to. Now you have. Solution some basic idea like how to access raw (specific apps or a setting in iphone) and which stage to turn to the left (camera raw I presume).
I've noticed the pictures from my iPhone look awful compared to my old pixel, and I know nothing about photo editing and there's zero chance I'd be willing to manually edit photos when the pixel is point-and-shoot
ha, so true, I often get so disappointed because my wife comes out looking like a wax model or something in many of our photos. It's not all the time but I wish I knew in advance or had some signal that filtering was being applied so I could at least react and change the settings or the lighting or something. Some kind of AR overlay would be nice, or even an after the fact overlay in the info settings like how you can view scanned text on an image, etc.
ProRAW doesn't disable image processing, in fact it even says as much in the link you provided.
> Apple ProRAW combines the information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing to offer additional creative control when you make adjustments to exposure, color, and white balance.
ProRAW is regular DNG raw files. In the DNG format you can store metadata like tonemapping masks etc but those are non destructive adjustments, it’s like a layer on top of the raw data. You can open the ProRAW files on any app that reads RAW files and undo any processing without loss of information and do your own processing.
I still think has denoise, and sharpening added as well as some magic from the other camera sensors. I would like to see a true raw from a single sensor.
They are DNG files, but I don't think they're truly raw like one might expect from other cameras[1]. I just downloaded the DNG posted in the article and took a look in Photoshop with all post-processing turned off. Definitely looks a bit processed in some of the background details, but I could be wrong.
Specifically, the out-of-focus shadow details look like a smoothing or denoising algorithm has been applied. Maybe it's just something about the optics Apple is using (e.g. different lenses can have distinct characteristics in bokeh, softening, color, distortion, etc) vs other dedicated cameras, but it's something I see in almost all photos coming from an iPhone.
are they regular DNG files, or linear DNG files? I remember Apple explicitly mentioning linear DNG, which means they at least have demosaicked the image, probably a lot more
You are right that they are demosaiced raw files but that’s about it
> Instead, ProRAW stores results of computational photography right inside the RAW. This is another reason they need to store demosaiced data, as these algorithms operate on color, not RAW data. Once you demosaic, there’s no going back. I mean, what would you even call that, remosaic?
> Smart HDR does this in the least destructive way. Apple worked with Adobe to introduce a new type of tag into the DNG standard, called a “Profile Gain Table Map.” This data gives your editor everything it needs to know to tone map your photo image and end up with results identical to the first party camera. Because it’s separate data, you can turn down its strength, or turn it off completely.
this confirms all the lousy bizarre looking photos I create at times. I suspected possibly some strange post processing was going on but couldn't confirm it. I assumed I was driving the phone in awkward lighting or some other condition where the post processing salvaged my photo from a blurry mess, but there's no way to tell because like others identified there's no way to turn it off.
I remember telling someone about this great image sensor on the old OnePlus One a friend gave me years outside of its lifecycle and how it takes pretty amazing photos. I wonder if it was just a function of no image processing, and my steady hand from years of photography and breath-holding practice to manually stabilize my photos.
It’s possible it’s an enhancement for the masses where a smill minority of experienced photographers are just pooped on. Apple is known to shove a decision in your face at times only to add a setting later to disable that. I still accidentally enable live photos by accident and I wish I could remove that altogether in the settings. Im still on the old SE and luckily photos aren’t post processed
All modern smartphones use computational photography to enhance and process your images. The sensor is too small and the lens just not good enough to not do it.
It's not just noise reduction but the sharpening of the photos is really crazy. I took a picture of my carpet and it looks nothing like it does in person or up close. Like my carpet is just fuzzy and bland colored, not deep grand canyon crevasses with lots of contrast that show in the iPhone photo.
Cameras don't know how much brightness or contrast something is supposed to have; if you take a picture with only the carpet in frame, on auto AWB and everything else, it's going to be an overly contrasty picture lit as if it's the noontime sun.
That's when you have to switch to something with manual controls.
I've been noticing this issue with many smartphones lately, I've been looking at smartphone camera reviews a bunch and none of them look particularly good.
no, iPhone is far more overprocessed. see dpreview or any other legitimate camera review site. iPhone cameras/software are just lackluster compared to the competition. things like HDR on iPhone have been bad for years.
The Pixel 6 camera is still terrible, and unless you want to edit every single picture you take, the colors are incredibly unrealistic. From what I've seen online, iPhone is not nearly as bad
They have been doing this since iPhone X. Somewhere along the line "Computational Photography" took over. And the old iPhone where they value true to life photo style turns to HDR high contrast smooth looking Instagram photos.
I remember the old Apple guards used to trash the Samsung / Android photo as being unrealistic. How the tide has turned.
The new Apple resembles very little of the old Apple.
I’ve noticed the same. New iPhones would always look better in the past up until the iPhone 8/X.
I find that the camera of iPhone 8/X looks better than that of iPhone 7. But iPhone XS looks worse to me due to overprocessing, and every iteration after processes more. :(
I just really like the night mode that computational photography brings in, but in every other area it’s a poison pill we’re forced to swallow.
I think we need a new way to judge cameras... Getting experts to zoom in on tricky corners is no longer a good way to test.
There needs to be a new metric that reflects the whole user journey of using the camera - from figuring out how it works, to taking new photos when one came out bad. How many attempts to get a photo of a serial number label down behind the dishwasher..? Do pictures of the moon look terrible because the lens has fingerprints all over and the user doesn't realise? Can the camera run at the same time as google maps navigation and an audiobook without lag?
> Offloading photos/videos via Lightning cable is another story. I’ve had some serious pains trying to transfer content from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. I’ve been on YouTube watching videos, unplugging, switching Lightning cables, restarting devices — doing all the things I can think of. I finally found a tip that said if you turn on Airplane mode, then Apple Photos will properly load, and thankfully it did.
> These pains offloading media are not a new issue specific to the iPhone 14 Pro, and I really hope it is solved soon.
I'm surprised that he didn't consider AirDrop as a means of getting photos out. That's how I transfer most of the photos I need to edit on my MacBook these days.
The crazy thing is how well libimobiledevice + AFC (1) work on Linux. All I do is plug in my iPhone and open Nautilus (2) to see a list of my apps (3) that support file sharing.
The phone shows up as a camera with photos, as well.
Oh, good point. In my first screenshot, the iPhone shows up twice in the leftmost list - the first with your apps and the second with photos from camera roll.
I wouldn't use Nautilus to import photos, though - I'd use something like digiKam (1 - showing my connected iPhone).
The first time you connect your iPhone, it'll ask if you want to 'Trust this computer'. After trusting, you need to run 'idevicepair pair' (2) in the terminal to pair. Then your iPhone (or iPad) will show up in Nautilus.
One use case: Infuse is my iOS video player, and copying movies or serials over is as simple as connecting the iPad or iPhone and copying to Infuse's storage. It copies at 20-30 MBs/sec, which is plenty fast.
I had not even thought about the ability to connect my iPhone with my Ubuntu machine. But it seems like I need to look a bit more into the possibilities.
I already use digiKam for my photography workflow. It is really awesome for managing photos, adding tags etc.
For importing photos I actually use Rapid Photo Downloader in order to import photos into "date-ordered" folders. So if I can get Ubuntu to recognise my iPhone then I can probably use the same to import photos from my phone if I ever need that ability.
When I worked at walk-in tech support at university, we weren't supposed to take responsibility for backing up data prior to drop-off and didn't have drives or anything for that purpose. Sometimes if the customer seemed like the type of person that wouldn't blame us (why that policy was there) and really had no way to get it off I would use one of our WinPE USB drives to copy their essential files. When they had a Mac, however, I would just AirDrop their entire home directory to the Mac loaner and show them how to do the same when it came back. It would go through 100GBs of files within a few minutes and didn't use any of our equipment other than the loaner itself.
I don't think I've plugged an iPhone into my MacBook other than to charge on a trip since the last time I was into jailbreaking and was running checkra1n.
AirDrop is the only feasible way but still, 60Gig of Raw Video still take its time and will cancel for stupid reasons, like the iPhone just going into standby while airdropping.
Apple still can't figure out which formats to use. I've seen Photos compress photos to something like 256x256 PNG when sending via AirDrop. And this depends very randomly on the versions of OSes on your phone and your laptop and on the year of your phone and laptop.
AirDrop is 100x slower than the equivalent wired solution. I say this as someone transfering 350GB of media off their phone on friday, Apple needs to fix wired file access from mac to phone.
Lightning is limited to 53 MB/s by the sheer virtue of being USB 2.0, and probably is even slower in real life, so AirDrop would be at maximum 0.5 MB/s?
It's good that he's highlighting the potential issues with the eSim. To me, forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some.
Given that they still sell iPhone 14 with regular SIM cards, why wouldn't they allow that option in the US ¯\_(ツ)_/¯!?
The cable is still good for charging (if you need fast) and I like it a lot for CarPlay because in my experience wireless CarPlay has a ton of lag to it.
I do wonder what they do if they remove the port completely, how do they fix the phone if it gets truly messed up? Does it become like the watch where they just have to swap it out with a different one and send it back to Apple?
I recently tried buying an esim while travelling to Sweden because I always forget to buy one at the airport, or in advance. It actually worked out very well, and it was nice not to have to swap out my existing sim and take on a new phone number across all the messaging apps while I was there.
The thing that strikes me as ridiculous is that in the US on CDMA carriers, there was the exact same thing as "eSIMs" for years. You had to beg and plead with your carrier to set up and provision your phone, since there was no physical SIM.
So for Apple to pitch this as "wow, it's a new system where instead of just putting in a sim card you have to grovel to your carrier to set up your phone", it hardly strikes me as better UX.
Have you tried eSIM? It’s dependent on carrier, of course, but it’s actually an incredible UX.
My partner lost his phone (and SIM) recently and I was able to transfer his T-Mobile line to a different iPhone in a few minutes using eSIM. It was totally automated using the T-Mobile website — enter the IMEI then scan a QR code with iPhone camera.
I saved a trip to the store to get a new SIM card and didn’t have to talk to a human.
The usual: My account password, two factor auth, account security PIN. Additionally, an SMS is sent to the number that’s being transferred giving a chance to block (with a timeout to auto-approve if the device is lost).
I haven’t explored it but I would assume there is also an optional “high security mode” lock — something like requiring account changes to happen in-store with physical ID.
How is having to type into an app your account password, do two factor auth, type account security PIN a better UX then pulling out a physical SIM and putting it into another phone?
Carriers have been fighting sims for years because it makes it too easy to switch carriers. I think TMobile is the first one out of the gate to do this. You can download their app, try the service for a month or two by activating the esaim. If you like it, you can transfer your service right from the app.
Not having to talk to sales reps or go to stores is a big win for customers. Granted, this is mostly hypothetical at this point but it is coming.
It will be painful for an incredibly tiny number of people, and vastly superior for basically everyone else. Plus, it frees up valuable physical space inside the phone.
another counterpoint: I just got back from a trip in Europe and had to swap my sim card back when we landed. I forgot to ask for the small (and easily losable) tool they give you to pop open the tray, but luckily my SO had an earring that was able to fit.
I realise this isn't for everyone, but if you're changing sim often enough those sim card proddy tools fit nicely on keyrings. I fly from Canada to the UK roughly once a year to visit family and haven't felt like it's taking up excess space the rest of the year.
How do you buy/activate a temp e-sim when traveling? And as most shops capable of doing so? My family goes to the UK often and usually get a local sim.
I recently visited France. Before flying from the US, I purchased an Orange e-sim online and activated it while at the airport in the US. As soon as I landed in Paris, I was connected to Orange network and was able to use internet instantly.
Just pick a random cellular provider, visit their website, and that’s it? Do they have the cheap pay as you go plans available? Honestly don’t know - we’ve always gone to the local Tesco and asked the sales clerk for a sim on whatever service works best in whatever town we’re in.
For example, if you were coming to visit me in Australia, you could get an Optus eSim for the days you are here: https://www.optus.com.au/prepaid/esim
Annoyingly, its not yet perfect. Vodafone for example can do prepaid, but requires the prepaid physical SIM to be activated first then transferred: a Vodafone store can do it of course, but that's a pain.
I used Airalo App to buy and refill multiple eSims while travelling through Europe this summer.
I had an American Physical sim on my iPhone 11 and 2 eSims at some point with both physical and 1 eSIM being on at one time while the 2nd eSIM was off.
When i would arrive in a ne country, I would switch one ESIM off and switch another one on.
Note: you do need internet access to load an eSIM onto your phone, but you can preload it prior to arriving in its region
that looks awesome tho some of the deals are really bad - e.g. morocco has 1gb for 7 days for 10 usd. I am pretty sure I bought something like 30gb for 15 eur. Same for UK and France, the prices there are just too much and you can get cheaper deals in person.
But again I love the app and hope something like that becomes big enough that the big operators will integrate with it.
As someone who switches between two phones somewhat regularly, eSim is just not doable for me. Thankfully I'm not in the US so this specific iPhone 14 situation doesn't effect me but I can totally see them forcing this on us here in Australia as well.
I’m not in the US and I’m happy with this new change. Local telcos have eSim support but only for postpaid. Now US iPhone users will come and demand eSim for prepaid, it should finally force them to support prepaid users (or lose out to competitors).
I switched to T-Mobile last year and they basically insisted on a physical SIM card. They told me I wouldn’t get 5G with an eSIM. That sounded like BS, but I was never able to figure out why they would care what time of SIM I used.
I’ve been kinda unimpressed with the iPhone 13 mini camera coming from the pixel 6 pro. I like everything else about the iPhone better, but the camera seems substantially worse. I have to edit pictures quite a bit to fix color balance issues. Here’s a recent example:
(Lightroom won’t let me share both my edit and the unedited original but the blueish picture was taken at almost the same time and had the same general look as the edited picture.)
I’m not sure who would like the unedited version of the picture but I get weird color issues like this all the time on my mini. Here’s another one of my kid:
For anyone who has a doubt, I testify that my kid is not red and those cliffs were not blue.
Worst thing is it’s totally unpredictable when the issue is gonna crop up. It doesn’t happen in every picture. I don’t know what someone would do with a camera like this if they didn’t know how to edit to fix the colors.
this is true. you can follow @dalevon_digital on Twitter and he frequently does slr/iPhone/pixel blind comparisons. the pixel has won every single one when compared to a reference SLR picture.
I understand why you might think my finger is the cause but there are other pictures from that day and that series that lack the finger and still have the blue cast.
I wonder if it's because I'm getting old and jaded, but I really fail to get excited by this continuous flow of new devices (and "stuff" in general). I could get a new iPhone from my company, but I don't even see the point.
Coming from a still enthusiastic tech person who loves iPhone, I don’t think it’s a you problem. This is clearly another S revision in all but name, for the second year in a row. I want to be excited but there’s nothing particularly compelling unless you’re coming from pre-2020 (or maybe pre-2019). I’m still loving my 12 mini and will probably use it for at least another year, maybe two.
Compelling upgrades would be: another small variant (or smaller than 14 pro at least), something foldable (maybe, if done really really well), significantly improved battery life, bike computer functionality (CarPlay for bikes), or significantly improved performance (in a few years, maybe the 12 mini will be noticeably slow in 2024).
The curse of releasing devices with hardware that’s 3-5 years ahead of the competition in delivered performance (not just feature checklists) is that unless you wait 4+ years, new models don’t always feel like upgrades.
I have iPhone 11 and I still don't think it is worth upgrading to 14 or 14Pro yet. I consider myself tech savvy person but I don't see a point to buy a new phone if my current phone takes good enough pics for myself and my family and friends to enjoy. Also if the speed of browsing web and opening and using apps is still good enough then what's the point of buying a new phone and polluting environment? As I see it, the latest iPhones are capable of at least 5 years of use and only may need to do is replace the battery once in that life span and I am happy with this approach.
I switched to 13 pro last year, and gave the 11 pro to my girlfriend.
There is a significant difference in cameras between the 11 and 13 - especially during the night photos. To the point where, in our case, I often need to tell my gf to use my camera for a shot when we’re together, because it will
be so much better.
If you take a lot of photos then for this reason alone it’s worth to upgrade imho.
One justification that I can see is the trade in values. Here in the US, you can get a "free" iPhone if you're on a specific plan. Might as well take it if you already have the plan.
How are you able to make your battery last so long? I have an iPhone 12, and up until 6 months ago the battery was easily making it through the end of the day, but now with the same usage pattern I’m charging by noon.
On the note of will it be “noticeably slow in 2024” I have to say you might not even notice.
I’m using an iPhone X here in 2022 and honestly other than the battery life being a bit lower than usual, the phone is super snappy, even on these latest iOS releases.
It’s basically 5 years old and it’s still doing amazingly well.
I have an X myself and decided to throw the towel this year. I'm out of memory with the 64GB and have to keep pushing 5 years worth of photos and messages out. I also had to replace the battery once already and had to replace the camera (wobbly lens, all of the sudden) too.
I had to replace the screen twice (first time under the extended warranty/recall, second time I had to pay; it just becomes unresponsive and you get locked out of the phone). To make matters worse, the new one is arriving on Friday and the screen stopped working again last Monday. More than 90 days passed since the previous repair, so nothing to do and I'm locked out of the phone again because you can only unlock iphones through the touchscreen.
The phone is everything but snappy these days. I don't have tons of apps, but it stutters significantly from time to time.
One detail, phone doesn't have one scratch and is in perfect condition outside. Dropped it very few times and it was always inside a good case.
Wait? That unresponsive time is from the screen?! I get that for a minute or so sometimes but then it goes away. I thought it was the iOS software glitching out. Is it maybe a faulty digitizer?
I luckily have only had to replace the battery once for a small cost out of warranty. My storage is 256 GB, so that isn’t an issue yet.
I’m going to go look into unresponsive iPhone X displays now cause I feel like I’m having the starting signs of this issue with mine. It’s not a huge issue, as it rarely happens, but I’m curious now.
Sorry to hear your phone is super slow. I have a slew of apps on mine and it behaves rather well for me. shrug
Well, the iphone 11’s CPU is roughly on par with the best the Android side can offer today. So it is not that surprising, especially given apple’s care for their older devices. Even an 8 is plenty fast/smooth for usage today.
I’ve leveled with myself that this is the pace of future mobile device hardware releases. “Peak phone” has been a topic of discussion for a while now. Are we there yet? I think so.
Apple has gotten a lot of flack for releasing “new” hardware and software features that aren’t really new or groundbreaking. I’m starting to see the genius in their planning. The slow trickle of improvements (I like how you call them “S revisions”) are for the sake of momentum, the long term survival of the company. Especially when Apple is already battling the longevity of their own products. I’m rounding off Year Two of my iPhone 12 Pro Max and will likely squeeze out a third year.
Not many people upgrade every year. Apple sells a ton of phones but most people keep them for 2 to 3 years, so it’s just a lot of people on a cycle.
If they only introduced a new phone every 2 to 3 years people might be tempted by the new stuff on other phones. Or you could buy a new phone (to you) that is actually a two year old design.
This way you always get the newest thing, even if it’s not significantly better than what you could’ve bought last year. But it’s a nice upgrade if you’ve waited two years, and for people who wait like 5+ years it’s incredible.
Pro features in a mini device (specifically, 120hz oled AOD). LiDAR with real applications. Non-emergency satellite use/oceanic connectivity. 30+ hour battery life. Extreme ruggedness (I wouldn't mind "portless" if it meant everlasting 50M waterproofing).
I haven't thought about "carplay for bikes" but as e-bikes get more sophisticated, it may make sense.
You probably wouldn't want to use an iphone for a bike computer anyway. The vibrations of being mounted to handle bars can apparently damage the cameras. Much better to just spend a small amount on an actual bike computer, these days they all connect to apps on your phone can can make use of real maps navigation and show notifications from your phone.
I’m thinking about the use case for normies who don’t picture anything when you say “bike computer”. There’d need to be solid ecosystem support - the device would need to be vibration hardened (I’m sure they could make $$$$ on that alone), there would need to be great mounting and charging options, a bike version of collision detection, bike-optimized turn-by-turn, and probably integration with bike telematics+rear collision systems, when that inevitably becomes a thing. It should probably double as a dash cam using the cool wide angle stuff they’ve shown with continuity camera.
Wouldn’t it be great if your phone could call 911 automatically when the guy rolling coal on you decides to just run you down?
See that would be an interesting feature to add. They have sensor-shift image stabilization and some sort of focusing, perhaps they could add a feature to lock all of that so it couldn’t be damaged by vibration while riding a bike.
I think it’s probably a case where they’d tell you to use the right tool for the job. The Apple Watch Ultra is their answer for fitness tracking which does everything you need for post ride analysis. It’s just missing all the live info you get from a bike computer.
But bike computers are likely always going to be nicer to use than a phone because part of what makes them good, makes them bad for normal phone usage. Their displays are quite washed out and dull but are extremely visible in direct sunlight while using minimal power.
Depends if you are delivering food or cycling for sport. The dedicated devices have extremely good battery life (around 20 hours screen on with gps), have connectivity for ANT+ accessories, have large physical buttons designed for use while cycling with gloves, have reflective displays with great visibility in the sun, etc.
Sure, you don’t _need_ them but they don’t cost very much compared to your other gear and the minor improvements stack up.
So the new Pro phones are capable of going down to 1 Hz refresh rate. I don’t know if the app has to opt into that but I don’t think so. My guess/hope would be that if you were not changing the image it would just slow down automatically, so perhaps things like the Kindle app would benefit without a change?
They didn’t have to manually opt into the 120 Hz smooth scrolling.
It’s still an emissive screen, but it’s better than an emissive screen that is refreshing 60 times a second.
The usual. Faster, better camera, the various new features like the satellite and emergency communications. The high refresh rate display might be a really good improvement.
The small upgrades build over the years, so you would notice a difference. But it’s nothing massive like when they went from LCD to OLED or added the plus size.
There’s nothing wrong with an 11 Pro. If it’s still working for you it’s perfectly reasonable.
As a ~normal person who uses their phone at least 4 hours per day, it's the single most important tech device in my life. I enjoy getting the best thing out there every upgrade cycle (2 years). The progress feels incremental, but going back and using an n-1 gen phone reminds me how much slower things were. All of those extra half-second waits between interactions add up, and I enjoy having a quality camera with me wherever I go. There are also things like phone speaker quality that while hard to objectively measure and promote, have really improved over the years to the point where I don't hate doing things like watching educational or fun YouTube videos in bed in the morning.
Are you sure those half-second lags were there when it was new, or it’s just software becoming more inefficjent as usual, as newer models set a new performance baseline?
I don’t think any of the apps truly make an iphone from the last 4-5 years sweat at all - I would even question the “lag” parent commenter claims. It’s just probably a psychological effect of the new being better + promotion does make everything appear smoother.
This is generally my attitude towards OS software updates, previously a topic I’d follow closely. I get where you’re coming from!
My interest in hardware revisions has only grown in recent years, particularly in mobile devices. I’m not gonna go rush off and buy a new iPhone, I’m quite pleased with my 13 Pro Max and upgrading now would feel horribly wasteful. But I’m continually awed by advancements in mobile camera technology, and whenever I do upgrade it feels as much like magic as when I got my first newer game console (NES -> SNES) as a kid. But to be clear, my interest here is almost completely in the camera, and I pretty much view my phone as a really nice camera with convenient computing and network affordances included for some almost inexplicable reason.
To a lesser extent, recent advances in chips has also had me pining to upgrade a perfectly good laptop which again would feel wasteful to do now, but I expect when the time comes it’ll feel similarly revelatory even if that’s more incremental just because I’ve been upgrading the same sorts of things for much longer.
It’s okay, probably even good, that you don’t feel the same way about the device upgrade treadmill. A slower upgrade cycle would be objectively good for a lot of more important things. I’m not going to try to convince you a new iPhone is something you should want even for “free”. Just offering personal perspective why I find the new one exciting even if I’ll skip it.
My family is excited for it simply because of the hand-me-down supply chain - someone gets a new phone, someone else a few hops down gets a gently used iPhone X and we donate/sell a still functional iPhone6s.
Meant to mention this in my comment. Oftentimes when I feel compelled to upgrade sooner than I need to, I know that someone in my family or community will benefit from getting the device I no longer need. Often much more, maybe for much longer, than I’ll benefit from a purely as-needed upgrade formula.
I agree… but I also think it’s a great sign of slow but steady progress. The kind that will really standout in a few years. Comparing todays phone camera to a 2010 phone, makes me feel pretty good
I helped someone upgrade from an iPhone 7 to a 13 Mini. They’re both basically the same physical size. But it’s night and day.
The 13 is DRASTICALLY faster. The OLED screen looks far far better than the old LCD, and because the chin and forehead are gone it’s significantly bigger despite the similar case size. The 13‘s battery life is supposed to be significantly better despite more demanding software than the 7’s battery life was when it was brand new. The cameras are barely comparable quality wise.
That’s a top end 2016 phone compared to a medium+ end 2021 phone. And the difference is incredible.
If you go back to 2010 that would’ve been the first retina phone, the iPhone 4. With it’s little 3.5” display. At this point it almost looks like a different device.
5 years is quite significant and I would say that the progress reached a steady point around 2-3 years ago. There was likely much more difference between the 7 and the X than between the latter and 13
If you don’t benefit from the upgrades, of course you aren’t excited about them. If you do benefit from them, it’s more exciting.
I was excited when I got the iPhone 13 Pro because of the LiDAR ToF sensor and being able to utilize Apple’s new object capture API. I was also excited to have a zoom lens, as my old phone (iPhone 7) did not have one. These were all things I had a clear use case for, so it makes sense I was excited for the upgrade.
I think it’s okay to not be excited when you don’t have a reason to be. Don’t assume that means you’re old and jaded.
The average person doesn't get hyped up over it every year either, but once you are 3-4 years behind, the latest one looks real nice. I'm on the 13 pro and the 14 pro is not compelling but stack up a few years of the same scale of upgrades and I'll be sold.
I like to use and have my close friends and family use the newest possible iPhones. The reason is that they collect photos and video of each other and in some cases these will be looked at or treasured for years to come.
I have a pal who has a baby coming and I reminded him to make sure he gets his iPhone upgrade program replacement done in time.
My mom's partner, I ask him to keep his updated because these are photos and video of my mom who won't be here forever.
Not only do these devices capture the most consistent, high fidelity data, you almost have to try to screw up having the data automatically backed up.
The cost of keeping the devices updated is relatively low, and the device switch process has improved __every__ year.
New devices require new OS's which get the most attention and latest patches, etc.
But if you have an iPhone 12 or 13 you don’t need a 14 to capture all those moments. The cameras don’t differ that much and the os archiving and viewing features are the same.
I went from the 13 pro to the 14 pro and the video and photo quality is already clearly much higher.
The device is zippier, and the 13 was no slouch. Using a 12 or as other commenter said XS, there are delays and moments get missed waiting for the device.
I contend it makes horse sense to keep people you care about on the newest iPhone. In all liklihood they spend large amount of time using the device anyway, they might as well have the best display and other features as well.
What? My Xs is able to capture 4K 60fps video just fine and has a perfectly good camera and runs the new iOSs just fine. Having THE newest iPhone is hardly a requirement. My phone gets the same patches and security updates as any other iPhone
Yep, you're old and jaded. I can relate. iPhones and almost all of their features are old news and they're mostly pushing iterative updates or advanced features most people don't have a use for yet (satellite connectivity).
Still fantastic technology no doubt, but certainly not the wow of 10 years ago.
I don’t read it as outrage but rather lamenting how developments used to feel more fun and exciting when the phones were new (whether buying them or not).
Besides getting jaded, this feeling is maybe the case with any maturing technology. PC developments in the 90s were crazy year to year, and now I don’t bother to follow the scene.
If being skeptical of technological advancement identified as such isn’t a hallmark of HN, nothing is IME. So much so that it has a reputation for being aggressively unkind and judgemental. But GP was neither.
Maybe he is here to be curious about why other people get excited…
I know I am excited for when stable diffusion/DALLE level manipulation is built into the photo app and iMovie to compile cinema level clips while I sleep.
I would appreciate if articles reviewing cameras did a better job of explaining why the pixel count is just a single (and highly manipulable) measure of imaging merit.
For all the pixel count, no company ever talks about pixel size (physical) and the noise characteristic as a result or the effective resolution. The imaging chip has not gotten physically larger between iPhones, I assume, so the pixels are just dividing the same light into more sites. Is this better?
People who don't know will just assume that 48 MP, well that's better than a Sony A7RIII now, right? Of course not.
The article is very explicitly aimed at photographers, it's on a photographer's website, it's a review about only the camera, the conclusion is titled "buying advice for photographers", etc.
If he was to explain what determines image quality, why not also demand that he explains aperture, focal length, etc.? It's just not aimed at that public.
I'm not sure you are right here. The sensor size (and the lens speed) has been one of the key things Apple marketing has been leaning towards in the last few generations. Tech reviewers tend to repeat it back to their audience, which eventually lead to general consensus of Apple's camera system being superior.
Sensor size in smartphones is also "highly manipulable", because the smartphones are very flat and have serious angle of incidence issues as the lens is too close to the sensor. If consumers demand larger sensors, sure it can be done - but it will reduce the amount of light that reaches the edges of the sensor, eating the possible increase in image quality. Smartphone cameras are limited by thickness, not by sensor sizes.
I continue to find the iPhone's "night" photos underwhelming compared to Google Pixel's (haven't tested other Android devices). Google seems to be doing a much better job at stacking or other Computational Photography tricks.
Considering Apple's marketing focuses so much on the camera, and they have so much experience in the domain, I'm kind of shocked they continue to be so disappointing.
Perhaps it's a style decision.
(I certainly haven't tried playing with RAW, that's beyond my level of care.)
Quite impressive when they shot at 48MP, but the pictures taken at 12MP just look like your bad, few generations old, non-pro iPhone photo.
As a very amateur photograph that doesn't want to carry his DSLR all the time I considered getting it for the 48MP but after reading the review and seeing what would be most of the pictures I would take (the 12MP ones), it's a hard pass.
I'm upgrading my iPhone 13 mini because having switched from a Pixel 4a, the camera performance is just unacceptably bad. It's a testament to how much I like the rest of the iPhone that I didn't just go back to the pixel. I briefly considered carrying the Pixel around just to take pictures.
Huh wow, I have a 13 mini and love the camera. It’s a bit better than my 11 Pro, especially in low light, and I had no complaints about that camera when it was my main phone.
I said I'd try getting my Pixel 4a running again to do a comparison, but I'm feeling lazy and found this video comparing the 5a and the iPhone 13. So it's not exactly the comparison I had been making in my comment, but I think the video demonstrates a lot of the issues I saw between the 4a and iPhone 13.
These things are largely a matter of taste. The iPhone photos look nicer to me, overall. There are a few cases of closeups shot with the iPhone where the photos are relatively soft, but I suspect that's just bad focus, camera shake, or subject movement. Also seems that the Pixel ramps up the contrast more than the iPhone, which will tend to make things look a little sharper.
The pictures just look bad compared to old ones from my pixel 4a. I'm not sure if it's a signal processing thing or what. I will try booting that up and posting a side by side in a bit.
I loved my Pixel 4a. Price point seemed reasonable, battery and camera were both very decent, and I preferred using Android to iOS.
The one downfall was that when I broke my screen this year, the replacement was so costly that I ended up switching to a friend's unused older model iPhone for now. I may still repair it at the end of the year...
Yeah... I love my iPhone XS Max, partly because it has 2x telephoto--not 2.5x, not 3x or 4x of all the ridiculous things: just a good 2x--and I essentially use that 2x telephoto lens every chance I can. They finally have come up with an iPhone that has brought back 2x telephoto... but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone :/. (I do appreciate that the low light abilities are probably better, and maybe that should be worth it to quickly upgrade before they screw up 2x again.)
The sensor in 2x camera on the older phones was never as nice as the main camera sensor either. It’d be interesting to see a comparison of the optical vs crop cameras for 2x to see if they were able to improve those 12MP at all.
> but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone
My understanding is that it's even worse than that, as the 48MP sensor isn't a regular sensor but a Quad Bayer sensor. While there are some benefits over a 12MP sensor, based on what I've read it seems that the image quality is more comparable to a 12MP sensor than to a 48MP sensor. So cropping to 2x would match a 3MP sensor.
That's currently the main reason why I'm planing to keep my 12 Pro a little bit longer. A 2x lens seems more useful than 3x to me and if the assumption above is correct the 2x quality on the 12 Pro should be better than on the 14 Pro. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a lot of discussions regarding this topic, but there's a YouTube video that comes to a similar conclusion: https://youtu.be/u9sJb_E6h5E?t=588.
That’s how MP are always defined, as far as I know.
If you buy a DSLR/Mirrorless camera with a 24MP sensor, there aren’t 24 million R,G,B pixels, but closer to 6 million Red, 12 million Green, and 6 million Blue.
So if that’s how the iPhone is doing their 48MP sensor, then that’s just standard
It's different on the 48MP Quad Bayer iPhone sensor:
Instead of something like RGBRGBRGB for the subpixels the subpixels are layed out as RRGGBBRRGGBB (in both dimensions). So while those additional subpixels provide some additional information (either brightness information or a different exposure time for HDR) in terms of color information the sensor would still be pretty much limited to 12MP. Based on the reviews that I read in the past Quad Bayer sensors seem marginally better than comparable regular sensors (48MP Quad Bayer vs 12MP regular), but nowhere near as good as the MP number makes them look like.
It's an 85mm equivalent focal length, which is comparatively niche (to 50mm, aka "standard" focal length)
85mm is great for head shots, detail shots, video b-roll, etc. and limiting for general use, unless your style is all about subject isolation, telephoto, compression, etc.
Photographers often fall into categories of focal length usage. Some prefer the 24-35mm/85mm pair and skip "normal". Some shoot mainly 50mm. Landscape photographers often shoot 16-35mm and then 70mm+.
My sweet spot is 50-100mm, which was well served by the dedicated 2x camera (I'm often fine with digital zoom—the artifacts are part of the style).
So, they've made a reasonable choice, but 50mm lovers are left out.
That’s an odd takeaway from the article. You can trivially switch between 12MP and 48MP. Why not just… switch to 48MP when you want the extra resolution, and otherwise stick to 12MP. Perhaps switch to 48MP when you would otherwise use your DSLR…?
Because looking at the 12MP pictures I would NEVER want it, and I don't want to sacrifice the battery / storage with 48MP pictures the time. I expected the lower resolutions to be a leap compared to the current gen (I have a 13 non-pro) but there's basically no difference.
Those 12MP photos aren't representative because he's using a third party camera app that hasn't been tuned for this phone yet and for some reason is using this as a review of the official camera.
They look fine to me though. If you're worried about beating "a DSLR", a medium format film camera from 1920 beats it in every aspect anyway. Read your Ken Rockwell!
get a mirrorless... DSLR are old, can't even compare these 48mp images to say a Sony at 48mp well i guess if your not that into printing large and only viewing your images on facebook i guess its fine.
DSLRs are not old, new ones come out every year, and they have advantages over most if not all mirrorless, such as the battery life or the size of the sensor.
What? Mirrorless cameras use both full frame sensors and crop sensors based on price and line, the exact sizes you would get in DSLRs. While battery life is generally better on a DSLR you should also consider the feature set you’re getting with that reduced battery life. Further, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the last of Canon and Nikon prosumer and pro level DSLRs: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedl...
So yes, they are old and are being phased out in favor of the superior in nearly every way technology of mirrorless.
This is an excellent video review by Peter McKinnon. I really like his studio shot comparison between his Canon mirrorless camera and the iPhone 14 Pro.
I don’t think it’s any surprise that a smartphone can capture a decent image in perfect lighting conditions. That’s been the case for a while. You’ll notice though that all pro photographers still reach for their real camera when the quality of the pictures matter.
For all the people that complain about the people who say that their iPhone is superior to DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, I’ve never actually seen anyone seriously say that. Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you. The iPhone enables this. Are there really people out there saying they’re going to shoot a wedding or something with an iPhone and mean it? Sounds more like photographers compensating.
> Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you.
Not really. There's not really any point taking a smartphone camera out of your pocket at an airshow, or at a zoo, to take a photo of the Moon or a myriad of other scenarios where the lens is the dominant factor.
Sometimes the best choice is not to take the shot.
That a stupid argument, and one that misses the point completely. If you want or need to take a photo, your massive camera setup sitting at home does you no good. The camera sitting in your pocket anyways, however, does.
Lots more where it is feasible. :) But sure, if you can’t use a big camera, or don’t want to, use your phone. It’s no skin off my back. Just wanted to point out that “phone” vs. “no camera at all because your big one is at home” is a false dichotomy.
I came here to comment this too. It works surprisingly well. Perfect for using your iPad in bed (someone's got to get the Sudokus done..) while someone else is sleeping or something as you can go extremely dark and extremely red, hurting no-one's eyes at all.
This is a first world problem: the flash that appears in their flagship Live Photos photo/video feature has ruined some great vacation photos that were hard to take.
I don't know if this is fixed in the iPhone 14 / iOS 16.
I'm really conflicted about if I'm going to be shooting in 48MP or 12MP for normal use. Most of my photos are taken of friends in casual settings and used for social media. Many times a good shot requires capturing a number of photos in sequence, with all but one or two discarded.
The local file storage and backup capacity requirements for 48MP are going to get crazy. I may only shoot in 48MP in rare cases when I really want the super quality and normally leave in 12MP mode.
You say that and then you try to zoom in and 48MP instead of 12MP might get you a number plate or a face or a bird identification or whatever. As well as rather a lot of pixels on modern phones, we also have things like review videos attached to photos and they take up space too.
Nowadays we have stupidly large amounts of storage available. I recall my Commodore 64 ...
It all ... depends. Do you want the flexibility to be able zoom in or not? Do you want to long term store your photos or not? If you can't be bothered with storage management and don't need very high resolution then dial it down and off you trot but you do have a choice.
Haven't gotten my hands on it yet but, from the videos I've seen, you're able to turn 48MP right from within the camera app. I've also seen a spot in videos to switch video modes also.
Yeah I wish there was an easy way to automatically delete all but 1 or 2 of the shots from a set. Kind of like how they let you easily discard all but one of a burst.
I though era of "more megapixel = better picture" is gone, but apparently not.
All that matters in technical quality of cameras is dynamic range. That is related to sensor size, more specific to pixel size that has ability to absorb light. It is simple physics.
I would agree with you, but read about what they’re actually doing with this camera.
They’re actually binning the pixels back down to the same resolution as before and only using the extra size to enhance sharpness and dynamic range. You only actually get higher resolution if you shoot raw.
why not just have larger photodiode to increase dynamic range? can't see how using more photodiode would equal more dynamic range or better noise levels? never seen a sony,canon etc get less noisy and better dynamic range as they add more mega pixels..
The iPhone is using a quad-bayer filter. Most of the time, it is behaving as a 12MP camera with error correcting photodiodes.
Compared to a normal 12MP camera, the 48MP one will collect slightly less light due to there being more gaps, but the bet is that the increased noise from that is less than the noise reduction from the pixel-binning.
Every photodiode has three others around it with the same colour. If they’re all similar, the sensor will average them, and if one of them is way off, it’ll throw that one away and average the rest.
This is better than doing noise reduction on either a 12MP, or a standard 48MP sensor because the space between comparable diodes is reduced, making it less likely to falsely treat small things like stars as noise.
As a bonus, if the user zooms in on a really sunny day, the 48MP might actually be worth using directly.
But your eyeballs are still better than cameras, or at least what we see is better than an image taken of the same thing. Maybe it makes sense that we have not hit the absolute limits. Although these cameras are smaller than you eyeballs. Might not make sense to compare digital cameras to eyeballs yet.
Feels like the iPhone could use a micro SD card at this point. If I'm gonna use a phone as a cinema camera, shooting 4k and 48 MP stills I don't want to be clogging up my bandwidth uploading a ton of footage to iCloud when I'm probably going to cut it in Premiere or something on my desktop.
My drone is like this — it has an internal hard drive, but it's way more flexible and convenient to shoot to its optional micro SD card.
At 48MP these things are starting to tread on the territory of the "super resolution" mode of my Olympus camera body. Of course, the top-of-the-lone iPhone is also larger than that camera body in 2 out of 4 relevant dimensions, and costs more. The new iPhones are so big and so expensive that the idea that I would rather carry one than a big expensive camera is starting to seem questionable. In fact, if I had a choice, I am quite sure I'd rather my camera with a cheap lens were stolen, rather than my iPhone.
Cinematic mode for me is a bust. At 30 fps it was extremely choppy when I panned side to side, which makes it unusable. I was shocked at how bad it looked so I’m wondering how 24 fps can be any better.
I’m in doubt if I should upgrade from 12 Pro Max.
Please share your opinion.
The main reason for the upgrade for me is a better camera. Is the difference noticeable between 12 Pro Max and 14 Pro?
I found mrwhosetheboss youtube comparison against the Samsung S22 ultra helpful too. Very interesting how different the approaches are despite both being aimed at top end
My 13 Pro is so good, and it sounds like there are still issues with 48 megapixel photos (a lag in processing the files, compatibility.) I'll wait till the next model.
