[Material evaluation] More disappointing than Lingdong Island iPhone 14 Pro evaluation

2022-09-24 05:05:32 [Original by Zhongguancun Online] Author: A melon eater

iPhone 14 Pro can be said that in recent years, iPhone mobile phone This is a major upgrade in form. Instead of the "Liu Haiping" design, which has been used for many years, it adopts the "exclamation mark" screen design with double holes in front, and hides the "exclamation mark" hole into a black oval for display at the system level. At the same time, it introduces a new "Smart Island" interaction design.

After the official release of iPhone 14 Pro, many users expressed their disappointment with the innovative interactive design of "Smart Island" on the Internet, on the one hand, because of the early Software The adaptation problem of the version has led to a large number of display bugs in the "Lingdong Island". On the other hand, the "Lingdong Island" has not brought about a significant upgrade of the interactive experience as expected by the public. After a period of testing, we found that the "Smart Island" was not the only disappointment of the iPhone 14 Pro. Let's chat with you through the following iPhone 14 Pro evaluation content.

Appearance analysis of iPhone 14 Pro behind Smart Island

The front of the iPhone 14 Pro's body screen adopts the "exclamation point" type double hole design, which can be said to be another compromise of Apple's industrial design on the current level of technology application.

As we all know, in order to realize the Face ID function, Apple has insisted on using the "bangs screen" design since the iPhone X, and has continuously reduced the area of the bangs area in the process of several model iterations. However, even though the area of the fringe area has been shrinking, its visual effect still gives a feeling of "an era" behind the current design of the single hole screen in Android flagship phones.

Therefore, if we want to achieve a true full screen design without giving up the face ID function, it is necessary for Apple to turn the entire front camera module of the original deep feeling down to the screen. Although the off screen camera technology is nothing new in the smartphone market in 2022, it is still not mature from a practical point of view.

At present, even the Android flagship phone with a single front camera design is still conservative in applying this technology. For example, Xiaomi flagship MIX4 is still the flagship after a "taste" of the camera technology under the screen Xiaomi 12 The series adopts the design of central single hole digging. Therefore, for the iPhone that needs to place the original front facing camera module on the front of the fuselage, the technology of the camera under the screen is still "far more than near".

Xiaomi MIX4 CUP full screen technology

Against this background, Apple can only make the design compromise to technology again, adopt the "exclamation point" double hole design, and design the "Smart Island", an interactive innovation to make up for the compromise in industrial design. It can be seen that Apple seems to have lost the "Jobs like" spirit of making the impossible possible, but it still maintains its interaction design ability that exceeds the industry average.

Next, let's talk about other parts of the appearance design of the iPhone 14 Pro. First of all, generally speaking, the design idea of the iPhone 14 Pro is not very different from that of the iPhone 13 Pro series. Its major change is that the volume of the rear camera module is greatly increased, except for the "exclamation point" double hole design of the front screen.

Why is it said that the rear camera module has greatly increased in size? Because both its plane area and vertical height have increased significantly compared with the iPhone 13 Pro, the reason behind the large increase in volume is naturally the addition of 48 million pixels 1/1.31 inch of main camera. The increase in the size of the rear camera module has brought two negative effects. One is that the iPhone 14 Pro is difficult to lay flat on the desktop, and the other is that the left hand cannot avoid touching the "huge" rear camera module when holding it horizontally.

The body frame of the iPhone 14 Pro is still made of surgical grade stainless steel, and the back of the body is made of frosted glass, making it comfortable to hold. However, compared with the standard version of the iPhone 14, The body weight of the iPhone 14 Pro, up to 206g, will undoubtedly have a negative impact on the user's hand comfort when holding for a long time, especially after matching with the mobile phone protective case. However, the good news is that compared with the iPhone 13 Pro, the thickness of the iPhone 14 Pro has only increased by 0.2mm, reaching 7.85mm.

On the whole, the appearance design of the iPhone 14 Pro is a state of development in the process of inheritance. It is expected that this design style will continue for several generations in the future. Although the "exclamation point" double digging design is currently "mixed reputation" in terms of reputation, it does not prevent Apple from using and popularizing this design in the next generation of models.

Limited progress disappointing A16 processor performance test

The leading edge in processor performance can be said to be an important means for iPhone to cope with the "siege" of many Android flagship phones in recent years. In particular, the significant performance advantage of the A15 bionic processor for the flagship processor of the same generation of smart phones has helped Apple further consolidate its dominant position in the flagship phone market.

Therefore, the performance of Apple's latest generation of A16 bionic processor has also attracted the attention of users. We also tested the performance of A16 bionic processor on the iPhone 14 Pro. The A16 bionic processor on the iPhone 14 Pro is made by TSMC's 4nm manufacturing process. The CPU part has six cores in total. It adopts the design of large and small cores, and has two performance cores (large cores) and four energy efficiency cores (small cores). The GPU part is composed of five image processing cores. In addition, there are 16 core neural network engine, ISP, display engine, etc., among which the display engine is drive It is an important part of information screen display and Lingdong Island.

In the GeekBench 5 test, which can accurately reflect part of the performance of the mobile phone processor CPU, the measured GeekBench CPU single core score of the iPhone 14 Pro was 1890 points, and the CPU multi-core score was 5510 points. Compared with the iPhone 14 equipped with the full blooded A15, it has a certain improvement.

In the GPU part of the performance test, the iPhone 14 Pro 3DMark The Wild Life EXTREME test scored 2770 points, and the GFX Aztec 1440p Metal off screen run score test scored an average of 48.91 frames. The overall performance has slightly improved, or almost no difference, with the iPhone 14 equipped with the full blood A15.

In the heavy load test of the well-known mobile phone performance test game "Original God", the image quality option was set to extremely high image quality+60 frames, and the test scene was the running chart of Liyue Port: the measured average frame rate of the iPhone 14 Pro 20 minute game was 58.9 frames, the frame rate curve fluctuated slightly, and there was no significant frame reduction throughout the test. This performance is not much different from that of the iPhone 14 equipped with the full blooded A15, and even the frame rate performance of the iPhone 14 will be more stable.

Through the above practical tests, we can find that although A16 bionics has made progress compared with A15 bionics, this progress is not enough to help Apple build a "performance moat" that is difficult to cross, which will give high-end Android flagship phones a chance to catch up with Apple in performance at the beginning of 2023. However, for the majority of ordinary consumers, A16 bionics can fully meet the performance requirements of users in all kinds of application scenarios except for ultra heavy game needs.

New peak brightness iPhone 14 Pro with 6.1 "XDR screen

For iPhone users, screen quality is a configuration they don't need to worry about. The iPhone 14 Pro is equipped with a 6.1 inch XDR screen. The screen material is OLED, the screen resolution is 2556x1179, the global maximum screen brightness is 1000 nits, the HDR peak brightness is 1600 nits, and the outdoor local peak brightness is 2000 nits. It supports 120Hz ProMotion adaptive refresh rate technology and all-weather off screen display technology.

The all-weather off screen display technology (AOD) can be said to be a long-awaited feature of iPhone users. This feature has existed on Android phones equipped with OLED screens for a long time, but Apple's "ultra delay" launch did not disappoint. The AOD display screen of the iPhone 14 Pro is not a separate interface, but a "dark" version of the lock screen interface. Like the lock screen interface, the AOD interface can display small pieces and notification content, but these contents cannot be directly operated. Clicking the screen in the AOD interface will wake the phone to the lock screen interface for operation.

AOD information screen interface display

The iPhone also has a large base, and the iPhone 14 Pro image experience is analyzed

The image experience of iPhone 14 Pro can be said to be the top priority of this upgrade, The iPhone 14 Pro is equipped with a new generation of Pro camera system. The rear camera module is composed of a 48 megapixel 1/1.31 inch main camera+12 megapixel ultra wide-angle lens+12 megapixel 3X telephoto lens. The main camera supports the second-generation sensor displacement optical image anti shake function, and also supports Apple's latest image engine technology.

The addition of the 48 million pixel main camera with the big bottom has not only improved the imaging, but also added a lot of "trouble" to the iPhone 14 Pro. First of all, subject to the problem of photosensitivity, the 48 million pixel main camera uses the 12 million pixel mode of four in one pixels for imaging by default, but users can also manually adjust their 48 million pixel photos. Secondly, iPhone 14 Pro supports Apple ProRAW format photography, plus the original efficient mode and compatibility mode options, Users need to make a number of decisions before using iPhone 14 Pro to shoot.

First, users should decide whether to use efficient mode or compatibility mode for shooting. The advantage of efficient mode is that it can greatly save the storage space occupied by photos, but at the same time, many devices do not support smooth viewing of photos in this format, and compatibility mode requires more storage space; Secondly, users need to decide whether to shoot Apple ProRAW format. Using this mode to shoot users can obtain a RAW file in DNG format, which will bring more space for post-processing, but the corresponding format file will take up more storage space.

Finally, users also need to decide whether to take 12 million pixel photos or 48 million pixel photos in Apple ProRAW format. The 12 million pixel mode has better photosensitive performance, but its detail rendering ability is not as good as the 48 million pixel mode. The 48 million pixel mode will take up too much storage space, and the file volume of a single photo will be more than 70MB.

In the live sample test, we chose to use the compatibility format commonly used by consumers+12 megapixel mode for shooting. If you are interested in the performance of the iPhone 14 Pro 48 megapixel Apple ProRAW format, we can test it separately in the future.

Thanks to the addition of the bottom sensor, the main imaging performance of the iPhone 14 Pro is obviously improved compared with the previous models. The overall imaging quality is at the first echelon level of the current flagship mobile phones, but its disadvantage is still obvious, that is, the problem of detail sharpening.

IPhone 14 Pro main photo sample

Although the depth fusion algorithm of iPhone can avoid the problem of large area smearing on the image, its detail sharpening problem also makes the image look unnatural. Although the more advantageous imaging performance of iPhone 14 Pro can reduce the degree of excessive detail sharpening to a certain extent, it cannot avoid this phenomenon.

The performance of the ultra wide-angle lens of the iPhone 14 Pro in this evaluation can be said to be surprising, and its imaging effect has significantly improved compared with the previous generation of models. However, compared with the main camera level ultra wide-angle lens used by many Android flagship, the imaging quality of the ultra wide-angle lens of the iPhone 14 Pro still lags behind. In addition, the performance of the telephoto lens of the iPhone 14 Pro is as excellent as ever, with clear image quality and natural color.

Sample of iPhone 14 Pro telephoto lens

IPhone 14 Pro Ultra Wide Angle Lens Sample

Still "limited" fast charging iPhone 14 Pro charging test

The iPhone 14 Pro still only supports a fast charging speed of up to 27W PD, and the normal charging power is about 20W. With the 65W PD charger and the original data cable, the iPhone 14 Pro can charge the battery from nearly exhausted to 64% in 30 minutes through actual tests. The charging speed performance is not much different from before.

summary

As a model that sells for nearly 10000 yuan and iterates once a year, users must have higher expectations for the new iPhone, and Apple's upgrade of the iPhone 14 Pro this time obviously does not satisfy users. Of course, the limited progress does not mean that the iPhone 14 Pro is disappointing in the use experience. Its overall use experience is quite satisfactory, and there will be some small surprises in some details. For users with sufficient budget, the iPhone 14 Pro is a very good flagship phone choice.