Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max in for review

Hello and welcome to the best iPhone to date – the brand new iPhone 14 Pro Max. There are a lot of new and better things but the new iPhone carries over some old and tired stuff, like the Lightning connector and subsequent cable in the box.

Looking at the iPhone 14 Pro Max from the back, you’d be forgiven if you mistake it for the old model. The only thing giving away the 14 for the latest iPhone is the titular Purple color we’ve got.

But on the front, it’s unmistakably the new iPhone, thanks to the Dynamic Island. It’s Apple’s clever word for the new notch and it’s basically software binding two physical cutouts with a little screen and a lot of functionality. We’ll go over that in the full review, but suffice it to say, you’d quickly forget that the new notch is a physical entity. It comes alive in the simplest of tasks, like the call notification, setting a timer, or listening to music.

The selfie camera is new too – the 12MP camera finally has autofocus!

The display still measures 6.7 inches, but it’s brighter this year at a peak of 2,000 nits and smarter with its refresh rate, which enabled Always-on display. And in true Apple fashion, the implementation while late isn’t like anyone else’s.

The AOD isn’t a full black screen with a few white indicators for time, date, and notifications. It’s basically a dimmed-down version of your lockscreen and it takes some getting used to – at first, it will prompt long-term users to think their phone’s screen is on.

But the AOD is wise to recognize its environment so that it will dim down in a darker room, ramp up the brightness outdoors, and fully turn itself off while you’re sleeping or while the phone is face down. It will be interesting to see the battery penalty for the new always-on mode in our review.

The main camera is also new. It’s a 48MP 1/1.28″ imager with 1.22µm individual pixels, dual-pixel PDAF, and the second generation sensor-shift stabilization. The new sensor bins its pixels 4 to 1 to produce a final 12MP image, but it also allows for 2x shots again at 12MP with cropping rather than binning. Full 48MP images through Apple ProRAW are available too.

As you can see, there’s a lot to test, so we’ll get down with the review. In closing, here are a couple of shots comparing the new iPhone 14 Pro Max with the 6.1-inch iPhone 14 Pro. The smaller Pro’s unboxing is also coming soon.

Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max, left, iPhone 14 Pro, right