Apple iPhone 14 review

Apple iOS 16 on the iPhone 14

All new iPhones come with Apple's iOS 16 out of the box. As usual, it's not a groundbreaking update over iOS 15, but it does improve on the lockscreen, the notification management, the Messaging app, and the privacy options, among other things. And, in typical Apple fashion, some features were left for a later date.

Let's take a closer look at the iPhone 14 Pro's iOS 16 now. Its interface is still based on homescreens populated with apps and widgets, App Library for your less important apps, and Notification and Control Centers.

The lockscreen on iOS 16 is the first thing that's been overhauled, though it still follows the same logic - it's one with the Notification Center and houses your notifications (privacy options are available), plus shortcuts for the torch and the camera. There is also an Always-on option for the first time ever, but it's available only on the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. You can get past the lockscreen via Face ID or PIN if you've opted for secure unlock.

You can customize your lockscreen by picking some cool wallpapers and adding a row of widgets (up to four). There can't be more than one row of widgets, though. The neat thing is that you can build a couple of different lockscreens and switch them on the go (tap and hold, then swipe). This way, you can easily change the look of the homescreen/notification center on the go depending on your mood or work.

Lockscreen customization

Another change here is that the notifications now roll up from the bottom of the screen, which is more convenient for browsing through them. There are different notification display options - stack, list, or just a count.

Lockscreen customization

You can also pair your homescreen look with the lockscreen and change both in one go.

Switching lockscreen and homescreens on the go

Your apps usually populate the homescreen(s) and widgets. There are two specific screens - the leftmost is the Today page, while the rightmost one - App Library.

You can hide specific homescreens - you may have a page that's full of games and hide it when at work or hide a page of work/school apps when on vacation. You can't opt out of Today and App Library, though.

Lockscreen • Homescreen • Today • App Library • Hide homescreens

Apple iOS 16 has an improved Focus mode - now, you can assign a Focus mode on each lockscreen preset you create. And in addition to all other ways of switching between Focuses, now switching between lockscreen also changes the Focus mode.

There are different Focus modes like Work, Personal, Driving, Gaming, Do Not Disturb, among others, highly customizable at that. And you can create and automate you own, of course.

Focus modes

The new iOS 16 also introduces Focus filters, which can affect different apps, with a dedicated API available to developers as well. With these filters, apps like messages and mail clients can automatically filter their content as predefined by the user within the Focus mode.

Focus filters

Widgets can be placed on any of the homescreens and the Today page, and they can coexist with app icons. There are three widget sizes supported by iOS - 2x2, 4x2, and 4x4. You can stack widgets of the same size on top of one another, and, optionally, they can rotate automatically.

Widgets • Widgets • Widgets • Stacked Widgets

The App Library is an app drawer, which is always your rightmost homescreen pane. Apps are added automatically to the App Library upon installation. The sorting is also an automatic process, and you can't edit the categories or move apps into different categories. The app sorting depends on the App Store tags the developer has used upon uploading the apps.

App Library

The Today page is still alive. You can put the same widgets and stacks you can on your homescreens. Here you can also use the old third-party widgets that haven't been optimized yet for newer iOS versions. The old widgets come right after the new ones, should you choose to use some new ones, of course. It's a pity this Today page cannot be disabled, as we found it mostly useless.

The Notification Center is summoned with a swipe from the left horn or the notch. The pane was unified with the lockscreen in iOS 11, and that's why you can have different wallpapers on your homescreen and notification center.

The Control Center, which has customizable and (some) expandable toggles, is called with a swipe from the right horn. You can use haptic touch to access additional controls. And the battery percentage is also here.

Today • Today settings • Notification Center • Control Center

Other key improvement coming with iOS 16 include improved Mail app, options to edit and unsend messages in Messages app, completely redesigned Home app, and Fitness app for everybody, even those without an Apple Watch.

FaceTime has also been improved with better hand-off functionality across devices - now it also includes your wireless headphones, too.

The Photos app has an option to discover duplicate photos. Hidden and Deleted albums now require Face ID/Touch ID.

The Wallet app and functionality have been drastically expanded. In addition to all sorts of keys you can store here, the app now supports detailed receipts and tracking information.

Digital Keys and Digital ID functionality via Wallet have been expanded, too. Now various apps can use basic information from here to verify your identity if you are of a certain age. Sharing car and home keys is also possible between family members.

Finally, the Health app now supports medication tracking in addition to all sorts of important medical and fitness information.

The multimedia is handled by Apple's default apps - Photos, Music, TV.

The Photos app's library has four different views - Years, Months, Days, and All Photos. As usual, AI-powered search options and powerful photo and video edit modes are available.

The TV app is part of iOS 16 and is your default video player for locally stored movies and shows you've added via iTunes. This is also the digital store for movies and TV shows, and it is also the place where you find the Apple TV+ streaming service. A bit overwhelming, but you get used to it eventually.

Photos • Photos • Photos • TV • TV • TV

Music is the default player, and it relies heavily on Apple Music. But even if you decide not to use the streaming service, it can still do an excellent job if you have a few minutes to add your songs via iTunes.

Music

Books are here for your documents, PDFs, and eBooks. Stocks and News are onboard. Safari is your default web browser, and Apple Maps is your default map client.

Books • Books • Stocks • Safari

Finally, Live Text has been part of iOS for a year now, but it has been immensely improved in iOS 16. It now works on both photos and videos and is powered by advanced machine learning. It can easily recognize texts and photos and allows for Look Up right away. What's even cooler is that you can now choose an object from a photo/video, tap and hold on it, and then drag it and use it wherever you like - photo editor, video editor, messages, emails, whatever.

Live Text

All of the new iPhone 14 models also get a new Crash Detection feature. It leverages data from a number of sensors on the phone, including a new HDR gyro and high-g accelerometer, to determine if the user has been in a serious car crash and then contact emergency services. Apple doesn't go into detail as to what constitutes a serious enough crash, and we are not about to go and test it for ourselves, so just know that the feature is there.

And those are the basics of Apple iOS 16 running on the iPhone 14 series. The vanilla iPhone 14 lacks the Dynamic Island and Always On Display, which are both new additions to the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. You can check those out in the corresponding reviews.

One final thing worth mentioning concerns software support and future iOS updates. Apple generally has a great track record for long-term support of its handsets. Though this is all speculation and not officially confirmed in any capacity, it stands to reason that reusing last year's A15 Bionic in this year's iPhone 14 might just extend support for the chip and the devices using it. That could potentially eventually be a bonus to iPhone 13 generation owners as well. Again, this is just speculation on our end, but a pretty logical one.

Synthetic benchmarks

The iPhone 14 carries forward Apple's last-gen A15 Bionic chipset. Specifically, it's "higher tier" variant with five GPU cores, as found in the iPhone 13 Pro models. So, we can probably expect a small uptick in graphical performance over the iPhone 13 and its four GPU cores.

In the CPU department, the 5nm A15 Bionic has a Hexa-core (2x3.23 GHz Avalanche + 4x1.82 GHz Blizzard) configuration - the same as last year.

Another thing that differentiates the iPhone 14 from the iPhone 13 is RAM. The new model has 6GB of RAM instead of 4GB. This should help in fluidity and keep apps alive in the background. So, all things considered, physically, the iPhone 14 might be a copy of the iPhone 13, but internally it borrows from the iPhone 13 Pro instead. While you aren't getting the latest and greatest A16 Bionic, this is still a nice little bump in hardware.

Despite being a bit older, the A15 Bionic is still an incredibly powerful chip. It excels in CPU tests, only outpaced by the A16 Bionic.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  5346
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  5269
• Apple iPhone 14
  4761
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  4706
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  4705
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  4681
• Apple iPhone 13
  4645
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  4629
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate (X Mode+)
  4575
• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  4338
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  4021
• Samsung Galaxy S22
  3682
• Asus Zenfone 9 (Dynamic)
  3606
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  3505
• Google Pixel 6a
  2876

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  1890
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  1861
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  1741
• Apple iPhone 14
  1738
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  1735
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  1731
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  1729
• Apple iPhone 13
  1727
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate (X Mode+)
  1360
• Realme GT2 Explorer Master
  1336
• Asus Zenfone 9 (High Performance)
  1313
• Samsung Galaxy S22
  1171
• Google Pixel 6a
  1047
• ROG Phone 6D Ultimate
  1001
• Asus Zenfone 9 (Dynamic)
  927

The more compound AnTuTu benchmark is also very favorable towards the iPhone 14. It manages to perform on par with the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max and is outshined by the iPhone 14 Pro.

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  968412
• Apple iPhone 14
  817125
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  801691
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  794348
• Apple iPhone 13
  775519
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  772512
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  766065
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  723486

GFXBench was less than stable on iOS 16 and had its fair share of issues, visual and otherwise. We wouldn't necessarily trust its results, particularly the off-screen ones. Even so, the iPhone 14 holds its own.

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  60
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  60
• Apple iPhone 14
  55
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  55
• Apple iPhone 13
  55
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  54
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  47

GFX Aztek Vulkan High (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  50
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  50
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  42
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  40
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  40
• Apple iPhone 14
  38
• Apple iPhone 13
  34

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14
  60
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  60
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  60
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  60
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  60
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  60
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  60
• Apple iPhone 13
  59
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  54

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  121
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  119
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  112
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  108
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  107
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  103
• Apple iPhone 13
  98
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  97
• Apple iPhone 14
  91

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  196
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  185
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  181
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  178
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  161
• Apple iPhone 14
  151
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  150
• Apple iPhone 13
  150
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  146

GFX Manhattan ES 3.0 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  262
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
  256
• Apple iPhone 13 Pro
  252
• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  243
• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  233
• Apple iPhone 13
  222
• Apple iPhone 14
  217
• Apple iPhone 13 mini
  211
• Apple iPhone SE (2022)
  60

Finally, here is 3DMark. We got pretty expected results compared to the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max
  9894
• Apple iPhone 14
  9757

3DMark Wild Life Extreme (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 14 Pro
  3368
• Apple iPhone 14
  2936

We made sure to test the stability and thermal-throttling characteristics of the iPhone 14 as well. The phone throttles its performance quite a bit with prolonged loads but does so quite gradually, with no sudden drops, which is good to see. We guess that's the price to pay for the new, more repair-friendly internal design.

Thermal-throttling and performance

In practical terms, the iPhone 14 gets moderately hot after a prolonged load. Even then, however, the A15 Bionic still has enough "oomph" to deliver a smooth experience.

Overall, we had absolutely no performance issues with the iPhone 14. Old chipset or not, it still performs great with superbly smooth general UX and also chews through every task we throw at the phone, from productivity to gaming. You shouldn't have any purchasing hesitation regarding performance with the iPhone 14 at all.