Apple iPhone 14 Pro review: new ideas in a familiar package

Weak currency rates against the dollar mean the new phone is £150 (A$400) more expensive than its predecessor, coming in at £1,099 (A$1,749) despite costing the same $999 in the US.

The pill is animated, expanding and contracting to accommodate system alerts and ongoing notifications, such as charging status, album art and a little waveform when playing music or a countdown timer. Tapping and holding the notch reveals more of the notification, such as music playback controls, and just a tap opens the app.

The pill acts as a focal point for other animations such as the Face ID logo appearing when authenticating purchases. The whole experience feels fun and alive, which is the broad theme of the iOS 16 software running on the 14 Pro and all other iPhones as old as the iPhone 8.

The battery life is solid but more variable than other iPhones. Leaving the 14 Pro flat on a desk for most of the day, the battery lasts about 39 hours with 5.5 hours of active use. Keep the phone in a pocket, which shuts the display off, and it lasts about 45 hours between charges.

In the US the iPhone 14 line ships without a sim card tray, relying entirely on eSim, a purely digital version of the sim. In the UK, it will continue to have a sim tray. Emergency satellite SOS is rolling out in November, but only to phones sold in the US or Canada.

Apple does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery, but it should last in excess of 500 full-charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity and can be replaced for £105. Out-of-warranty screen repairs cost £349. The specialist site iFixit gave the 14 Pro six out of 10 for repairability.

New for the iPhone 14 line is car-crash detection, which senses the high impact force of a traffic collision and automatically calls the emergency services if you do not respond within 20 seconds.

The 14 Pro has one the biggest under-the-hood changes to an iPhone camera system in years. A new processing system boosts lowlight performance across all cameras front and back two- to three-fold, which helps particularly when shooting indoors in dim, artificial light.

The camera can also shoot full 48MP images in ProRaw mode and produce a 2x zoom by shooting only on the centre of the image sensor, which is handy but struggles a little in lower light conditions.

The 3x telephoto and ultrawide cameras remain 12MP, but the latter has a sharper lens that produces crisper macro shots. The selfie camera has been upgraded with better low-light performance and auto-focus for the first time, which makes closeup selfies a bit sharper. Portrait mode can now blur the foreground as well as the background of an image, which is more realistic, but still struggles with hair and other fine elements more than competitors.

Videography is still class-leading with an impressive new action mode that stabilises footage like an action cam, but it requires bright light to work effectively.

Overall, the main 48MP camera is certainly more capable in middling to poor light and a little crisper on fine detail, but otherwise is very similar to the 13 Pro, as are the other cameras. That still means the 14 Pro has some of the best cameras available, but it is not a night-and-day upgrade.

The iPhone 14 Pro costs from £1,099 ($999/A$1,749) with 128GB of storage.

For comparison, the iPhone 14 costs £849, the iPhone 14 Pro Max costs £1,199, the Samsung Galaxy S22+ costs £949, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 costs £999 and the Google Pixel 6 Pro costs £849.

The animated interface makes the phone feel more reactive and alive. The pill-shaped dynamic island grows and expands in a fluid fashion, bringing together system alerts and on-going tasks with the potential to transform how the phone works. The always-on display with the redesigned lock screen from iOS 16 feels similar with its live notifications and widgets.

On top you get everything that is good about an iPhone: strong battery life, very fast performance that lasts years, long software support, a truly stunning screen, Face ID, recycled materials and a large ecosystem.