iPhone 14 Plus | Fill the screen

It’s been four years since Apple launched a basic iPhone with a bigger screen. It’s now done this week with the latest addition to the 2022 vintage, the iPhone 14 Plus, of which this is the big selling point.

Karim Benessaieh
The Press

Arriving in stores this Friday, the iPhone 14 Plus is technically an improved iPhone 13 with a larger screen. And this one really is bigger than ever, at 6.7 inches, a size that had until now been reserved for the pricey iPhone Pro Max since the Model 12.

More autonomy

The iPhone 14 Plus got the same A15 Bionic chip as last year’s iPhone 13, with one noticeable tiny improvement, a 5-core GPU instead of 4. As a sign of that improvement, battery life goes from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. for streaming video. You might not see the difference, but Geekbench 5 benchmarking software tells us there is indeed one in graphics processing capability.

As usual, and even for last year’s models, Apple phones outrageously dominate. In terms of graphics processing, they are in another galaxy. The processor capacity, however, is not entirely out of reach for the Android competition.

So we have with the iPhone 14 Plus an extremely fast phone, capable of managing several apps simultaneously, of going from navigation to photos to video games without irritating delays. The large screen size-we admit we have become dependent on this characteristic-allows very satisfying video and game streaming. For a GPS in the car, this is an advantage. We even used it for digital books, in a waiting room, an experience that was not frustrating.

The screen here is almost the same as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, what Apple dubbed Super Retina XDR, at 2778 by 1284 pixels, 458 ppi density and 1200 nits peak brightness.

Where you have to agree to make a cross is in the rear lenses, two in number rather than three. Forget the iPhone 14 Pro’s 48MP main camera and x6 optical telephoto lens. The iPhone 14 Plus is content with the two main cameras at 12 Mpx of the iPhone 13. A photo enthusiast will obviously see a difference. Highly zoomed details taken at 48MP are much clearer than those of a 12MP photo.

To see how damaging the loss of optical zoom is, we compared it to an iPhone 14 Pro Max, both with 5x zoom, digitally for the iPhone 14 Plus. The difference seemed obvious to us, but the photo obtained with the iPhone 14 Plus was acceptable.

Another novelty appeared in the technical characteristics: the front camera, which now features autofocus. Honestly, putting the iPhone 13 and 14 Max side by side, we saw absolutely no difference in focus, which was clear in both cases from afar and up close.

Note also that like all 2022 models, the iPhone 14 Max can send an SOS via satellite if the cellular network and detects if its owner is involved in a collision.

Last, but not least, the iPhone 14 Plus is priced $250 more than its iPhone 13 sibling from last year, but $300 less than an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

One buys ?

Is this latest model of the iPhone 14 worth the purchase? The key here is how much importance you place on a large 6.7-inch screen rather than 6.1. The smaller iPhone 14 costs $150 less. No need to pay more if the big screen seems like an unnecessary luxury. If you don’t need the telephoto lens and the 48 MP camera, as well as the Dynamic Island and the Always-On mode of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, there’s still no need to spend an extra $300: the iPhone 14 Plus becomes an interesting alternative . Too bad, however, that we kept the same chip launched last year.