iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max announced with animated notches and always-on displays

Apple has officially announced the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. In the first big display redesign since Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017, both handsets have a new pill-shaped cutout that replaces the notch and can adjust dynamically. Both devices also have a faster A16 Bionic chip and an always-on display.

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max the “most innovative pro lineup yet.” The iPhone 14 Pro will start at $999, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Both will be available for preorder on September 9th and available in stores on September 16th.

The first notable design change with the iPhone 14 Pro models is the display. While Apple will offer the usual 6.1- and 6.7-inch options, the notch is being replaced by a pill-shaped cutout that will house the Face ID components and a second circular cutout for the front-facing camera.

Apple has moved the proximity sensor behind the display, and notifications will now pop out of the notch in an animation. Apple calls this system the Dynamic Island. Notifications and alerts will adapt and move around the pill-shaped notch, and Apple is really leaning into how it animates and uses the system for new notifications.

Apple demonstrated a variety of ways the Dynamic Island will animate and work in practice, including live activity widgets coming to life and animations and controls for music. When you swipe to go home, background tasks like music playback will move to the island.

Both the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max will include an always-on display that works with the new lock screen widget feature in iOS 16. It will support information like reminders, calendar events, and weather without the iPhone having to wake up to display it. There’s even a sleep state for iOS 16 wallpapers that will darken them to use less battery power.

Inside the iPhone 14 Pro models is Apple’s A16 Bionic chip. Apple has focused on power efficiency, display, and camera with its new chip. The six-core CPU includes two high-performance cores that use 20 percent lower power and four efficiency cores that use a third of chips from competitors.

This new A16 chip helps power the smooth animations found in the Dynamic Island feature and will also power Apple’s new camera system. For the first time ever, the iPhone is moving away from a 12-megapixel sensor to a 48-megapixel one. The new main camera offers improvements to low-light photography, all using a quad-pixel sensor with f/1.78 aperture and 24mm focal length.

For most photos, the sensor will take 12-megapixel binned photos to maximize light capture. This also allows Apple to crop the sensor in different ways to deliver true 2x zoom at a 48mm focal length. This should result in some impressive photos, and the new sensor even optimizes details in Apple’s ProRAW format.

The new ultrawide camera also offers improvements to macrophotography and a 3x improvement in low light. Apple has also upgrade the flash on the iPhone 14 camera system so it’s twice as bright and reacts to the focal length of photos.

If you’re interested in shooting video, the iPhone 14 Pro models have certainly got you covered. The cinematic mode can now do 4K resolution at 30fps and 4K at 24fps.

Overall, the iPhone 14 Pro offers a lot more this year than the modest upgrades to the iPhone 13 Pro models last year, which moved to a 120Hz ProMotion high refresh rate display and three all-new cameras. On the Android side, Samsung has a Galaxy Fold 4, which combines a tablet and a phone experience into one device, and the Galaxy Flip 4, which folds in half.

Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max will both launch on September 16th, with preorders starting on September 9th.

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