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Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max hands-on: Introducing "Dynamic Island"

Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max hands-on: Introducing "Dynamic Island"

Video transcript

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CHERYLNN LOW: I'm here at Apple's iPhone event, and it is finally time to say goodbye to the notch, sort of.

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The company has just introduced a new series of iPhone 14s. And the iPhone 14 Pro and the Pro Max are the models that have done away with the horrendous looking notch cutout that people have hated for years. In its place, however, the company has introduced something new called the Dynamic Island.

This is a pill-shaped cutout that houses the front camera still, but it also has software built in that will make that black space expand and contract, depending on what you're doing, to make it just much more useful. And even though it's not a real full-screen experience, with the Dynamic Island, this does feel much more like a full screen phone.

So we're looking at the smaller iPhone Pro model right here. This is the one with a 6.1 inch screen. And obviously the biggest difference is the notch is replaced by this dynamic island.

And you can still kind of see the camera over in the cutout. And one of the changes here, in addition to the lock screen that we just saw, is that now you can actually use the Dynamic Island to do stuff.

Right now I don't have anything sort of using it yet. But when I do long press on it, it animates just a little. It expands and contracts a little bit. There's a bit of a haptic feedback you can feel.

When you do use it for activities like recordings and stuff, and you swipe out of it, you can see that it expands to take up more space on the screen. And if you tap on it now, you either go back to the app or, if you long press on it, you can see that it expands to take up the top section of the screen as well for fast controls.

This also works a little differently with different things like Apple Music. If you start playing a song on Apple Music and you long press it right there-- of course, while you're still on the app you won't see more controls, but if, say, you went over to Safari and you long press, you get to see the playback box.

So I'm holding up my iPhone 13 Pro over on the right and the iPhone 14 Pro on the left. You can see they really don't look that much different. The cameras may look ever so slightly bigger on the new model. And that's about it.

Another one of the big changes on the iPhone 14 Pro that we can check out right now is the redesigned lock screen. This is basically what we already saw with the iOS 16 beta and the preview that we saw at WWDC-- customizable lock screens with widgets that you can place now.

But this also features the always-on display. You can see that right now it's sort of dim. And then if I were to kind of lift it up, the wallpaper animates and lights up again. So Apple, with the A16 Bionic in this phone, is sort of intelligently managing how much to keep your phone on so you can see your stuff. But if I do leave it asleep for a little bit or leave it untouched for a little bit, it does dim after a while.

So it was still very visible. I'm not sure how much this will tax the battery. This is something we'll need to test out in the real world to find out. But generally, it's just like a very refreshed look for the Pro Series of the iPhone.

So on the back there is a 48 megapixel primary sensor now that has just a larger sensor as well. We're not going to get a lot of really good testing samples from here right now. I mean, I could show you the different lenses that are available, but this is something that we all want to get a review unit out in the wild to check out. But here's kind of what you can look at for the moment.

Like the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus, the new iPhone 14 Pros also have the photonic engine for better photos in low light, as well as Action Mode for a better video stabilization. But Cinematic Mode here gets an upgrade and now supports 4K resolution at up to 30 frames per second for higher quality DSLR style videos. The new features that Apple introduced, like Emergency SOS or crash detection, are also available on the Pro model phones as well.

Despite the new always-on display, Apple says the iPhone 14 Pro models can still offer all day battery. And this might be thanks to the fact that it uses a new A18 bionic chip, which is designed on a 4 nanometer design process.

The iPhone 14 Pros also retain the same starting price as the predecessors, with the smaller 6.1 inch phones starting at $999 and the Max starting at $1099. You can preorder them starting September 9, and the phones will be available September 16.

But, of course, before you go spending your money, make sure you give us some time to test these phones out in the real world so we can verify things like performance, how useful some of these new features are, as well as battery life. And so stay tuned to Engadget for that.

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