The new top model of Apple's phone has two advantages over its predecessor, the iPhone 13 Pro Max, resulting from the new design. The first such news is Dynamic Island. Notch has been replaced by two cutouts in the screen, which are programmatically combined into one oblong capsule. Pixels between the holes are dimmed, but if necessary, dots appear there to indicate that an app uses a camera (green) or a microphone (orange).
In addition, the Dynamic Island in the iPhone 14 Pro Max can expand, narrow and slide apart, as well as divide into two parts (if two programs would like to use it at the same time) depending on the context. When you minimize an app that supports an API such as CallKit or Now Playing, just hold it to expand the widget or roll to open it. In the case of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, we can forget about it, because we only have Static Notch in it.
The second such unique feature of the iPhone 14 Pro Max is the Always On Display mode. Thanks to this, when you press the lock button, the screen is not completely blank. The wallpaper is dimmed (and the background disappears if AI has detected the depth in the image), and the range and battery charge status information disappears from the bar next to the Dynamic Island (which expands to show the padlock symbolizing that the device is locked). Interestingly, AOD also works in apps.
So much has changed in the photo module that I will devote a separate material to it. In short, the iPhone 14 Pro Max received new photo modules: triple main and auto selfie modules (12 Mpix and 23 mm, zf / 1.9 instead of f / 2.2). The huge island with lenses on the backs, which protrude above the housing even more than in the iPhone 13 Pro Max, immediately catches the eye. Fortunately, it does not bother me when using the device and I do not cover them with my finger.
The main camera in the iPhone 14 Pro Max has a much larger matrix and takes photos up to 48 Mpix (f / 1.8 and 1 / 1.28 ") in Apple ProRAW mode. However, it is optional, and in automatic mode, photos from the main lens still have size 12 Mpix and weigh several dozen times less Four pixels are here combined into one, so that the effective pixel size increased in the iPhone 13 Pro Max to 2.44 um (2x 1.22 um) in the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The first impressions are that, unfortunately, there is no revolution here, but after taking example photos with both phones, I can see that the iPhone 14 Pro Max is actually doing a bit better after dark. Photographs have less noise and objects in the background do not turn into soap. Apparently, the algorithms that combine several photos on the fly into one and raise their quality programmatically are now doing a bit better thanks to the Quad Pixel technology.
The double magnification is carried out by cutting 12 Mpix from the central part of the matrix (it is as if the device had an additional 48 mm lens). The previous top Apple phone had a 12 Mpix main camera (f / 1.5 and 26 mm, 1 / 1.7 "and 1.9 um). Interestingly, this 2x magnification is used by default in portrait mode. The telephoto lens with 3x zoom must be turned on manually, and its parameters have not changed (12 Mpix with f / 2.8; 77mm and 1 / 3.5 ").
This does not mean, however, that the iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 13 Pro Max will take identical photos at 3x zoom. The new model has Photonic Engine algorithms that improve the quality in poor lighting conditions. This is good news, because in this respect last year's top model fared worse than ... the iPhone 12 Pro Max (which had a 2.5x zoom and a bit better light). After the first tests, I can see that this year's model takes less noisy photos after dark.
In addition, an ultrawide lens appeared on the iPhone 14 Pro Max. He also takes pictures (including macro) with a size of 12 Mpix (13 mm, 120 degrees), it also has a larger matrix than its predecessor (1 / 2.55 "instead of 1 / 3.5"), but a bit worse light (f / 2.2 instead of f /1.8). In addition, he also uses the Photonic Engine, and how all these changes will affect the quality of photos, as well as video quality (there is a new Action Mode, and the Movie Mode has 4K support), I will be looking at.