Apple is a company that has been accustomed to updating its iPhone to new versions of iOS for years. But while at the same time pampering their old terminals It is common for the new function they announced for the incumbent terminal to not reach older models.even those in a lower range released in the same year.

It makes less and less sense, especially when a model like the iPhone 14 inherits almost all the hardware of the iPhone 13 Pro, but not its special features. Or when the iPhone 14 has new features to be the latest to arrive, but that news hasn’t reached nearly the same terminal as it did a year ago.

Before distinguishing it so clearly, for example, iPhone 4 didn’t get Siri, but HDR came with iOS 4.1. So, Apple didn’t save it for the 4S. What was originally going to be reserved for a new model was the panoramic mode released on the iPhone 5, but with iOS 6, 3.5″ terminal users discovered that the 4S was able to stitch multiple images together to create a massive 28-megapixel image.

It’s hard to think of such a thing now. see double segmentation According to the years and intervals in which the company performed. Functions with Pro in the name, as the name suggests, are a line Apple currently reserves for Pro. Technically there is no possible explanation.

Pro features remain in Pro, but not for lack of others

ProRAW

With the iPhone 12 Pro, Apple introduced ProRAW, which the company describes as a technology that combines information from a standard RAW format with iPhone image processing, giving you more flexibility in editing the exposure, color and white balance of your photos. Since this is something that requires post-processing to get the most out of it with applications like Adobe Lightroom, we can say not a feature the average user would missnor will you spend more money.

The arrival of ProRAW was exclusive to the iPhone 12 Pro . So it didn’t reach previous models or the iPhone 12 and 12 mini. Reason? Apple has never disclosed this, but the iPhone 12 Pro had 6GB of RAM, its entry sibling had 4GB, and given how dependent the iOS camera app is on RAM (it’s common for them to close other apps and models like the one below when used) . The 7 Plus theoretically already came with more RAM to handle portrait mode), it’s probably fair to assume that Apple has examined the hardware not being enough.

The same thing happened again with the 13 Pro and 13 last year. While the 13 Pro came with ProRAW, the 13 did not. Again the technical explanation could be 6 vs 4 GB RAM. The really strange thing came this year. While we don’t yet know the RAM of either model, the rumors are pretty credible this year, and even more credible if it comes from someone like Ming-Chi Kuo. Y According to thatBoth models will have 6GB of RAM, but 14 will be LPDDR4 and 14 Pro LPDDR5.

you should remember this The iPhone 14 will then have the full hardware of the iPhone 13 Pro.: Upgraded Apple A15 chip with 5 GPU cores combined with 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM. That is, the iPhone 12 Pro should be able to handle ProRAW as it has fewer resources. The argument could also be that the iPhone 14 sensor is not capable of handling ProRAW, but what Apple announced yesterday regarding the iPhone 14 camera is what the iPhone 13 Pro already has, as we see in the picture.

Now they both share a camera. With optical image stabilization sensor with a displacement of the 12-megapixel sensor, with aperture f / 1.5. While Apple didn’t reveal this on the internet, it did reveal yesterday that the 14’s sensor has grown from 13 to a 1.9um pixel size. All this makes us think that the main camera of the iPhone 14 is exactly the same as the 13 Pro, and yet, adding the same RAM and the same chip, there is no trace of ProRAW.

ProRes

This button will still not be seen on the iPhone 14.

Apple announced the ability to record video in format with the iPhone 13 Pro. ProRes. Apple describes it as a format that “provides multi-channel, real-time editing performance while delivering professional image quality.” In other words, it creates videos that are less compressed than typical videos we record in HEVC or H.265, ideal for working with them professionally, at the expense of doing a lot more work.

There were already discussions last year, because Even the 128GB iPhone 13 Pro didn’t have ProRes recording support in 4K at 30fps (yes at 1080p). This could be due to the slower storage memory on the 128GB model or a decision made because the 128GB doesn’t record much. This year, by the way, the same thing continues to happen with the iPhone 14 Pro.

But it concerns us How about ProRes video on iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus?. Answer: Despite the fact that the camera hardware, chip and RAM are a priori identical to those of the 13 Pro recording ProRes, as we reviewed, there is no trace. There is a possible explanation and this is that although there are two iPhone 14 models larger than 128GB, internal storage may be slower than the 13 Pro and 14 Pro, but Apple has always used very fast storage and it is difficult. To believe this isn’t happening (dramas with SSDs in M2).

For the iPhone 14 not to have this feature, at least when it comes to ProRes recording with the main camera, segmentation only.

An iPhone 13 Pro with the same hardware as the base 14 is now a second-hand iPhone

Photonic Engine not reaching iPhone 13 Pro.

So far we’ve reviewed what iPhone 14 hasn’t taken from the iPhone 13 Pro or its older brothers. However, there are two special mentions that are missing in the context of what we’ve reviewed. Like the new iPhone 14 Pro Max, the iPhone 14 is capable of recording up to 30fps in 4K HDR in Cinema Mode. A leap for all new models, because last year the limit was 1080p at 30fps without HDR.

Celebrating that Apple isn’t segmented there, but getting back to what it can do… If the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 are the same, or according to Apple logic, the 13 Pro is even superior, and that’s why. It gives ProRAW and ProRes, Why not enable cinema mode via software at 4K 30fps with HDR on 13 Pro? It should technically be possible, and it might come as a surprise in iOS 16, as in panoramic mode in 4S in iOS 6, but right now the web doesn’t reflect that.

Decisions we don’t understand in every product.

Something that didn’t make it to the iPhone 13 Pro either, but to the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro, photonic engineAs my colleague Juan Carlos López explains, it is a software component of the camera that “works side-by-side with the Deep Fusion processing engine” and “first picks up information gathered by the sensor of the camera we are using”. The compression algorithm kicks in to try to improve low-light performance”.

We previously understood that an older iPhone does not receive Deep Fusion or Smart HDR (reluctantly, the iPhone X is forever overexposed) due to improvements in the chip in terms of CPU, GPU, ISP and Neural Engine power. But this generation, where the iPhone 14 has inherited a lot from the iPhone 13 Pro, the accounts are no longer balanced backwards and We do not understand that the Photonic Engine did not come via the 13 Pro update.Just as we do not understand the absence of the action mode of the camcorder found in the 14 and 14 Pro, as the stabilization of the 13 Pro sensor is the first generation, like that of the 14.

Cinema mode does get better, but not for those with an iPhone 13 Pro.

Our impression is that Apple not only segments between series of the same year, but also segments between new models from one year to the next.. Even if you bought an iPhone Pro, you often have to forget about getting new features beyond what’s available in the new iOS, reaching even models six years ago.

The industry has shown there is another way to do things, and a great example is Google. With the Pixel 3, they released the fantastic night mode they call “Night Sight” on their cameras. However, the Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 soon caught on, despite having chips that are far less capable than the Pixel 3.