Excellent battery life and a large display make the 14 Plus upgrade-worthy
This is the new iPhone that most people want. Itâs not the iPhone with the neat new display features or a high-resolution camera. Itâs the iPhone with a big display and a battery that goes for days.
Thatâs really all you need to know about it, honestly. If youâd rather have an iPhone with the best possible battery life than an iPhone with the very newest features, then the iPhone 14 Plus is the one for you.
The 14 Plus is the big-screen version of the standard iPhone 14. This year, rather than going iPhone Mini / iPhone Big, Apple went iPhone Big / iPhone Bigger. It shares nearly all the same features but offers a 6.7-inch screen compared to the standard 14âs 6.1-inch display. It also claims the best battery life of any iPhone â officially, Apple calls it âall-day battery life,â but in my experience, you can get much more than that.
Oh, and thereâs one more distinct difference: the Plus starts at $899, while the regular 14 starts at $799. That makes it the least expensive 6.7-inch iPhone released yet, but itâs still far from cheap.
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What the iPhone 14 Plus doesnât include are the new display features on the 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. Thatâs the shape-shifting notch called Dynamic Island that displays system status indicators and an always-on display that shows a dim version of your wallpaper even when the screen is locked. Theyâre handy features, but theyâre more of a sign of whatâs to come for the iPhone than must-haves. Instead, the 14 Plus provides the kind of quality-of-life upgrades that a lot of people want from a new phone right now.
The 14 Plusâ display features a slightly higher 2778 x 1284 resolution than the 14âs, so even though itâs much bigger, it maintains roughly the same pixels-per-inch (458ppi compared to 460ppi on the 14). That means images look just as sharp on this screen â theyâre just, you know, bigger, and you can see more emails or parts of a webpage before you need to start scrolling.
Thereâs more to see on a bigger screen. iPhone 14 (left) and iPhone 14 Plus (right).
Thereâs no ProMotion, super-smooth scrolling 120Hz refresh rate here, which is a shame. Appleâs still reserving that for the Pro models, long after fast refresh rates have become the norm for Android phones at the same price. Itâs not something youâll miss if youâre coming from a phone with the same standard 60Hz refresh rate, but I did notice it when I switched from the 14 Pro â maybe even more so because the screen is so big. On the other hand, the lower refresh rate is less power-intensive and probably contributes to the 14 Plusâ excellent battery performance. I think thatâs a tradeoff most people will happily live with.
This is probably an obvious point, but the feeling of having more visual space while using this phone â especially compared to a 6.1-inch model â is real. More text fits onto its screen, and games and videos are a little more immersive. But it also very much handles like a big phone. Itâs a real struggle to use it one-handed, even with the iOS 16âs âreachabilityâ UI controls. Lots of people get along with a big phone just fine, but the 6.1-inch 14 and 14 Pro feel much more comfortable in my hand.
Gaming is more comfortable on a big 6.7-inch display.
It may be big, but the 14 Plus is lighter than I expected it to be. It weighs 7.16 ounces (203g), or just about an ounce (28g) more than the iPhone 14 â and a little less than the 6.1-inch 14 Pro. Its light weight was something I appreciated every time it came clattering out of the pocket of my joggers because this phone doesnât truly fit in any pants pocket I own. In use, it makes the 14 Plus feel a little easier to handle than the Pro Max iPhones.
The screen is this phoneâs big draw, but the extra real estate lends itself to the 14 Plusâ other killer feature: battery for days. MacRumors reports that there is indeed a much bigger cell in the 14 Plus than in the standard 14 â on par with the battery in the 14 Pro Max. But because the 14 Plus doesnât have all of those fancy, new, power-hungry display features, it manages to eke out better battery performance.
The 14 Plusâ battery can deliver multiple days of use on a single charge.
Appleâs claim of the âbest battery life in an iPhoneâ isnât an exaggeration. Typically, a day of moderate use with about two hours of screen-on time and plenty of time away from Wi-Fi only drained the battery by about 25 percent in my experience. I even managed to get three days of use on a single charge. Reader, I canât remember the last time I used an iPhone that comfortably made it through multiple days of use.
Not everyone should expect multiday performance. With heavier use like extended periods of gaming or video streaming, two days feels more reasonable, and that might mean pushing into the single digits by the end of day two. My two hours of screen-on time isnât a whole lot, but I didnât take it easy on the 14 Plus by any means. Throughout each day, I used some navigation, connected to 5G rather than Wi-Fi as often as I could, and recorded some short video clips. And at the end of every day, I felt like I should have pushed the phoneâs remaining battery percentage much lower than I had. Color me impressed.
In every other way, using the iPhone 14 Plus feels like using the iPhone 14, which feels like using the iPhone 13. Performance is snappy, and the A15 Bionic chipset recycled from last yearâs 13 Pro keeps up with just about anything you can throw at it. Thereâs no physical SIM tray, as on the rest of the 14 series, so be prepared to get acquainted with eSIM.
There are a couple of new emergency features included on the 14 Plus (also available on other 14 and 14 Pro models): Crash Detection and Emergency SOS via Satellite. Crash Detection uses multiple phone sensors and inputs to automatically detect when youâve been in a car accident and call emergency services. We havenât tested it, but early reviews are mixed. On the one hand, it can sometimes work too well. On the other, it seems to rely on a lot of signals to indicate that youâre actually in a moving car, which might cause it to miss some crashes if, for example, you havenât been driving for very long before an accident.
Satellite SOS is a feature thatâs coming in November and helps relay a message to emergency services when youâre out of cellular range. It might cost extra down the line, but for the first two years, itâs included free with the iPhone 14 Plus. Even if you donât end up needing it, you will likely be able to try it out to see how it works.
The iPhone 14 (left) and iPhone 14 Plus (right) both include a capable A15 Bionic processor.
The 14 Plus includes the very same cameras as the 14, which means a 12-megapixel f/1.5 main camera with sensor-shift stabilization, a 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 12-megapixel selfie camera with autofocus. Thereâs no high-res, 48-megapixel sensor here (or the nice 2x crop for Portrait Mode that comes with it), but the 14 Plus does gain the benefits of Appleâs updated image processing called Photonic Engine.
What that boils down to is better low-light performance, especially from the ultrawide and selfie cam, even though the hardware isnât exactly new or special. You can read a little more in-depth analysis in my iPhone 14 review, but the short version is that this is a very good camera system â not solely worth upgrading for, but itâll be a pleasant update if youâre coming from an iPhone 11 or older.
When I reviewed the iPhone 14, I couldnât find a compelling reason to pick it over the iPhone 13. The 14 Pro, maybe, if you want the latest and greatest features. But the standard 14âs improvements over the 13 are so minor that most people would be better off living without them and saving a little money.
The iPhone 14 Plus, on the other hand, actually does make an argument for spending a little more. Its $899 price tag is nothing to sneeze at, but itâs lower than the iPhone 14 Proâs starting price of $999 â and lower still than the $1,099 youâd need to pay for the 6.7-inch 14 Pro Max. For $899, you get a significant boost in battery life, no matter what iPhone youâre upgrading from. And a phone with good battery life now stands a better chance of providing healthy battery life a few years down the line when it inevitably degrades. Given that Apple will likely support the 14 Plus with at least five years of software updates, this device could really go the distance.
Thereâs the screen, too, and as we learned from the iPhone Mini Experiment, people donât want small phones. Big screens let you see more and scroll less â the fact that the phone isnât really pocketable or usable with one hand doesnât seem to bother most people. This isnât the best big phone screen Apple offers, but itâs still very good.
If itâs time for an upgrade and youâve been eyeing the big iPhone, but youâd rather get the best battery life possible than the very latest features, then the iPhone 14 Plus is for you. It is an iPhone with a really big screen and great battery life for under $1,000. Thatâs a combination of features that a lot of people will find appealing, and the 14 Plus delivers on its promises.
Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge