USB-C to A16 Bionic chip: iPhone 14 didn’t include these new features | Digit

During their “Far Out” event, Apple went out and announced something for everyone who’s a part of their ecosystem. For the audio enthusiasts, there was the new AirPods Pro 2. For the smartphone aficionados, there was the usual suspect, the new iPhone 14 lineup. And for the ones who love to go out and about in the wilderness, there were the new Apple Watches, with the Ultra variant being the star of the show.

All of the newly announced products, including the iPhones, came with features that everyone’s been harping about on the internet. However, there were some things in the iPhones that we feel Apple skipped out on. The non-Pro iPhones were the biggest losers. So, here’s our list of three key features that we feel should have been there on the iPhone 14 lineup that Apple announced on September 7.

Apple iPhone 14 – No USB-C

The topic of Apple’s resentment to include a USB-C charging and data transfer port has been debated to death. Every year amongst all the leaks, the biggest one remains to be the inclusion of a USB-C port. However, this time around, the hopes were higher than before. Everything pointed towards Apple finally breaking down and ditching their beloved lightning port in favour of the more universally appealing USB-C port.

The most prominent reason was the recent legislation passed by the EU, which would require all personal electronic devices to have a USB-C charging port. Everyone thought that Apple would break down. But they didn’t. They went ahead and put in the lightning port, knowing they would soon have to leave that port behind. 

The second reason why everyone thought that this year’s iPhone lineup would have USB-C was the fact that literally every other handheld computing device that Apple sells, apart 

from the base model iPad, has a USB-C port. Anyone remotely connected to the industry guessed that Apple might go the iPad route with the iPhones and ship the Pro models with USB-C while retaining the lightning port on the non-Pro phones.

However, it looks like none of it was enough to push Tim Cook and Co. to include a much-awaited USB-C port in their iPhones. The lightning port is slow in every respect and just old at this point. At this point, given the fact that they already have removed the sim tray in US iPhones, it looks more likely that they will announce a port-less iPhone the next time around. 

Apple iPhone 14 – Where’s the ProMotion?

We are talking about the non-Pro iPhone 14 here. Both the iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Plus lack the higher refresh rate ProMotion display, which has already been a feature on the Pro models of last year.

In today’s market, it is hard to imagine a phone being sold for almost ₹80,000 and still lacking a feature as basic as a high refresh rate screen. It is not like Apple has no clue about high refresh rate displays. They already included it in last year’s iPhone 13 Pro models. So, given that they were carrying over the processor, which is clearly capable of handling a high refresh rate panel, they could have very well included at least a 75 Hz display on the non-Pro phones of this year. But, they didn’t, and no one was impressed by this move.

Apple iPhone 14 – Why the older chip?

Continuing on the topic of older generation iPhones and the transfer of their tech into the latest gen devices, let’s talk about the one thing that Apple did transfer over, which no one wanted. It is the processor. The non-Pro iPhones this year come equipped with the last-gen A15 Bionic processor, which was launched with the iPhone 13.

Why?

No matter how powerful the processor might be, it makes no sense, especially given the pattern iPhones have been following in terms of processor upgrades, for Apple to go with a last-gen processor on a newer device. Well, Apple did it. So anyone looking to upgrade will have to deal with it. The jury is still out on whether the new base iPhones are worth upgrading to or not. However, on paper, it looks like Apple may have missed the trick with this one. Especially given the other two things that are even more important additions if they would have been included in the new phones.

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