The actual saving grace of the iPhone 14 series seems to be a couple of safety and disaster aide features that Apple is trying to implement across iPhones and partially across Apple watches this year. The first big one is satellite messaging, which Apple was probably going to have claim to as the company to first do it if Huawei hadn’t just beat them to it a few hours prior. This feature allows you to contact an emergency station or rescue personnel when you’re in an area without network coverage through directly connecting to an orbital satellite.

Apple has even made a full app to help a user find the correct position of the satellite in the sky, and created a purpose built protocol to transmit smaller messages and faster due to satellites having far more limited bandwidth. They’ve even gone one step further and put up their own relay centers and staff for when a rescue station only takes calls, so that Apple receive your emergency message ad relay that to the rescue personnel as a call. It’s a pretty concerted effort, especially considering the amount of investment that will especially go into the satellite equipment part, and we have to admit it’s pretty great. Now If only it didn’t only work in the US and Canada. The next big feature is Crash detection, which will be available for not just the iPhones but  all of Apple’s 3 new Apple Watches as well.

It essentially uses 2 sensors to , microphones and some trained algorithms to detect when there has been changes in air pressure, sound and position that could hint at a car crash, then alerts an emergency service center as well as your loved ones. It’s also a pretty great feature. My only gripe with it(like other emergency features on any phone) is allowing a user to state what counts as an emergency number in their country, because often the stated numbers for the US or Europe just straight up don’t work here. Either way it could prove to be a useful feature in an emergency, even if we hope no one here has to use it.

The last big change of the iPhone 14 phones? You might this a little disconcerting but well, Apple is removing the sim card from it’s phones. At least in the US. From now on all iPhones in the US  will only come with an eSIM option, completely doing away with physical SIM cards. Now to be fair, even I don’t think this is the biggest deal, eSIM has been a long time coming and even here in Zim Econet at least supports the eSIM option. And as said, this only really applies to US iPhones, though that means for those of us who love to import or buy imported models we should probably check whether it has a physical SIM slot or not. If not, well hopefully you’ll be an Econet subscriber, because you might have a slightly harder time of things otherwise. The business brain part of me also thinks this makes it much harder for anyone buying a locked iPhone 14 in the US to unlock it, as usually that process might unlock a phone’s hardware capability to read other SIMs , but now there’s an extra software layer to it as well. YouTube’s MKBHD even went a step further to say it would definitely be an extra step in keeping an iPhone user stuck to Apple’s Ecosystem as well, as the process of trying to transfer eSIMs might prove horrendous when moving to an Android. There’s a lot to unpack there, but we’ve babbled enough for this article.

So what do we think of the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus at the moment? Honestly, here it’s far less impressive than it was even last year. We’re sure they’ll be fine phones to use, and by the time reviews come out we’ll have more info on whether any of their slight upgrades actually count as an upgrade. But outside of the regular 14 and it’s bigger screen (better screen too) and bigger battery, I don’t see why these regular iPhones are worth buying. Especially when they don’t have neither the new , “notchless” screen of this year’s Pro Models with the “Dynamic island” , or even last year’s screens with 120Hz. It’s enough to make me think buying a 13 Pro or Pro Max , considering you do get said 120Hz screen and cameras that are still better due to a telephoto lense. But of course people differ. And as we said before people love a big , cheaper screen, which is exactly why the 14 Plus will likely sell like hotcakes. We just wish said hotcakes came with a lower price or at least a dynamic island.

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