iPhone 14 /14 Pro leaks live: likely release date, price, specs and more

While we’re on the subject, one of the strongest (and most believeable) rumored changes for Apple this year is that the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro models (and the related Max devices) will have different chipsets.

The new iPhone 14 will stick with the A15 Bionic chipset, where the iPhone 14 Pro will have the A16, and likely a touch more RAM inside.

While you could see that as Apple making the iPhone 14 worse (and, I suppose it is, given until this point every iPhone has always had the very best CPU inside) I see it as a good thing in helping consumers decide.

Because while the Pro range is always marketed at high-power creatives and people that need loads of power, in reality they’re popular because they just are the best iPhone.

So making it clearer that the Pro range is really the phone for the professional – much like the MacBook Pro vs MacBook – will simplify the choice for many.

However, that brings us back to price – unless Apple keeps the cost of the iPhone 14 the same as the iPhone 13, because of a similar engine, then it’s not going to be fair on the customer.

Sure, make the iPhone 14 Max more expensive than the iPhone 13 mini – it’s bigger and all the larger components cost more – but otherwise let’s hope for parity.

OK, next up for disucssion is your friend and mine: the iPhone 14 Max.

I can’t tell you excited I was when I started hearing glimmers of this phone begin to leak late last year, as it was the phone that I’ve thought Apple should make for years.

What is it? It’s the iPhone Pro Max without the Pro bit – so my expectation is that the 14 Max will have the A15 Bionic chipset inside (from 2021) and only two lenses on the rear, with the 14 Pro Max having the best of everything.

Wait! Don’t dismiss it yet – the thing I’ve enjoyed using the 13 Pro Max for is simply the battery life, and a larger 14 Max would be able to have that without the cost of the Pro Max.

Sure, the best camera is a brilliant thing – and I’ve got some wonderful snaps from the 13 Pro Max – but in these most cost-conscious times, I think the 14 Max is going to be a winner.

That means we’ll see the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Max, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max – that’s some lovely symmetry there.

We did some good analysis recently on the iPhone 14 release date – let’s go over it again here because I’ve got a pretty good gut feeling on this one.

My prediction is that the iPhone 14 launch date will be September 13, and then – regular as clockwork – on September 23 we’ll see it on shop shelves.

I can say this because I’ve attended all the physical iPhone launches since iPhone 6, many years ago – and they’ve always been on or around my birthday. The rumored September 6 launch date doesn’t jive with that, therefore it has to be the week after.

I once complained to a fellow journalist that I always had a disrupted birthday because of the iPhone launch, and he looked at me with sadness and told me he’d missed his entire 40th birthday day because he crossed the date line and the day just disappeared to come to an iPhone unveiling.

I shut up after that.

Talking of live ones, we’ve just published a story that Apple is expecting no hit to its orders of the new iPhone 14 range, despite the cost of living going up so much in recent months.

That right, despite the mooted 15% increase in price, Bloomberg is reporting that Apple has ordered 90 million units of its phones, clearly confident it can shift them over the course of the year and anticipating no slow down in demand.

That’s surprising and touches on something I’ll discuss in more detail later on: the expected absence of the iPhone 14 mini. To keep orders up at that level, which reportedly is in line with previous years, shows real confidence at this point – and means Apple must have new features that it feels are going to resonate with consumers.

Right, let’s start with a live one: the iPhone 14 price. Recently, respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo pointed to some strong results from one of the iPhone suppliers, stating they believed that it was going to be making a vast majority of the iPhone models.

That manufacturing company, Hon Hai / Foxconn, has suddenly increased its financial outlook, which leads Kuo to confirm his belief that the iPhone will increase in cost around 15%.

What would that mean for you, if you’re looking to buy one of the new iPhone 14 models?

Based on the fact Apple likes to keep its iPhone prices ending $49 or $99, I suspect the new iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the smaller iPhone 14 Pro to hit $1099. This is just an educated guess at this point though – the ASP (average selling price) mentioned means that it could be Apple spreads the cost through the range to keep it balanced.

Right, so here we are – our first live, on-the-go dissection of some of the top rumors we’ve seen in the last week (and a fair smattering of the stuff we’re pretty confident of seeing next month, based on the consistent leaks over the last year).

I’ve been writing about and covering iPhone launches since 2008, and one thing that’s clear is that since the iPhone 6 or so, we’ve seen far more leaking of key elements of the phones in the build up to the launch, a far cry since the days of the iPhone 4 being found in a bar (opens in new tab) and everyone losing their minds…