There are 10 ways the iPhone 14 Pro is better than the Google Pixel 7 Pro. Here they are.
BATTERY LIFE
The Pixel comes with a larger battery vs the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s slightly smaller battery, but it’s not just the battery size that matters here. The way the iPhone uses the battery is also way more efficient, meaning that the iPhone will last far longer on a single charge than the Pixel 7 Pro.
Yes, the Pixel does charge marginally faster than the iPhone, but with the bigger and more efficient battery of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, it’s unlikely you’ll need to charge it during the day.
CAMERAS
Next up are the cameras on the iPhone.
And not specifically the image quality, but how smooth the lens transitions are. I’ve seen this issue across multiple android phones, and from every manufacturer, but when recording video and you want to zoom in and out switching between lenses, the iPhone is by far the smoothest that I’ve ever seen.
Yes, you can still just about see when the lenses switch from a slight shift in the image, but I still see some big shifts in colour and changes when switching lenses on the Pixel 7 Pro.
ACCESSORIES
Number 3 is something that’s improving as time goes on, but given Apple’s market share of the whole mobile phone market, there are far more accessories available for the iPhone than the Pixel.
In fact, one of my favourite phone cases from MagBak which make a Magnetic case that sticks to any magnetic surface has only just come to the Pixel 7 Pro. But because of its wider market share with Apple, you will be able to find a much wider range of accessories, from cases to mounts, camera lenses, magnetic wallets, tripods and screen protectors in all shapes, sizes and colours.
For me, that meant I had to wait around 3 months to get the case I wanted, and now I can go stick my phone onto metal surfaces and once again get weird looks from people when I managed to stick my phone to a vertical surface without it falling off!
SCREEN
Number 4, it’s the screen on the iPhone.
The Pixel for sure has a great-looking screen, but over on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, it’s a lot brighter than the Pixel.
The Pixel manages to hit 1500 nits at peak brightness, compared to the 2000 nits on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, double what the Pixel can do. So the iPhone will be far better on those bright and sunny days when looking at your phone.
The iPhone’s screen is also more colour accurate than the Pixel, giving the iPhone a better overall screen for day-to-day use than the Pixel.
Including something which is arguably better again, for number 5, the Always On Display.
ALWAYS ON DISPLAY
With the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro max this year, Apple introduced their first ever Always On Display Technology. This works in a similar way to the Pixel and other Android phones by reducing the screen’s refresh rate to just 1hz.
On the Pixel, it removes everything from the screen and just shows you what needs to be on that always on display.
You get a black background with the time, date, weather, and some notification icons all of which are in black and white - there’s no colour at all.
Whereas with the iPhone, the Always On Display resembles more of their regular home screen, just dimmed down, because that’s exactly what Apple has done.
They’ve essentially taken the regular home screen of your iPhone, and reduced it down to 1Hz, including the brightness.
This means that you still get some colour on the always-on display, you also get more rich widgets on screen and overall it just looks way more appealing and usable than the extremely limited version on Pixel and Android in general.
Given that this is Apple’s first attempt, it’s going to be interesting to see how they develop this feature in the upcoming iPhone 15 and beyond.
PORTRAIT PHOTOS
Number 6 is something that I don’t quite understand, perhaps you can enlighten me in the comments - but when using Portrait mode on the Pixel, I constantly have issues with edge detection.
There’s always a piece of someone’s hair, or an ear which has been missed by the Pixel, which takes what could be a potentially near realistic DSLR type photo to look obviously amateur, as an ear gets blurred out or a chunk of hair gets mistaken for part of the background.
It’s something that I don’t have issues with across other Android phones, the Samsung S22 Ultra is particularly good at that if you go read the camera test post I did that compared all 3 of these which I’ll link below, but going back to the iPhone here - it doesn’t suffer these same issues and always seems to be better at identifying the whole person from the background of a Portrait photo.
Pete Matheson
If you take a lot of portrait photos, as I do, then this becomes very noticeable over time.
PERFORMANCE
Changing up a little away from the camera, let’s get to the Performance.
Because this is one area where the iPhone 14 pro and Pro Max win hands down.
Whilst they’re fairly on par with each other when generally browsing around launching apps and scrolling social media - when doing more intensive tasks like editing and exporting photos or videos, and certainly loading games - the iPhone is so much faster.
You can use Geekbench as a way to see this in terms of numbers - when run on both phones the scores aren’t quite double, but the iPhone is almost 100% faster than the Pixel 7 Pro.
DYNAMIC ISLAND
Number 8 on the list is Dynamic Island.
Love it or hate it, the Dynamic Island does take up too much space compared to the older style Notch, but recently it has come in handy with some recent updates from the likes of Uber Eats, Ringo, a parking app and many others.
These have started to be genuinely useful - for example when I parked my car, to have the dynamic island change to a countdown to remind me how long I have left on my car - rather than having to set an alarm, or have to keep going in and out of the App to check how much time I have left.
The implementation does work really well, it doesn’t interfere with other apps whilst you’re using your phone either - it’s just this small but constant reminder of what’s going on.
There are certainly arguments both for and against Dynamic Island - but at least these types of updates are great use cases.
MAGSAFE
Next up is Magsafe. Something most Android users, and I’d argue even most iPhone users aren’t that bothered with - but Magsafe is one of those iPhone accessories that you don’t realise how good they are until you start actually using it yourself.
It started off with me getting the MagBak case for the iPhone last year, which means I can stick my phone to anything. But now I have Magsafe chargers on my desk, in my car and on my bedside table where I can just walk in, and instantly attach my phone to charge - and with a couple of these chargers, they’re in a perfect position and angle to be able to read my notifications or see incoming calls without having to pick up my phone.
Most of these chargers also have places to charge a watch or my headphones too, whereas, on the Pixel side of things, I’m yet to find any good, reliable all-in-one chargers.
In fact, the closest I’ve been able to find is basically a MagBak case which now makes all the Magsafe accessories like the wallets stick on, just how I like them.
WORLDWIDE FEATURE RELEASE
Number 10 is something that’s become a repeating pattern for me with Pixel releases, and that is what I guess I’d call worldwide feature availability.
The number of times I would sit there and watch in awe at the Pixel presentations, seeing all the cool new features on Pixel. The Google Assistant can call up and book appointments for you, answer phone calls for you, live translate between languages, only to find that when I actually got my phone, those features were only available to the US, and nowhere outside.
These are flagship features, that are very much a big part of why people buy Pixel phones.
I know Apple have done these a small amount recently with features like SOS Calling, but within a couple of months or so, those features now are available to people outside of the US.
And this is typical of Apple - I don’t ever really recall any time Apple has touted a flagship feature in one of their iPhones, only to read in the small print, or find out at launch that it’s a US-only feature.
When features are limited by country with Apple, typically there are still 8-15 countries that they launch with, before expanding into other areas.
Why do you think the iPhone beats the Pixel, or maybe the Pixel beats the iPhone - Comment down below.
