That is, until you go past the mark of about 20-30 minutes into your gaming marathon. I compared the iPhone 14 Pro side by side with the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and noticed that the transitions just felt a tad smoother on the Apple device.įrame rates were consistently at the top end of the permissible limit, and there was no absolutely no trace of stuttering or frame drops. If you have keen eyes, you will easily discern the stunning clarity of shadow and reflection rendering, especially if you’ve played games on a mid-range Android phone. Except for outlier scenarios where the developer hasn’t enabled one or two of the peak graphics presets to keep things from going haywire, the Apple flagship had absolutely no trouble delivering the smoothest performance you can get on a smartphone. I fired up games expecting the iPhone 14 Pro to crush them. A gaming beast that literally brings the heat The iPhone 13 Pro was no thermal management champion, but the iPhone 14 Pro doesn’t fare any better under stress - especially when it comes to playing games. That’s not good news, especially when the processor has made yet another fabrication leap that offers a 40% bump in CPU power while graphics memory bandwidth has gone up by a 50% margin.įor thermal management, however, Apple has merely played around with graphite sheets, hoping that they will do a dramatically better job this time around. Apple has made changes to the thermal hardware this year, and teardowns of the 14 Pro show what exactly is going on under the hood.įor yet another year, Apple has skipped the more efficient vapor chamber cooling system in favor of graphite sheets. Nadeem Sarwar / DigitalTrendsīoth phones feature a processor that is too powerful for the heat management system inside. That’s because the iPhone 14 Pro is held back by the same problem as the Google Pixel 6a.

I did get a taste of that class-leading performance, but only in short bursts. When I embarked on a marathon gaming session involving every demanding title that I could find on the App Store, I expected nothing but class-leading performance.

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