For tech journalists, September is essentially iPhone Month. That’s because, in the last decade, only one September hasn’t included the unveiling of a new iPhone — and that was in 2020 when the world was slightly busy with that whole global pandemic thing. It wasn’t exactly a massive delay, either with the iPhone 12 arriving in October, instead.
The point is that it would be very brave for anyone to bet against a September/October reveal for the iPhone 14. But if the wait seems unbearable, you could hop on a plane to China where knock-off iPhone 14 cases are, apparently, ready to go.
As many have pointed out, these aren’t the most impressive knock-offs in the world — and not just because they’re for a product that’s technically currently imaginary. Apple hasn’t used this kind of transparent packaging for some years, so it wouldn’t fool diehards.
Still, it gives you an idea of what the upcoming handsets will look like, because these cases are typically made via CAD model leaks. Apple releases CAD models to third parties to ensure cases are actually ready to go on launch day. Although the fact that these are here a good two months before go time suggests the company could probably afford to delay a little in future.
So what can we learn from the cases? Nothing we didn’t already know. The iPhone mini is MIA after apparently selling appallingly badly over two generations, and we’re instead treated to two 6.1in and two 6.7in models.
We’ve heard elsewhere that while the more advanced big-screen iPhone will still be called the iPhone 14 Pro Max, the chunky vanilla model will instead be called the iPhone 14 Plus.
That makes some sense. Apparently this year, Apple will be trying to upsell the Pro models, and is even rumoured to be reserving the new A16 chip for them. Buyers of the vanilla version will apparently get the same A15 as on the iPhone 13 (meaning you should probably just buy a discounted iPhone 13 Pro in my view, but you do you.)
One other interesting detail from these cases: look at how big the camera gap is on the Pro versions! Rumour has it that this may be to make way for a new 50MP main sensor, giving us the biggest photography upgrade for the iPhone in quite some time.
Just a few more months before we know if the rumour mill was right as per usual, or miles off the mark.
