It’s no secret that 2025 was the golden age of budget phones. A year where you could get fast performance and capable cameras all for under ₹20k. Unfortunately, 2026 isn’t shaping up to be the year we all hoped it would be. It’s the year we’re starting to feel the consequences of AI in the form of sky-high RAM and storage prices. As you may have guessed, budget phones have fared the worst, given their already thin margins. OPPO has historically done well with its K-series, and this year the Chinese smartphone maker is back with the all-new K14 5G.
The K14 is an interesting phone, to say the least. It packs the Dimensity 6300 processor, a 50MP main camera, and a new design. The first point of comparison for many would be its predecessor, the K13. It was the favourite of many and still comes out as a better phone than the K14. But to me, that’s not the correct way to judge. Sure, the K13 launched at the same price of ₹17,999, but it now costs over ₹20k, so the two devices simply cannot be compared. This had me wondering: How does the new OPPO K14 justify its price tag? To answer this question, I asked OPPO to send the K14. This review sums up my experience with the device over the last two weeks, highlighting its pros and cons to help you make an informed decision.
OPPO K14 Review
Summary
The new OPPO K14 is a good phone with a pretty design that’s more than capable of handling everyday tasks and even gaming, for that matter. However, it’s not perfect. I’d love to see better nighttime camera performance and a higher-resolution display, but neither is a deal-breaker.
Design & Hardware
Design has always been OPPO’s bread and butter, with some handsome-looking phones throughout its history. I can pretty much say the same things about the K14 as well. It’s a tried-and-tested design that just works for everyone. The white variant I received has geometric patterns on the back that catch the light in different ways. This adds a bit of style without being overly flashy. I handed the phone to some of my family and friends, and they all had the same opinion. The matte finish picks up no fingerprints, so the phone stays pristine at all times.
The sides are plastic, of course, but that’s not a problem. The silver finish matches the white frame well, and the in-hand feel is good, too. Don’t get me wrong, the K14 is a big phone, but with a slight curve to the frame, it’s manageable enough to use with one hand for someone with average-sized fingers. The back also includes the dual camera setup tucked inside an island. The design is fairly straightforward, but what I do love is that the camera lenses don’t protrude much, so the K14 doesn’t wobble on a table. The weight can range from 209–216g, depending on your color, and it’s distributed pretty well for a phone with a 7,000 mAh battery pack.
Security is handled by a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. It’s plenty fast and works with both wet and greasy fingers, unlike the optical ones. The K14 also gets the myriad of IP ratings, including IP68 and IP69, meaning you can go swimming with the K14 if desired. Though I would always be against that since water damage isn’t covered under warranty. Also, OPPO is heavily advertising the K14’s durability, which I put to the test when I accidentally dropped it from waist height. There was no damage whatsoever.
Display & Speakers
The OPPO K14 features a 6.75-inch HD+ LCD display with a 120Hz refresh rate. I’ll say it straight: the display isn’t a selling point for the K14. The 120Hz refresh rate is great, but the HD+ resolution simply limits everyday usability, and the text does feel noticeably less sharp. However, if you haven’t been testing flagship phones every month, then the K14 would feel right at home. The 1,125-nit peak brightness makes the screen visible outdoors without me having to squint much. The content experience is also fine, but nothing special.
The stereo speakers, on the other hand, are really good. There’s ample separation between instruments, and mids stay decently clear along the spectrum.
Performance
Performance is what makes or breaks the budget smartphone experience. The K14 features the Dimensity 6300 processor, featuring 2 Cortex-A76 cores running at 2400 MHz and 6 Cortex-A55 cores at 2000 MHz, along with the Mali-G57 MP2. In addition, my review unit came with 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 256GB of UFS 2.1 internal storage.
The Dimensity 6300 has been around for a long time and has proven to be plenty capable. The K14’s everyday performance is actually really good. ColorOS is my favourite Android skin, and that pays enough dividends. Both light apps and heavier ones like the camera open quickly, switching between tasks is smooth, and the RAM is enough to keep multiple tasks running at the same time.
The animations, while not as pretty on my Find X8, are still fluid enough to make the experience feel premium. The phone also gets a dose of my favourite AI features, including the likes of AI Portrait Retouching, Recompose, and Perfect Shot. All of them help you tweak the camera’s output for a better-looking photo. All that being said, there are many pre-installed apps, including the annoying “Hot Apps” folder, which you’ll need to remove manually.
Since this is a review, I also put the Dimensity 6300 through its paces with a series of benchmarks. The K14 scored 814 in Geekbench’s single-core and 1,981 in the multi-core test. In AnTuTu, the phone achieved 688,325 points. Moving on to gaming, I installed BGMI and played it at Smooth and Extreme settings. Overall, the experience was decent for the price, with stable 60 FPS gameplay and no dropped frames, even in intense situations.
Battery Life & Charging
If you ask me for just one reason to consider the K14, I’ll probably say it’s the 7,000 mAh battery. I couldn’t push the phone hard enough to drain it in a day, and that’s big praise. For context, I started my day at around 9 AM with 100% charge remaining. After my morning cup of coffee, I decided to run benchmarks on the K14. Once that was in order, I watched a few YouTube videos and hopped into a long BGMI gaming session with my friends. The evening was the usual struggle at the gym with the OPPO Enco Air 3 Pro+ connected to the phone. Lastly, I went shopping with my friends and took a few sample photos.
I ended that day with roughly 40% charge remaining. When I did eventually run out of juice the next day, the 45W fast charging came to the rescue. It can charge the battery from 0% to full in around 90 minutes. You can also use the K14 as a power bank to charge other phones with a cable.
Cameras
The K14’s cameras are headlined by a 50MP OV50D sensor paired with a 2MP depth sensor. Selfies are handled by an 8MP shooter. I didn’t expect much from the K14’s cameras, but they are better than expected. Give the main sensor enough light, and it captures some pretty photos, with ample sharpness and decent HDR. The same was true of daytime portraits, where edge detection was on point, and the shallow depth of field looked natural. Skin tones are also managed well. There were a few situations where highlights were slightly blown out, but that isn’t a big issue.
Nighttime is where the OmniVision sensor struggles. Don’t get me wrong, the images are decent, but they just lack details, and there’s noticeable noise. You can also expect to wait before the camera captures the image, since there’s a shutter delay at night, which can make it difficult to capture moving subjects. That said, the 8MP selfie shooter is more than enough to preserve detail while keeping skin tones natural. Videos being capped at just 1080p at 60FPS is a bummer, though.
Verdict
At ₹17,999, the OPPO K14 is the new reality of budget phones in India, and it’s something buyers will have to adjust to. The K14 is a good phone with a pretty design that’s more than capable of handling everyday tasks and even gaming, for that matter. However, it’s not perfect. I’d love to see better nighttime camera performance and a higher-resolution display, but neither is a deal-breaker.
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#OPPO #K14 #Review #Big #Battery #Decent #Performance
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
![Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook](https://i2.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Apple-John-Ternus-Tim-Cook_Full-Bleed-Image.jpg.xlarge_2x.jpg?w=680&ssl=1 "Who is John Ternus, the incoming Apple CEO? | TechCrunch
After 15 years, Tim Cook will hand off the Apple CEO role to John Ternus, the company’s senior vice president of hardware engineering. Starting on September 1, Ternus will lead one of the world’s most valuable companies, but if you’re not a dedicated Apple enthusiast, you’ve probably never heard of this man, who has largely remained out of the spotlight until now.
How long has John Ternus worked at Apple?
Ternus has worked at Apple for nearly half of his life — now 51 years old, he has been with the company for 25 years.
He joined Apple’s product design team in 2001 as only his second job out of college (his first was at a small maker of virtual-reality devices called Virtual Research Systems). By 2013, Ternus was a VP of hardware engineering and was promoted to the SVP role in 2021.
Ternus — who is 15 years younger than Cook — was among the youngest of top Apple executives who had been rumored as a possible successor, implying that Apple could be looking for someone to lead the company for a long time. After all, Apple has only had two CEOs in this millennium, so it seems that leadership continuity is important to the company.
Ternus reports to Cook, who he considers a mentor, and leads all of hardware engineering at Apple. That’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s known for ubiquitous hardware like the iPhone and the MacBook.
In his 2024 commencement speech at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s engineering school, Ternus reflected on the lessons he learned at Apple, which perhaps can tell us a bit about his character — or at least a sanitized version of it.
“Always assume you’re as smart as anyone else in the room, but never assume that you know as much as they do,” Ternus said in the speech. “With this mindset, you’ll find the confidence you need to push forward, but more importantly, the humility to ask questions.”
Techcrunch event
San Francisco, CA
|
October 13-15, 2026
In a tech ecosystem populated with abrasive egos, it’s refreshing to hear Ternus utter the word “humility.” Better yet, he doesn’t appear to have an X account.
Image Credits:Apple
What projects did John Ternus lead at Apple?
Ternus’ earliest project at Apple involved scrutinizing parts for the Apple Cinema Display, an early desktop monitor.
“At some point in my first year, I found myself at a supplier facility. I was far away from home. Well past midnight, I was using a magnifying glass to count the number of grooves on the head of a screw … and I was arguing with the supplier because these parts had 35 grooves. They were supposed to have 25,” Ternus recalled in his commencement speech. “I distinctly remember stepping back for a minute and thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing? Is this normal?’”
As Ternus climbed the corporate ladder, his responsibilities grew. He may no longer spend as much time analyzing screws, but he still seems to take pride in getting the little details right. In a recent interview, when Ternus was asked about his favorite memory of Steve Jobs, he mentioned the former Apple co-founder’s attention to craftsmanship.
“[Jobs] was moving a piece of furniture, a chest of drawers, and pulled it away from the wall and looked at the back and was just reflecting on, you know, that the carpenter who made it had made it beautiful,” Ternus said. “It finished the back as beautifully as the rest of it, even though nobody was going to see it, right? And I think about that all the time because I think that perfectly exemplifies what we do here.”
From there, he went on to lead the hardware development behind products across the Apple ecosystem, overseeing launches like AirPods, Apple Watch, and the Vision Pro. He also had a hand in major technical upgrades at Apple, like Apple’s transition from Intel chips to its own proprietary Apple silicon.
Most recently, Ternus was involved in the production of the MacBook Neo, Apple’s new, more affordable laptop model that lowers costs through some clever trade-offs in hardware design, like using an iPhone chip to power the device.
“We never want to ship junk. We want to ship great products that have that Apple experience, that Apple quality. To do that with the Neo required building something completely new from the ground up … leveraging both the technologies we’d been developing like Apple silicon, but also the kind of expertise that we’ve developed over many, many years of building Macs, and building phones, and building iPads, and all of these things,” Ternus told Tom’s Guide.
As CEO, Ternus will have to steer Apple through its challenge to catch up in the AI race and figure out what to do with the underlying tech behind the Vision Pro.
What else do we know about John Ternus?
Ternus was on the swim team at Penn. For his senior project, he built a feeding arm that people with quadriplegia could control with head movements.
According to public records of political donations, Ternus donated ,900 to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2021.
Otherwise, Ternus has maintained a relatively low profile.
#John #Ternus #incoming #Apple #CEO #TechCrunchApple,ceo,John Ternus,Tim Cook")
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