Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro is finally breaking the ugly notch for something that doesn’t look all that different on the surface, but as soon as a notification or call comes in, it transforms into something incredible. Apple calls it the dynamic island.
The genius of this clever software trick lies in its ability to turn a technical flaw — that’s the inability to place the front-facing camera and FaceID technology under the display without sacrificing the quality or accuracy of facial recognition — into something beautiful and useful.
In many ways, LG almost did that decade came up with his V-Series and called it the Second Screen (opens in new tab). It was literally a secondary ticker display, placed above the main display and capable of showing everything from the usual plethora of status icons and the time, to a handful of quick toggles, music player controls, quick camera actions, and even custom widgets.
It was glorious, but why hasn’t it made it to the best Android phones? (opens in new tab)? Now that Apple has done it, I’m willing to bet it will, and from an Android enthusiast’s perspective, that’s beyond frustrating.
When life gives you lemons…
Anyone who’s been a fan of LG phones knows that the company was the king of innovation in the Android space as long as it was making phones. From weird dual-screen devices like the LG Wing (opens in new tab) to phones like the LG G Flex (opens in new tab) — which started the bendable OLED trend before anyone else — it felt like LG was willing to try pretty much anything to stand out from the crowd.
In many ways it worked. While their flagship phones didn’t sell that well, the company made a name for itself by holding the number three spot in the US for mobile devices (and better in a few other countries) until it finally pulled the plug (opens in new tab) in a department that just couldn’t do things right, according to the company’s top executives.
Fast forward to fall 2022 when Apple announced the iPhone 14 Pro (opens in new tab)the first all-screen iPhone without a notch.
yes, there it is It’s not a notch, but it’s certainly larger than most punch-hole cameras we’re used to seeing on the Android side. If anything, it’s the closest thing to the dual-camera setup we’ve seen on the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. When Samsung finally got over its stigma of poking fun at Apple’s horrific notch design on the iPhone X and beyond, it started with pinhole cameras, which started popping up a a lot of less space than a notch.
But it wasn’t Samsung that really did anything with these cameras. It was Samsung’s loyal fanbase that quickly turned the literal hole in the screen into something completely fun, if somewhat useless. The trend to install great perforated wallpaper (opens in new tab) on your Galaxy S10 became a Reddit phenomenon, and it showed that users don’t care so much about technical limitations as they do about what can be done to overcome them fun.
If Apple’s presentation of Dynamic Island when it debuted on September 7th was anything, it was a lot of fun. Typical over-produced Apple product announcement segments may have flanked every page of Dynamic Island’s announcement, but the fact that Apple took yet another large slice of its display and turned it into a fun, useful feature is a sheer brilliance that I’ve come to expect would have from google. Or, as I said, LG in its prime.
The collage of options above shows the wealth of features Apple has built into the Dynamic Island, which is cleverly hidden by Being integrated into the software experience.
If your phone requires biometric authentication, a playful face will pop out of the island and wink at you when it recognizes you. Incoming phone calls display dedicated answer and hang up buttons. Media playback can be accessed instantly with a tap of a finger. Even your next Lyft ride will let you know the estimated arrival trajectory with a quick pop out of the island.
Essentially, it works to fix the absolute mess that has been iPhone notifications since the product line’s early days, and it does so in a way that seems utterly superior to anything we’ve got on the Android side. At least on the surface.
Dynamic Island won’t fix the issues with Apple’s messy notification shade design at all, but it will certainly help with active background apps and secondary tasks like listening to music or the timer running in the background. And to that I ask Google and other Android OEMs: Why the hell didn’t you do that first?
Time to copy the copy
To be fair to Apple, Dynamic Island isn’t a direct copy of anything Android made – there’s always plenty of that with every Apple release (opens in new tab) – but it’s a brilliant concept that clearly stems from several different ideas that Android vendors have come up with over time. It’s also a far better way of handling notifications than the current slide-down nonsense that Google adopted a few years ago.
Samsung has come the closest to what Apple offers with its smaller notifications (pictured above) that deliver the same message as these giant dudes getting in each other’s way without actually getting in the way. Seeing this appear in the status bar – similar to the ticker notification style Android used to have – would be a big improvement if you ask me.
But Dynamic Island represents a new level of interactivity and multitasking that we haven’t really seen outside of floating windows (like when you start a timer and do something else on your phone). It’s a brilliant way to turn “wasted” screen real estate into something that’s not only useful, but fun.
I want Android OEMs to adopt this, and I want to see this in Android 14 next year. It’s about time Android’s awful slide-down notification system got an overhaul, and I think something akin to Dynamic Island is the way to do it. It’s going to take a bit of work from Google to figure it out – most Android phones have a different camera setup or pinhole location, after all – but I think the work will be totally worth the effort.
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