Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro finally ditches the ugly notch for something that doesn’t look too different on the surface, but transforms into something amazing the second a notification or call comes through. Apple calls it Dynamic Island.
The genius of this clever software trick is its ability to take a technical flaw — the inability to place the front-facing camera and FaceID technology below the display without affecting the quality or accuracy of facial recognition — and turn it into something simultaneously beautiful. and useful.
In many ways, LG has done something similar almost a a decade before with its V-series and called it Second Screen (opens in new tab). It was literally a secondary ticker placed above the main display that could show everything from the usual array of status icons and the time to a handful of quick toggles, music player controls, quick actions for the camera and even custom widgets.
It was magnificent, but why didn’t it catch on with the best Android phones (opens in new tab)? Now that Apple has done it, I’m willing to bet it will, and it’s more than disappointing from an Android enthusiast’s perspective.
When life hands you lemons…
Anyone who has been a fan of LG phones knows that the company was the king of innovation in the Android space while 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 OLED bending trend before anyone else — it felt like LG was willing to try just about anything to differentiate itself from the rest.
In many ways, it worked. Although their flagship phones didn’t sell as well, the company made enough of a name for itself to hold the #3 spot in the US for mobile devices (and better in some other countries) until finally calling it quits (opens in new tab) in a division that just couldn’t get things right, according to the company’s top management.
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 bigger than most pinhole cameras we’re used to on the Android side. If anything, it’s the closest to a 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 terrible notch design on the iPhone X and beyond, it used hole-punch cameras that took a a lot less slot space.
But Samsung didn’t really do anything with these cameras. It was Samsung’s loyal fanbase that quickly turned the literal hole in the screen into something totally fun, if a bit useless. The trend of putting cool wallpapers with perforation (opens in new tab) on your Galaxy S10 became a Reddit phenomenon and showed that users don’t care as much about technical limitations as what can be done to overcome them entertainment.
If Apple’s presentation of Dynamic Island at its Sept. 7 debut was anything to go by, it was a lot of fun. Apple’s typical over-the-top product announcement segments may have surrounded each side of Dynamic Island’s announcement, but the fact that Apple took another huge cut into its display and turned it into a fun, useful feature is pure brilliance I’d expect from Google. Or, as I said before, LG in its prime.
The collage of options above shows the multitude of features that Apple has built into the Dynamic Island, which is cleverly hidden by integrated in the software experience.
When your phone needs biometric authentication, a playful face appears to 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 instantly accessed with a touch. Even your next Lyft ride will let you know its approximate inbound trajectory with a quick hop off the island.
It basically works to fix the absolute mess that iPhone notifications have been since the dawn of the product line, and does it in a way that looks completely better than anything we have on the Android side. At least on the surface.
Dynamic Island won’t solve 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 a timer running in the background. And so I ask Google and other Android OEMs: Why the hell didn’t you do this first?
Time to copy the copy
To be fair to Apple, Dynamic Island isn’t a direct copy of anything Android has done – there’s always plenty of that with every Apple release (opens in new tab) — but it’s a brilliant concept that clearly stems from a few different ideas Android vendors have come up with along the way. It’s also a significantly better way to handle notifications than the current slide-down crap that Google adopted a few years ago.
Samsung has come closest to what Apple provides with its smaller notifications (seen in the image above), which deliver the same message as those giant sign-in types without actually getting in the way. Seeing this appear in the status bar – not unlike the ticker notification style that Android had – 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 go do something else on your phone). It’s a brilliant way to turn “wasted” screen space into something that’s not only useful, but fun at the same time.
I want to see Android OEMs embrace this and I want to see this in Android 14 next year. It’s about time Android’s terrible sliding notification system was overhauled, and I think something like Dynamic Island is the way to do it. It’s going to take some work from Google to figure it out — most Android phones have a different camera setup or a different location for the punch-hole camera, after all — but I think the work will be worth the effort.