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Thoroughly unimpressed with the island. Just a software makeover to disguise the notch. I’d much prefer a smaller pinhole like on the Samsungs so I get more screen real estate.

No video I’ve seen of it so far has convinced me it’s anything other than UI for the sake of UI that eats even more screen real estate.

And watching video landscape on the 14 Pro will probably just annoy me even more than the regular notch as the pill sits further away from the edge.
 
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You have to use it to understand it. It makes the notch useful. Of course it would have been better to have a full screen display, with no notch, but as long as the technology is not there yet, this is the greatest implementation of it.
All the small but important things you do on your phone have now a place. The whole OS feels much better with the dynamic island. Things that before were hidden or appeared on the Lock Screen or notifications page, now appear in the dynamic island. Music playback, incoming calls, timers, Face ID, and many more. It is just a new intuitive UI element that is extremely cool to use. I already love it.
But they don’t appear in the island. The island is the sensors which is empty space. The UI around the island grows to show info , but the empty space is still there and still annoying, especially watching videos.

It’s just Apples way of hiding something which is unpalatable.
 
I'm waiting to see what can be done with the dynamic island when the pill and hole punch designs are treated seperately, as this is currently software and the OLED screen turned off around it that creates the look of this entire pill shape.

They're two separate cut-outs.
 


The new Dynamic Island is arguably one of the iPhone 14 Pro's most interesting features, so with the new iPhones now in the hands of customers, we thought we'd take a deeper look at the Dynamic Island, how it works, and what it does.


During the iPhone 14 rumor cycle, we knew that Apple was working on an alternative to the notch that incorporated a pill-shaped cutout and a hole punch cutout for the TrueDepth camera hardware, but what came as a surprise is the clever way that Apple has integrated this new space into the iPhone's interface.

Pixels around the Dynamic Island merge it into one pill-shaped area that changes size and shape to accommodate various types of alerts, notifications, and interactions, turning it into a kind of front-and-center information hub. It can do everything from showing you Maps directions to confirming Apple Pay payments, with a list of some of the possibilities below.
  • Expanded into a large rectangle to show upcoming Maps directions without having to open the Maps app.
  • Displaying Maps directions in a smaller pill-shaped interface for when you just need a quick glance at the next turn.
  • Square shaped for an ‌Apple Pay‌ payment confirmation.
  • Showing a music waveform and time remaining on a song that's playing.
  • Tracking the time of arrival of a Lyft.
  • Displaying privacy indicators when the microphone or camera is in use.
  • Displaying a small bar with the phone icon and the length of the phone call.
  • Displaying an AirDrop interface when transferring files.
  • Showing a timer.
  • Keeping track of sports scores.
  • Accessing music controls and a music player.
  • Showing AirPods connection status and battery life.
  • Displaying ‌iPhone‌ charging status and battery life.
  • Low battery alerts.
  • Turning the iPhone's silent mode on or off.
The Dynamic Island works with Live Activities, and right now you can test it out with the Timer and with live sports if you happen to be running the iOS 16.1 beta. Live Activities are going to launch in iOS 16.1. Developers can create experiences for the Dynamic Island too, so we can expect to see innovative apps that take advantage of the new interface.

You can interact with content displayed in the Dynamic Island by long pressing to get to a widget for expanded controls, or tapping to go right into the app.

The Dynamic Island is capable of displaying multiple functions at once, and when that happens, it splits into a larger pill-shaped area and a smaller circular area so you can see two things at once. You can swap between them and tap into them like you can with the standard Dynamic Island interface.

Make sure to check out our video to see Dynamic Island in action with all kinds of apps and functions, and if you have an iPhone 14 Pro, let us know in the comments below what you think of the new interface.

Article Link: Check Out the iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island in Action
I’ve used to for a few days now and it feels like a gimmick. I could see how it has some usability. But the island cuts into 99% of the content I use on this device. Where as the notch didn’t in any way.
And before the 16.0.1 update I noticed this on YouTube.
The aspect ratio of all the videos was cutting into the dynamic island. But after the 16.0.1 update all the videos on YouTube are now magically cropped as to keep the video away from the island.
 
I'm waiting to see what can be done with the dynamic island when the pill and hole punch designs are treated seperately, as this is currently software and the OLED screen turned off around it that creates the look of this entire pill shape.

They're two separate cut-outs.
I would rather have the holes than one much larger hole. I hope we are able to cut this feature off. This idea could have worked well with a notch, push these cut outs all the way up and next to the speaker grill. The implementation feels like an after thought to the hole punches.
 
Wow, we really are all suckers, aren't we. They're changing the background color around notch 2.0, adding some notification icons and buttons to that area, and calling it a feature.

And MacRumors is saying it "is arguably one of the iPhone 14 Pro's most interesting features"? OK, if you say so.

This 'feature', marginal camera improvements, and a phone that is both thicker and heavier than the already brick-like 13?

I'll say it again, we really are all suckers.
 
I’ve used to for a few days now and it feels like a gimmick. I could see how it has some usability. But the island cuts into 99% of the content I use on this device. Where as the notch didn’t in any way.
And before the 16.0.1 update I noticed this on YouTube.
The aspect ratio of all the videos was cutting into the dynamic island. But after the 16.0.1 update all the videos on YouTube are now magically cropped as to keep the video away from the island.
YouTube works exactly like before. If you zoom in, then the video will play in full screen and of course you will notice the pill. When you don't zoom in, the video will be displayed under the pill, using the area below.
 
Wow, we really are all suckers, aren't we. They're changing the background color around notch 2.0, adding some notification icons and buttons to that area, and calling it a feature.

And MacRumors is saying it "is arguably one of the iPhone 14 Pro's most interesting features"? OK, if you say so.

This 'feature', marginal camera improvements, and a phone that is both thicker and heavier than the already brick-like 13?

I'll say it again, we really are all suckers.
Nobody says you should upgrade from iPhone 13 Pro to the 14 Pro. Of course the 14 Pro is better, but the difference isn't that big. I upgrade every year, so this was never an issue for me. This year though I have the feeling that we get a better upgrade, year over year. The display is better, the dynamic island intuitive and the camera much better.
 
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Thoroughly unimpressed with the island. Just a software makeover to disguise the notch. I’d much prefer a smaller pinhole like on the Samsungs so I get more screen real estate.

No video I’ve seen of it so far has convinced me it’s anything other than UI for the sake of UI that eats even more screen real estate.

And watching video landscape on the 14 Pro will probably just annoy me even more than the regular notch as the pill sits further away from the edge.
While the island is a little further away from the edge of the screen, the screens on the pro were made taller by about the same amount. The result is that the safe area is about the same size.

By default, most videos don’t extend into the notch/island area. It usually fits the video top and bottom to the screen and letterboxes the sides. It takes a non-standard video format like 2:1 to push into the notch area or you have to zoom in on a regular video.
 
It’s it too much to wish Steve Jobs and Jon Ivy were still around? Tim Cooke is turning the company into some convoluted and boring eco system. We’re getting things we got two years ago re branded and re packaged. Absolutely no innovation is going on anymore. We got new CPUs , wonderful. But if my car looked exactly the same drove the same felt the same every time a new one came out…. I would buy different car.
Your new exact car now can drive 14% further!!!! Now please pay us $45,999.
What's funny is that is literally how cars work and in particalar advancements in car technology. The number one bullet point in any car advertisement is MPG (now it's the electric or hybrid equivalent). Cars from 10 years ago drive the same, feel the same. Except now they have higher MPG, the have 14% safer breaks, they have 14% better lights for more visibility, they have 14% better better crumple zones). They have all the same stuff except it's gets slightly better every year. The biggest innovation in cars in the last 20 years is probably self driving, so that one thing that wasn't on a car in 2002 (for example) that's on a car in 2022.
 
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Although I haven't tested it yet, but it makes sense to tap to the app, tap&hold to the widget. Isn't that how the whole iOS UX performs?

It would be confusing to have it otherwise just for this specific area of the screen. I'd end up holding on app icons to open the app, and tapping to reveal menus or "peeking" as it was once called.
 
Although I haven't tested it yet, but it makes sense to tap to the app, tap&hold to the widget. Isn't that how the whole iOS UX performs?

It would be confusing to have it otherwise just for this specific area of the screen. I'd end up holding on app icons to open the app, and tapping to reveal menus or "peeking" as it was once called.
Assuming that there is an expanded view for a DI notice, I think that the expected action to a single tap would be a local change to expand the notice. Then if you still wanted the app you could tap again or tap-hold. that is a progressive reveal and would make more sense with a single tap.

1. Here is a notice
2. Tell me more - tap
3. I want to take action on that - tap or tap-hold
 
It’s a clever implementation, but let’s be clear: this is just a way of masking dead space on the screen by surrounding it with other content. If it were a true full screen display (no notch or cutout), Apple could still display different info and notifications in different sized bubbles and nobody would think anything if it.
Thanks for stating the obvious. I guess a $1 trillion dollar company couldn’t figure this out without your help. Could it be that maybe, just maybe, Apple feels that this is a better implementation than whatever sacrifices are necessary for a true edge to edge display?

It’s amazing to me that people think that Apple hasn’t already thought all of this through and came to the best conclusion without the help of armchair quarterbacks who don’t have the full technology picture.
 
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The island seems big, large and distracting. It breaks the immersion. I’m not sure I like it. I need to use it.
When expanded, it is nearly identical to existing notifications that popped up in the same place as earlier iOS versions and hardware. And no one said this then. Now it just blends in the camera rather than appearing below the camera. And when it’s not active it takes up about 1cm horizontally. I mean seriously, todays phones and their huge screens are largely overkill, and this hardly takes away anything more than a few pixels.
 
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My 2 cents:

What I like:
-seems like a good way to reduce the space that notifications etc used to occupy below the camera by blending the camera in and moving the notifications up to the top of the display.
-has a whimsical quality that reminds me so much of what makes Apple’s stuff so fun.
-introduces a new ui concept that is highly functional and directly meshes the hardware/software.

Things that don’t make sense:
-over-emphasis on interacting with it, and perhaps it’s a bit too pervasive throughout.
-some of the expansion sizes of the black area seem obtrusive
-anything that deliberately encourages the user to touch the area around the FaceTime camera. This seems like a bizarre oversight. Fingerprints all over my camera? No thanks.
-location. This relates somewhat to my point above about pervasiveness. I am concerns that now a key interaction is located at the top of the screen. I think the top is great for information and terrible for anything that requires touch interaction. Apparently reachability moves everything down closer for one hand use, but then the whole point of blending the camera in is lost. I think Apple just needs to scale back this feature a bit, focusing more on just information rather than encouraging touch interaction. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense when located at the top, particularly on the Max.

Finally, obviously landscape mode throws a wrench into the whole concept. But I seldom use my phone in landscape anyway, and when I do it’s usually for video or a game. And neither of those things are hindered by a lack of island functionality.
 
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When expanded, it is nearly identical to existing notifications that popped up in the same place as earlier iOS versions and hardware. And no one said this then. Now it just blends in the camera rather than appearing below the camera. And when it’s not active it takes up about 1cm horizontally. I mean seriously, todays phones and their huge screens are largely overkill, and this hardly takes away anything more than a few pixels.
90% of notifications still pop up UNDER the “ dynamic island “ the same bubble that the notched iphones still is present in the 14P/M. It hasnt gone anywhere. Almost none of my notifications show up in the island….
 
90% of notifications still pop up UNDER the “ dynamic island “ the same bubble that the notched iphones still is present in the 14P/M. It hasnt gone anywhere. Almost none of my notifications show up in the island….
Have you installed 16.0.1? I heard that is fixed a problem with YouTube pushing into the island area. Perhaps is applies to other things as well?
 
1. Here is a notice
2. Tell me more - tap
3. I want to take action on that - tap or tap-hold

That's not how iOS works. I'll take your example on "Notice/Notification" .. You tap, you're inside the app. You tap and hold to get more details on that notification. So, still, works as the rest of iOS, doing it otherwise for this piece of new software would be confusing in my opinion.
 
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