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iPhone 14 Pro Max Is the dynamic island a novelty?

I

iiiiiMAC!!!!!

macrumors Pomeranian
Original poster
Nov 14, 2020
52
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I went into a shop to use the dynamic island, and after getting to use it for a few apps I couldn’t really tell if this would be useful or not.

Is this just a novelty 2nd screen, or have people really begun to get use out of it after using it for a few weeks? I only used it for 10 mins at the shops so it’s hard to tell when you don’t have real world use.
 
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It's one of those whimsical features that I don't see becoming much of a thing unless we start to see the same camera cutout layout on all iPhone models next year.

It's a feature that will heavily depend on developer support for making good use of it and being limited to a few models there's not a huge incentive for devs to start doing something with it.

But in the end it's not much more than a cool way to hide the cutout and so far doesn't truly make an impact on how you use your phone.
 
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I find it useful. Some examples where I used the island.

* At the gym, I have my fitness app active and Apple Music playing in the background. I use the dynamic island if I wear something interesting and I want to know about it.
* Using Maps directions. I set a destination on Maps and switch to a different app while I am walking. The persisted next direction on the screen is nice; I don’t have to wait until the notification pops up or switch back to the Map app.
* I was using Strava the other day while general commute cycling, had Maps set to a destination, and the phone on a mount. Having Strava active with maps persisting on the screen (via DI) was useful to me. I tend to use audio prompts to get direction info, but being able to glance on the screen and see the info alongside the fitness app I was using was a nice experience.

I don’t think this feature is revolutionary, but I am definitely making use out of it.
 
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This is not something you "use". And as long as people don't get it, they'll be disappointed and say it's just a gimmick and worthless.
 
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iiiiiMAC!!!!! said:
Is this just a novelty 2nd screen…
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it is a very, very clever way of giving people the illusion that there is a “2nd screen” where in reality there is only a black hole.

It is indeed very clever, but at the end of the day a hole is a hole is a hole, so if at any point you see through the illusion, that’s all you’re going so see.
 
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fatTribble said:
I think Dynamic Island has a lot of potential regardless of whether Apple removes the pill.

Prior to this, we had two ways of seeing the status of something an app is doing. We could open the app or we could get a notification. For anything ongoing, opening the app repeatedly gets old. Notifications are only good for the moment it was sent.

Now we have a true status area.

Here are some things we could see in Dynamic Island:

If someone in my Find Me app sets my home as a destination, I could see their trip progress including minutes until arrival

Apps like NASA could display the countdown until launch for a mission and then x number of minutes or hours afterwards until the mission completed or reached a certain point. Similarly how about a countdown for when the space station is visible at my location

If I download an entire season of Gilligan’s Island in iTunes before a flight I could see the download progress

A progress bar for the duration of a restore from iCloud or transfer from my old iPhone when setting up a new iPhone

Weather could display all kinds of things like minutes remaining in a tornado warning, minutes until rain starts or ends, etc

The Health app could show me my heart rate for x minutes after any workout

Those are some of my thoughts. I’m hoping that eventually so many apps will use Dynamic Island that Settings will allow you to choose which apps you want to allow.
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All those are cool ideas but in its current form I feel dynamic island is poorly equipped to handle more than one or two statuses at the same time.

If you imagine even half of those things on your list were going on at the same time, most likely you would have a situation where your top bar is littered with icons you don't really know, sort of like the Android status bar tends to get cluttered with this stuff when a lot of things are going on.

You are spot on about showing the status of something ongoing as that has been kind of hard to track. Having moved back to Android recently, I sometimes feel that platform goes too far in telling me about what is going on where I have just had to silence notifications for a lot of apps because they were telling things that I considered irrelevant, like e.g app update installation progress.

Maybe in the future Apple allows you to prioritize what is shown in the dynamic island so you are seeing the most relevant thing but otherwise not burdened by clutter. Eg. a timer in the clock app would take priority over showing download progress or something.
 
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This was previously unused space that now has a bit of practical use that enhances multitasking and hides cameras. That's all there is to it.

It's not a groundbreaking feature imo, but it's certainly better than a static notch that adds nothing to the UI.
 
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To me it looks like a notch, a smaller notch with things in it, yet a a notch nevertheless 😊
 
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Ultimately it is just a notification system that happens to disguise some dead space. It is not a standalone feature.
 
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It’s young. The concept of a dynamic, interactive one-stop-shop for all notifications, alerts, activities, and live/ongoing notifications like scores and Ubers is a great idea. Building it around the pill cutouts is also cool. Now it needs time to grow, evolve, and most importantly, be supported at large by most apps
 
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iiiiiMAC!!!!! said:
Extra room on the lock screen? You mean those extra couple of pixels? Is that really good enough to mention as a positive?
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No, I mean the extra rows of content that iOS 16 on an iPhone 14 Pro/PM shows on the Lock Screen compared to on the 13 series. I definitely see that as a positive. But even beyond that, the “dynamic” aspect of the island is a great innovation, and not really something seen before in a smartphone.

iiiiiMAC!!!!! said:
Can I ask why the touchbar was pointless? Ive never owned a macbook, but I would have thought that a screen that could change the buttons based on different applications would be quite handy and useful
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In my limited testing, the biggest drawback for me was having to take my eyes off the screen to use it because the layout on the bar kept changing.

iiiiiMAC!!!!! said:
I think its here to stay for maybe 3-5 years, like the notch, but I dont think this will/can be something that stays for too long. They have to perfect under the screen touch id sooner or later
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I doubt Apple is ever going back to TouchID, when FaceID is much more secure and clearly innovations like the dynamic island work. I think the concept of how notifications are displayed on iOS will definitely be altered by the island even once Apple moves to a full screen display with faceID under the screen.
 
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I’m withholding judgment until I see more, but so far I’m not convinced the pill/DI are the best UX choice.
 
Mr.Blacky said:
This is not something you "use". And as long as people don't get it, they'll be disappointed and say it's just a gimmick and worthless.
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Great then, this is why I’ve asked the question, so can you give me a more elaborate answer?
 
Anything is better than the dumb notch, that was a bigger eye sore with the two ears sticking out either side. Never got used to that.
 
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