For all the Apple fans, Apple has decided to do a design refresh in the latest iPhone 14 Pro lineup. Called as the Dynamic Island, the top will now house a new pill-shaped cut-out.
How is it different from the notch on the iPhone 13 Pro and why should you care?
Apple’s Dynamic Island Feature Explained
The new pill-shaped cut-out is going to come in the the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. However, this will not be present in the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus and it will come with a notch. The cut-out which may seem aesthetic, has functionalities too.
A new 12MP f/1.9 front camera sensor with autofocus and 38% better low-light performance is there in the cut-out.
The iPhone 14 Pro, when paired with the new image algorithm called Photonic Engine, will be able to apply Apple’s Deep Fusion processing to uncompressed images. The selfies have brighter colours and more details in the selfies.
What is dynamic now in the Dynamic Island feature is the fact that how intuitively it can morph into different shapes to display all sorts of glanceable info.
For instance, when you put your phone on silent, connect your AirPods, access Face ID, or plug your charger, the cut-out will expand and display the activity and then immediately go back to normal.
In the event of an ongoing background activity, such as a call, playlist, podcast, or timer, the cut-out will stay expanded until it ends.
Allowing better multitasking, one can tap it to go to the app or long-press it to explore options.
Lets say you are scrolling on Insta and get a phone call, in this case the cut-out will expand to show you who’s calling and the option to accept or deny it. During the duration of the call, the cut-out will stay expanded upon picking up the call. You can long-press the cut-out to access various options to cut the call, switch to FaceTime, mute yourself, and more.
Similarly, if you’re listening to music while reading an e-book, you can long-press the cut-out to see options to pause the song, skip forward or back, or jump to a particular part in the song. And if there are multiple ongoing background activities, the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island will form a new circular bubble beside the pill-shaped cut-out. All of this without leaving the app you’re in.
How Is this Better Than a Hole-Punch Cut-out?
First things first, the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island is indeed more noticeable and potentially obtrusive when watching videos or playing games.
From a purely aesthetic viewpoint, the hole-punch cut-out is superior because it’s cleaner and easier to forget. That said, what Apple’s Dynamic Island lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in functionality.
As more and more third-party developers tweak their apps to utilize the new cut-out, this cut-out will keep improving. Though this feature can be picked up by Android, but the same fluidity and success as Apple is highly unlikely.
This is because of more customization that will be needed in the android phones, given the proprietary iOS software. This is what makes Apple special.
One may say that it is not a great invention, but no one can snide it away as a mere gimmick. Making it easier to check glance able info and multitask, the fluid animations surrounding the pill-shaped cut-out make up for its big size.
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