If You Hate The iPhone's Dynamic Island, There's Bad News

With the debut of iPhone 14 Pro duo, Apple finally ditched the notch up top and redesigned it in the shape of a floating pill-shaped cutout that houses the front camera and the Face ID hardware. Dubbed Dynamic Island, it looks fresh, but the overall design has courted a rather divisive response on social media. Some think of it as inventive owing to the app optimizations that add a functional flair to it, while others call it just a wastage of screen real estate. Irrespective of the reaction, it looks like the dynamic Island is here to stay, and prosper.

According to Ross Young, co-founder and CEO of Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC), the Dynamic Island is coming to more iPhone 15 models. In its first outing, Apple has kept the new design element exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and its Max sibling. Ross, who maintains a fairly accurate track record with display-related information for upcoming Apple products, tweeted that the Dynamic Island will make an appearance on the "standard models on the 15," referring to the iPhone 15 series.

Ross made a similar prediction back in February of 2022, months ahead of the iPhone 14 series' official debut, further adding "no more notch from 2023." To put it plainly, the tentatively called iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus will be ditching the notch next year. It is unclear whether Apple will extend the design makeover courtesy to the iPhone SE, as well, which still carries a design from 2017. 

The Dynamic Island kicks into action every time the phone is unlocked. Tapping and holding on the black area expands it to show relevant app activity information, all of which is powered by Apple's ActivityKit framework. It can show call alerts, stopwatch timer, show the Face ID authentication prompt when needed, reveal the AirPods battery level, and a lot more. Plus, third-party developers are also having fun with it, turning it into a pong table game and putting cute animal animations over it.

Needless to say, the giant display pill has stirred quite a chatter on social media and appears to be one of the key factors when it comes to swaying the purchase decision. The impending arrival of Dynamic Island on the more affordable iPhone 15 models sounds like good news, but Apple will still remain stingy when it comes to display upgrades.

Young adds in a tweet that despite the Dynamic Island makeover, the vanilla iPhone 15 and its Plus variant still won't get a high refresh rate display with all that Retina XDR magic. Apple is still keeping the 120Hz OLED panel exclusive to the Pro models. Assuming the prediction turns out to be true, it would be quite a shame to spend north of $800 on an iPhone with a 60Hz screen, when Android phones offer the high refresh rate perk for nearly a third of that price tag.