It is difficult to describe the iPhone 14 Pro’s design as groundbreaking. It’s a great illustration of how individual design choices may be improved through time in design. One iPhone 14 Pro design choice, nevertheless, attracted a lot of media attention. The Dynamic Island feature is what it’s called.
Why is it necessary for iPhone users, and how does this choice stack up in terms of usability?
What is Dynamic Island?
In place of the notch that Apple first introduced in 2017, there is now Dynamic Island. It is a cutout in the shape of a pill that can vary its size and shape to show alerts and notifications.
One item Apple wasn’t proud of in 2020 was the notch. One of the final smartphones with a notch was the iPhone, which was released in 2018. In 2020, the mobile industry sought to optimise the available screen space and conceal any extraneous components. The business even made an effort to conceal the notch in the packaging and promotional materials.
In contrast, Dynamic Island is prioritised even in packaging since it is seen as a novel design choice.
Why we need Dynamic Island
Why do Apple iPhones have a notch when Android smartphones do not? ” is frequently asked by many smartphone users. All Android flagships have a dot design, which has a tiny dot for the front face at the top of the screen, such as the Google Pixel 6 Pro and Samsung S22 Ultra.
Why doesn’t Apple use the same strategy? The truth is that Apple employs a number of different sensors in the notch and dynamic island in addition to face recognition technology called Face ID. The Face ID hardware consists of a sensor with three modules: an infrared camera that captures an infrared image of the user, interprets the resultant pattern and creates a 3D facial map. A dot projector displays a grid of tiny infrared dots onto a user’s face.
Observations on user identification. Although some Android smartphones (such as the Google Pixel have facial recognition technology, most Android phones rely on finger scanning. It is true that many Androids smartphones support face unlocking. The fact that Android phones only employ 2-D facial recognition, which simply compares a user’s face to the photo they used to enrol, makes this technology much less safe on Android devices.
Apple made the Notch on the iPhone 13 Pro a little bit smaller by removing the speakers and microphone from the edge.
Why didn’t Apple just get rid of the sensors entirely? Sadly, Apple is unable to accomplish that at this time since sensors still require additional room. Apple buried the proximity sensor under the display of the iPhone 14 Pro, as can be seen, if you pay great attention to the design.
Why did Apple decide to create Dynamic Island?
The simple solution is that they accepted the present-day physical limitations. They attempted to use technical restrictions to their advantage rather than viewing them as limits. However, there are advantages and disadvantages to this design choice, therefore it is not perfect.
3 Benefits of Dynamic Island
- improved awareness of active actions and notifications
By adding a new layer to the UI, Dynamic Island enables users to get timely changes without changing context.
- Excellent motion language
Apple’s announcement of the iPhone 14 Pro featured a beautiful selection of transitions. It’s one of the most advanced motion languages lately. It has the potential to provide a great first impression on users.
- In full-screen mode, Dynamic Island doesn’t hog screen real estate.
There will always be a portion of the screen concealed behind the notch in full-screen mode. Because of the physical limitations imposed by the notch, it is difficult to avoid this behavior.
6 Downsides of Dynamic Island
- Dynamic Island is situated in a remote region.
The dynamic island is a participatory component. Users may use their fingertips to interact with it. But in order to achieve it, they will need to reach the spot with their fingers. Because of its difficult-to-reach location, the dynamic island, contact is less pleasant (users have to change their grip to access the area of the dynamic island).
- A lot of fingerprints will be on the front-facing camera.
Users will often touch in front of the front-facing camera that is built into the dynamic island. Users will likely experience blurry selfies and videos recorded on the front camera as a consequence of taps smudging the lens.
- Poor full-screen video experience
The dynamic island doesn’t appear as well in full-screen video mode as the Notch does. The screen’s side hole will be continuously seen by our brain.
- In direct sunshine, Dynamic Island doesn’t look well.
The OLED screen of the iPhone 14 Pro enables the creation of pure black colour. Apple depicted the dynamic island in marketing brochures as looking like a solid, all-black pill, but in practice, it could seem different. The space between dots may be seen, and in direct sunshine, it is even easier to see. The appearance of a single, solid entity is somewhat compromised when the individual stops are apparent.
- It’s possible that the dynamic Island material won’t be seen.
The dynamic island is very tiny; thus, designers are limited in their ability to manipulate the size of the parts to produce functional content portions.
- Risk of overuse of notifications and alerts
The dynamic island requires a lot of user attention each time it operates. If the app developers overdo this functionality, the dynamic island might rapidly become unpleasant. Fewer users will be pleased with an animated transition the more users view it since animated transitions may be particularly attention-grabbing.
