According to Apple, the free-floating pill-shaped notch on the iPhone 14 Pro is “magical.” And while we take everything from the company that pitched the Digital Crown as the eighth wonder of the world with a grain of salt, the Dynamic Island did seem promising at the time. After using it for a while though, it looks the Dynamic Island is more of a handy feature than anything truly magical.
At first, seeing notifications and things like timers stretch and shrink around the notch was interesting. But after your phone’s initial setup, you don’t spend much time looking at the Dynamic Island. Most of the time, any info there gets moved to the always-on display when you lock your phone. Compared to the always-on display, which people really notice, very few remember the Dynamic Island after the first week.
It does helpful little things like letting you quickly see an incoming call or Uber pickup time. But Apple claimed it would enable a new way to interact with your iPhone, and so far that doesn’t seem to be true. The Dynamic Island mostly fades into the background. In order for it to really be a “destination,” it needs more apps to take advantage of Live Activities to display info there.
While the Dynamic Island looks cool, it’s ended up being more of a simple solution to the notch cutting into the screen than anything revolutionary. And that’s okay – it does its job well without being exciting. In the future, hopefully, it can do more. But for now, the Dynamic Island is more of a handy helper than a superstar.
