The iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max’s Dynamic Island could fix the Apple’s notch

Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

There was a long row of phones in the lobby of the Steve Jobs theater before there were commercials and branding exercises about the notch. It was all about the notch in the Xs, but it was also about the fancy display that showed off perfect blacks compared to the Xr. Which is why Apple put a bright wallpaper with pops of color on the Xs and the notch disappeared into the black of the display. It was difficult to hide it in the wallpaper. Apple wasn't as confident of its screen cutout. It looks like Apple has figured it out with the new phone.

The "Dynamic Island" is a black contextual box that will now appear around the iPhone 14's cutout, inviting you toggling DND mode, monitor the length of your phone calls, check how much life is left in your Air Pod, or even pop up a sports score. Apparently, a lot of you love sports and Apple has decided to give you a lot of pretty ways to watch your sports. An animation shows the box popping up. The animations are pleasant and smooth. I looked at it and immediately had the urge to move around, pressing to open a button, or just tapping on it to turn it off.

Wow. The Dynamic Island feels like a new part of Apple's design language. It is similar to notifications and the contextual phone call menu in that it is integrated with the phone's black cutout. Apple said it could do away with the notch because it shrunk the TrueDepth camera array.

There was no way to shrink the camera array five years ago. It had to be able to take selfies. At the time, Apple had two options: keep a big bezel that would instantly make the phone look ugly and old fashioned, or go for the notch. Adding a notch to anOLED display increases the price of the phone. It felt a bit more luxurious because of the costliness of the move. When cloth is cheaper than leather, it's kind of like cars opting for it.

It felt like Apple was having trouble embracing the notch. It told developers to think about incorporating it in their own designs, but it seemed to struggle with its own advice. The space around the notch didn't seem to do what you wanted. The battery percentage was a big pain point. There wasn't a way to check the battery percentage on your phone before the arrival of the new operating system. Either you needed a tool or you had to take a step back. With the return of the battery percentage indicator, Apple lost a visual indication of battery level on the battery icon.

Photo by Chris Welch / The Verge

Photo by Victoria Song / The Verge

The status bar on the phone did some work before it wasnotched. You didn't just get the time and battery life of your phone, you got more. It also gave you the type of network you were connected to, as well as the type of device you were using to access it. When music is playing, you would see a small indicator on the headphones. All of that was moved to make room for the notch. To see things you used to see with a glance, you have to use two methods.

The Dynamic Island won't solve the problem of the notch originally presented, but it seems that Apple realized we want that stuff and we don't want to have to zoom around the phoneUI like a wizard to get it all. The Dynamic Island feels a bit exaggerated. Instead of dancing around the black bit at the top of the phone, Apple is morphing it on a whim to address problems the notch created.