Sometimes it’s the camera megapixels that stand out at a product launch. Sometimes it’s silicon improvements that take centre stage. With 2022’s iPhone 14 Pro , the star of the show was the sleight of hand called the Dynamic Island.

This is Day 27 of 30 Days of iPhone, a look at the moments that shaped the smartphone era .

Turning A Cutout Into An iPhone Success Story

To fit a selfie camera and Face ID hardware into the new iPhone, Apple had little choice but to cut out a portion of the display. But the aesthetic wasn’t what the designers wanted. This led to the Dynamic Island , a black status bar that encased the cutout and masked the lenses while offering information, controls, and widgets carefully laid out to camouflage the black gaps as negative black space in the island.

As Apple brought more multitasking to iOS (an area Android had already solved comfortably), the Dynamic Island highlighted background-app information with Live Activities . Users could tap them to expand the island and get more context and controls without leaving the foreground app.

Third-party developers accessed the Dynamic Island through the ActivityKit framework, and they quickly brought over information such as fitness tracking, rideshare arrival times, and flight departures. Again, Android users were used to these features both as home-screen widgets and as notifications, so Apple was late to the interface but made it its own through canny marketing.

Sharing The iPhone’s Dynamic Island

Echoes of the Dynamic Island appear in several Android devices and apps. Just as Apple drew inspiration from Android’s notches and disguise tricks, Android apps and services drew inspiration from Apple; the circular evolution of the standard mobile interface in action. The difference isn’t in the capabilities, but in the conversation.

Apple took advantage of a limitation and, with its marketing spin and branding power, elevated selfie cameras and forward-facing sensors for all.

This is Day 27 of 30 Days of iPhone. Yesterday, we looked at the introduction of MagSafe and why Apple passed it back to the community to create a new standard for accessories.