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The dust is still settling after Apple officially unveiled the iPhone 14 range, and we’ve been a bit surprised by a few of the announcements. I have a few thoughts on the Apple Watch Ultra, but I’ll save them for another time. Instead, I’ll take a look at a few things that the iPhone 14, mainly the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, “stole” from previous Android phones.
Dynamic Island – LG V10
Perhaps the most polarizing announcement during Apple’s “Far Out” event was the introduction of Dynamic Island with the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. Apple has finally done what everyone has been asking for since the launch of the iPhone X and it’s falling the notch calmly. It’s still hanging around on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus, but it makes sense from Apple’s perspective to offer some kind of differentiator between its non-Pro and Pro models.
The dynamic island might seem like a revolutionary new feature, and while that’s true to a degree, the fact remains that LG got there first with the LG V10. To give users another way to interact with their notifications, LG introduced the “Second Screen”. The second screen allowed users to set shortcuts for contacts, view incoming notifications, and control the music that was playing, all without using the main display.
It was one of those cases where LG tried to do something different, but the general implementation and lack of support doomed the second screen from the start. The LG V20 kept the second screen and offered essentially the same implementation, but it still faced mixed results. Some V20 owners found this extremely handy, while others found “it doesn’t really add much to the experience”.
Instead of adding a screen entirely, Apple’s implementation of Dynamic Island just works very differently. When you start playing music and exit the app, “Island” displays “Dynamic” information, e.g. B. the album cover of the song. It also converts basic notifications, e.g. B. when FaceID is needed, into a dropdown graphic that attaches to the island instead of taking up your entire screen.
Dynamic Island isn’t an exact rip off of LG’s second screen, but it’s pretty clear there’s some inspiration there.
Hole punch selfie camera
Speaking of the notch, we knew Apple wasn’t going to stick with it forever. It was only a matter of time before the company decided to do something “revolutionary” and settled on a selfie camera cutout with punch holes. Due to the various sensors embedded in the notch, not only did Apple have to redesign the modules used, but technically there are two cutouts. One of these is for the selfie camera and the other houses the proximity sensor and everything else Apple uses for Face ID.
Huawei was the first company to implement a hole-punch selfie camera, abandoning the notch entirely with the Huawei Nova 4. But since then, you would have a hard time finding a smartphone that doesn’t have one. This includes many of the best Android phones, such as the Galaxy S22 series, Pixel 6, ASUS ZenFone 9, and others.
Apple is definitely behind the 8-ball here, as we’re starting to see some phone makers introducing an under-display selfie camera. The Galaxy Z Fold 4 and ZTE Axon 40 Ultra in particular are two of the latest offerings with UDC, but it wouldn’t be a surprise to see more phones launching with such a change in the near future.
Always-on display
Talk about Apple waiting forever to release something it should have implemented years ago. The Always-On Display (AOD) has been around on Android phones for ages, giving users a quick and easy way to take a look at the time and any pending notifications. The writing was on the wall after the announcement of iOS 16 and the introduction of lock screen widgets.
Then one of the iOS 16 developer beta builds spilled the beans when some users found their iPhone lock screens were showing an unrecognizable UI. As it turns out, this was just Apple implementing the necessary software to support the always-on display. In true Apple fashion, this isn’t available on all four iPhone 14 models, as the AOD is exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.
Dynamic refresh rate
For almost as long as Android users have had the luxury of faster refresh rates and dynamic refresh rates, it’s still surprising it’s taken Apple this long. we knew that Apple wanted to use a fancy marketing term instead of “dynamic refresh rates,” and ProMotion was born. This was first introduced with last year’s iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, but only refreshed the screen between 24Hz and 120Hz.
With the launch of the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max and the always-on display, Apple felt it was high time to take things back even further. Instead of bottoming out at 24Hz, the iPhone 14 Pro range with its ProMotion display can now dynamically refresh the screen down to 1Hz. The obvious reason is to prevent the iPhone battery from draining when the AOD is showing, as stagnant content doesn’t need to be refreshed as frequently.
The OnePlus 9 Pro and Oppo Find X3 Pro were two of the first phones to offer dynamic refresh rates ranging from 1Hz to 120Hz thanks to the LTPO display. And as you might expect, this has found its way to more devices including the Galaxy S22 Ultra and now the iPhone 14 Pro series.
car crash detection
If you managed to make it through the entire Far Out event, you might have tuned out a bit with all the various promotional videos detailing how the Apple Watch and iPhone have impacted the lives of their users. But there’s one new feature everyone should really thank Google for implementing with the Pixel in 2020. Car crash detection was first added to Android as part of the March 2020 feature drop for Pixel 2, 3 and 4 owners.
This was made possible by using the various motion sensors and ambient sounds built into your Pixel phone. If your phone detects a car crash, it can go off an alert, which then prompts you to determine if you need further assistance. If no response is received, emergency services will be called and your pixel will provide the location for those services.
Not only is Apple bringing this to the entire iPhone 14 range, but the Apple Watch Series 8 is the first smartwatch to include this functionality. This is made possible by Apple’s implementation of an improved three-axis gyroscope working in tandem with a “high-G-force accelerometer” that can measure up to 256 g of force. Then the iPhone and/or Apple Watch use an algorithm to determine if a crash has occurred before notifying emergency contacts and services if no response is received within 10 seconds.
In June 2022, it was revealed that the car crash detection feature might not be exclusive to Pixel phones for much longer. Hidden code in Google’s Personal Safety app suggests this feature could be brought to other Android phones in a future update. But at the time of writing this article, it looks like Google and Apple will be the only phone makers to have this available.
