This year, it has been limited to only the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. But to paraphrase the title of one of my favorite British rom-coms, Apple likes to “give it a year” before bringing (some of) its latest features to every phone the company makes.
Welcoming everyone to Dynamic Island
You’ve all seen it by now, but to help anyone who hasn’t caught up, Dynamic Island is a new pill cut-out, which replaces the notch seen on other iPhones. Rather than just reduce the footprint and call it a day, Apple has turned it into a nifty notification/multitasking section through software. It swells and fades with different apps, such as the waveform appearing when playing music or a timer counting down, and out of all the updates made to the iPhone 14 Pro, it is the most significant change. And with this news, it looks as if this will be a feature spanning across all iPhones starting from next September, but not all features are going to make the jump.
Stuck in the slow lane (at 60Hz)
There is a bit of bad news though. Due to the supply chain being unable to support the demand, Ross is “still not expecting” the 120Hz LTPO panel to be available on standard iPhone models. By this point, it’s becoming a little silly that a flagship $800 phone like the iPhone is not getting a smoother display. I’ve reviewed phones available at half the price, such as the Nothing phone (1), which still manage to give you a fast refresh rate. I’d even take 90Hz like on the Pixel 6 at this point, but this seems to be one of the big selling points that Apple is keen to maintain in order to try and upsell you to the Pro.
Outlook
If we look to the past at how quickly Apple embraced the notch across its entire iPhone lineup (minus the iPhone SE), I’m really not sure why this was in doubt. One year after the iPhone X was announced, the notch-based design of old came to the cheaper iPhone XR. It would be no big surprise to see the Dynamic Island do the same — given how in the iPhone 14 Pro Max teardown, the manufacturing process of this seemed to not require a dramatic overhaul.
