Perhaps the biggest advances in the iPhone 14 Pro aren’t things you can see from the outside. The main camera has four times the megapixels as any previous iPhone camera, enabling all sorts of functionality. There are other camera upgrades, too, and they’re all boosted by the new A16 Bionic chip and its associated subprocessors.
But all people will notice are the things they can see. At the Far Out event to introduce the new iPhones on Wednesday, I was able to see the biggest visual difference: the Dynamic Island–a feature that merges hardware and software while answering the question, “Do you think Apple regrets not giving the notch a brand name?”
The new notch is called Dynamic Island and it can adjust its shape based on what’s on-screen and what it needs to do.
Jason Snell/Foundry
The Dynamic Island is the replacement for the notch, a combination of two small sensor cut-outs that Apple connects with darkened pixels in the display. We’ve seen similar screens on Android phones, but Apple has created something very unique here. First, the pixels in between the two cut-outs aren’t wasted–Apple is using them to display the “recording” dot that indicates that a microphone or camera is active.
Apple makes practical use of the pixels between the notch cutouts. For example, here it displays the recording indicator.
Jason Snell/Foundry
But of course, it goes beyond that—way beyond. The Dynamic Island can grow and change based on the current status of the device. It seems to be an extension of the forthcoming Live Activity widget specification in iOS 16 that lets apps display small wedges of information in the capsule-shaped Dynamic Island.
The Dynamic Island here is displaying album art and a waveform for the music that’s playing.
Jason Snell/Foundry
For example, if you’re currently playing music, when you swipe away from the Music app, a tiny album art will appear on the left side of the Dynamic Island, with a live music waveform–color-matched to the album art–on the right side. It’s all designed to artfully work around the space that’s taken up by the two sensor cutouts. It works with other apps as well and is extremely clever.
The iPhone 14 Pro camera array features three lenses that extend out further from the phone’s body than on the iPhone 13 Pro.
Jason Snell/Foundry
Just as striking is the always-on display. Rather than reduce the display to a dark, monochrome version of your lock screen, Apple still displays your lock screen image, just dimmed down. Colors are still visible and even striking. And of course, any lock-screen widgets are there to impart information. To save power, some widgets may stop updating as often–for example, the timer widget obscures the number of seconds so it didn’t have to update itself every second. It’s very much the approach Apple also took when it brought an always-on display to the Apple Watch.
With the always-on display, the iPhone 14 Pro shows a dimmed version of your lock screen image (left).
Jason Snell/Foundry
Author: Jason Snell
Jason has written for Macworld for 25 years, and was lead editor for more than a decade. He writes about Apple at Six Colors and podcasts at Relay FM and The Incomparable.