The dust is still settling now that Apple has officially unveiled the iPhone 14 lineup, and we were a little surprised by some of the announcements. I have a few thoughts on the Apple Watch Ultra, but I’ll save those for another time. Instead, I’ll take a look at a few things that the iPhone 14, primarily 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 finally did what everyone had been asking for since the introduction of the iPhone X and ditched the notch. It still lags on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus, but it makes sense from the perspective of Apple wanting to offer some type of differentiating feature between its non-Pro and Pro models.
Dynamic Island might sound like a revolutionary new feature, and while that’s true to some degree, the fact remains that LG came first with the LG V10. In an effort to provide users with a different way to interact with their notifications, LG has introduced the “Second Screen”. With the second screen, users could set shortcuts for contacts, view incoming notifications, and control music playing, all without using the main screen.
This was one of those cases where LG tried to do something different, but the overall implementation and lack of support doomed the second screen from the start. The LG V20 retained the second screen, offering essentially the same implementation, but it still encountered mixed results. Some V20 owners have found this extremely convenient, while others have found that “it doesn’t really add much to the experience”.
Instead of adding a screen entirely, Apple’s implementation of Dynamic Island just works in an entirely different way. When you start playing music and exit the app, “the island” will display “dynamic” information, such as the song’s album art. It also turns basic notifications such as when FaceID is needed into a scrolling graphic that’s attached to the island, instead of taking up your entire screen.
Dynamic Island isn’t an exact ripoff of LG’s second screen, but it’s pretty clear there’s some inspiration there.
Punch-hole selfie camera
Speaking of notch, we knew Apple wouldn’t stick with it forever. It was only a matter of time before the company decided to do something “revolutionary”, and they decided to go with a punch-hole selfie camera cutout. Due to the different sensors built into the notch, Apple not only had to redesign the modules it uses, but there are technically two cutouts. One is for the selfie camera, and the other houses proximity sensors and whatever Apple uses for Face ID.
Huawei was the first company to implement a punch-hole selfie camera, ditching the notch entirely with the Huawei Nova 4. But since then, you’d be hard-pressed to find 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 slowly starting to see a few phone makers introduce an under-display selfie camera. Notably, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and ZTE Axon 40 Ultra are two of the newer offerings with a UDC, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see more phones released with such a change in the near future.
Permanent display
Talk about Apple waiting forever to release something it should have implemented years ago. Always-on display (AOD) has been on Android phones for ages, giving users a quick and easy way to check the time and pending notifications. The writing was on the wall following the announcement of iOS 16 and its introduction of lock screen widgets.
Then, one of the iOS 16 developer betas kind of spilled the beans, as some users found their iPhone lock screens displayed an unrecognizable interface. Turns out it was just Apple implementing the software needed to support always-on display. Like Apple, this isn’t available on all four iPhone 14 models, as the AOD is reserved for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max only.
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 that it’s taken Apple this long. We knew that Apple was going to use a fancy marketing term in place of “dynamic refresh rates”, and ProMotion was born. This was first introduced with last year’s iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, but it only refreshed the screen between 24Hz and 120Hz.
With the introduction of the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max, along with always-on display, Apple thought it was high time to dial things down even further. Instead of bottoming out at 24Hz, the iPhone 14 Pro lineup with its ProMotion display can now dynamically refresh the screen down to 1Hz. The obvious reason is to help prevent the iPhone’s battery from draining. each time the AOD is displayed, as stagnant content does not 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 between 1Hz and 120Hz, thanks to the LTPO display. And as you’d expect, it’s made its way to more devices, including the Galaxy S22 Ultra and now, the iPhone 14 Pro series.
car accident detection
If you managed to attend the entire “Far Out” event, you might have tuned out a bit from all the various promotional videos detailing the impact of the Apple Watch and iPhone on the life of its users. But there’s one new feature that everyone should really thank Google for implementing with the Pixel in 2020. Car crash detection was first added to Android as part of the feature removal. March 2020 for Pixel 2, 3 and 4 owners.
This has been made possible by the various motion sensors and ambient audio built into your Pixel phone. When a car accident is detected by your phone, an alarm can be triggered, which will then ask you to determine if you need more help. If no response is received, emergency services will be called and your Pixel will provide the location of those services.
Not only is Apple bringing this to the entire iPhone 14 lineup, but the Apple Watch Series 8 is the first smartwatch to include this feature. This is made possible by Apple’s implementation of an improved three-axis gyroscope working in tandem with a “high g-force accelerometer” capable of measuring up to 256g of force. Then the iPhone and/or Apple Watch will 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 discovered that the car crash detection feature might not be exclusive to Pixel phones any longer. Code hidden in Google’s Personal Safety app suggests that this feature could be brought to other Android phones in a future update. But as of this writing, it looks like Google and Apple will be the only phone makers to offer it.
#iPhone #stole #Android