How does Apple turn the “rabbit ears” weakness into a strength on the iPhone 14 Pro?

At the Far out event held at dawn on September 8, Apple officially introduced a completely new iPhone 14 series product line, including 4 versions: iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max .

While the 2 standard versions have no significant changes in design and hardware, the 2 Pro versions bring powerful upgrades in screen, performance as well as camera. Most notably, this year’s iPhone 14 Pro’s screen has changed to a pill-shaped design, marking an innovation in screen design after 6 years of using the “rabbit ears” design.

Apple: The laggard in screen design

In the 6 years Apple used the “rabbit ears” design with a large screen cutout on the iPhone, Android phones have improved every year, going from “rabbit ears” screen to “waterdrop” design and now the most popular. is a “mole” or “punch” design with a single or dual selfie camera placed in a small hole at the top of the screen. This helps to expand the display area and does not distract the user from the screen cutout.

On the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple designed the screen cutout in the form of an elongated “pill”, placed in the middle of the top edge of the screen, unlike Android phones placed in the left or right corner. This may be a big upgrade over the outdated “rabbit ears” design, but still nothing compared to the compact “mole” design on Android phones.

Apple knows its problem, and it is at this point that “Apple” has taken advantage of the power of iOS to customize the screen cutout area, turning it into a display feature on the iPhone 14 Pro in a unique way. best.

Dynamic Island – “Slap” in the face of Android companies

Dynamic Island is actually the name that Apple gives to the tablet screen cutout on the iPhone 14 Pro. If you have watched the Far out event, you will surely be impressed with the way that Apple has handled this screen cutout with software so that it is consistent and seamless with the system.

According to Apple, iOS currently has too many types of notifications and they are not consistent with each other. Dynamic Island was developed to solve this problem. Now notifications (in the form of alerts) will be moved to the top, where the pill-shaped TrueDepth camera cluster is located. Apple customizes the display software to give the impression of a “pill” that can move and expand/shrink based on the app being used.

Obviously, customizing the screen cutout like Apple is something that has never been seen on any smartphone before. In the Android world, some manufacturers take advantage of the “mole” or “pill” area to make a bright border to notify or display battery life, but everything stops like that, partly because Android As the operating system is fragmented, it is difficult to create the ability to customize as smooth as the iPhone.

This is how Android companies customize the screen cutout area, which looks like a joke when compared to the iPhone’s Dynamic Island

Does Apple create a new trend?

Although Apple is not a leader, but Apple has always been a leader in many aspects, so much so that every time the iPhone has a new feature, Android phones will more or less “learn” that feature from Apple, such as the “rabbit ears” design (2017), the Touch ID fingerprint sensor (2013), the square border phone design (2020), or the removal of the headphone jack (2016), the removal of cable charging (2020). ..

Will Android manufacturers “learn” from Apple’s Dynamic Island in the near future? Android is an open operating system, so it is entirely possible for a manufacturer to customize the phone’s screen cutout, it’s just whether the companies really want to do it or not.