Apple’s ‘Dynamic Island’ Kind of Arrives on Android with a New MIUI Theme

Just recently, Apple introduced the iPhone 14 Pro series, and with it a new pill-shaped notch for the Pro models. Another highlight of the event was the new Dynamic Island feature in iOS, exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro models.  Encompassing the pill-shaped camera notch, Dynamic Island is a new way to display information on things like music, navigation, notifications and calls. 

As we have seen with TWS earbuds, Apple is sort of a trendsetter in the smartphone industry. Whenever they show-off something cool, like a product or a new feature, others in the industry are quick to adapt it. This time, a MIUI theme developer managed to copy the Dynamic Island style, for notifications. In the video shared by Vaibhav Jain, from TechDroider, the new notification system does a good job of hiding the punch hole camera notch on the left. 

https://twitter.com/vvaiibhav/status/1568942825068445697?s=20&t=V3RgFzS2JUx-R3FwvMA6sA

Xiaomi offers a very powerful Theme editor for developers, which allows for a lot of flexibility while designing. As you can see from the ‘Dynamic Island’ copy on MIUI, the end result is quite smooth. Obviously, this won’t be as smooth as on the iPhones, and will probably have other limitations too. But for a free theme, it’s great.

Usually, you can download themes like this on the Mi Theme Store, but unfortunately this specific theme, called Grumpy UI is still under the review process. It will be available once Xiaomi approves this for the storefront. Another tidbit, the theme is only available in standard Chinese, so users on other languages should wait for a translated version. 

There’s a good chance we will soon start seeing more refined versions of ‘Dynamic Island’ on Android, officially being incorporated by smartphone manufacturers, as many Android phones already have a punch-hole display which can fit in very well with the new design. 

https://twitter.com/RODENT950/status/1568850891892998145?s=20&t=vhm4Y58nL_go81pWtJNkqg

Although this isn’t the first time someone thought of using notifications to hide the front camera notch. As you can see from the tweet above, the HONOR V20 had a very similar…Ish feature all the way back in 2018, when punch hole camera phones were initially coming out. Obviously, leave it to Cupertino giant to do a better looking and even better functioning version.