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Android 16 could steal the best part of Dynamic Island from iPhone

Umito October 27, 2024

In 2022, with the launch of iPhone 14 ProApple finally did something about its much-mocked camera notch. Switching to a ‘float’Dynamic Island“For the camera, the company has managed to make the UI something that was previously a bit awkward. With some neat animations, the camera notch appears to expand and shrink to show notifications as they happen. as they arrive.

A GIF showing Apple Pay on iOS Dynamic Island — (Image credit: Tom’s Guide)

THE best Dynamic Island apps Combine it with “Live Activities” to view real-time information about an app you’re running in the background. Apple Musicfor example, displays a preview of the song you’re listening to, which opens wider to offer playback controls with a long press. It’s not limited to proprietary apps, either, like Citymapper, United Airlines, Uber and Spotify all using the discreet home screen widget.

Dynamic Island on an iPhone 14 Pro Max — (Image credit: Tom’s Guide)

It looks like something similar is coming to an Android device near you very soon. By digging into the Android 15 Version QPR1 Beta 3, Android Authority Mishaal Rahman was able to discover something called Rich Ongoing Notifications, an API that allows apps to put more than just an icon in the status bar to provide very useful contextual information.

Although the API is not yet available for Android apps, Rahman was able to use some hidden commands to generate a mockup of how he imagines the feature to be used, drawing app icons, text and colors background of your choice. Here, for example, is how he envisions it working for Uber:

A mockup of what current rich notifications could look like. — (Image credit: Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority)

Sure, it’s not as fancy as Dynamic Island, but it’s just a mockup, after all.

Still, assuming this is how the feature will be implemented – and if it isn’t dropped by the time Android 16 is released – it’s easy to assume that this is a direct response to the success of Dynamic Island on iPhone.

But as Mishaal points out, it’s not entirely fair to Googlebecause the first implementation of this feature (a block in the status bar indicating the duration of current phone calls) was added in Android 12The second beta version of, more than a year before Apple unveiled Dynamic Island. You can see it in the first and second images of the X post embedded below.

Here’s Android 12 Beta 2’s current call chip in action, along with the new call notification style. It is enabled by default; Google Dialer just doesn’t support it yet. pic.twitter.com/OZbrvCL80xJune 12, 2021

Although the feature is hidden in a beta version of Android 15, Rahman thinks it’s more likely to arrive with Android 16 next year. This is for practical reasons: Android 15 has achieved platform stability and started rolling out to Pixel devices earlier this monthso it seems unlikely that Google would want to add a whole new API at this point in its life.

But that doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily be a year away from seeing this. As reported earlier this month, rumor has it that Google could mix things up next year with an Android 16 release in the second quarterrather than the usual fall window.