TL;DR
- Realme is soliciting user suggestions for a potential Dynamic Island-style feature.
- The winning pick gets exposure and could see their idea in a future version of Realme UI.
Apple finally ditched the wide display notch with the launch of its iPhone 14 Pro models, opting for two cutouts that it’s dubbing a Dynamic Island. However, the company has also turned the cutout area into an info hub for notifications, music controls, and more.
Now, it looks like Realme could be the first Android brand to offer a Dynamic Island rip-off (h/t: MySmartPrice), as it’s soliciting feedback from users for a “Realme Island” feature.
“Can you imagine what if Realme UI added a software trick to turn the camera cutout into a multifunctional feature? The UI around the camera hole could morph into different shapes and sizes to display incoming phone calls, alerts, notifications, and more,” a company representative wrote on its forum.
The Realme representative then encouraged users to give their own ideas and suggestions for how a “Realme Island” feature would look and work. The prize? Well, Realme UI developers will consider the winning pick for inclusion in the future. You’ll also be getting exposure on the community homepage, naturally.
Either way, the fact that Realme is relying on user feedback for the feature suggests that it doesn’t actually have a compelling reason of it own to implement a Dynamic Island clone in the first place.
Realme is thinking about a Dynamic Island clone, but it doesn’t appear to have any standout use-cases of its own.
The news also comes after Xiaomi executive Lu Weibing responded to a Weibo user’s request for a Dynamic Island feature, asking if the user “really needed” this function. However, Weibing’s response suggests that Xiaomi might be undecided on the feature for now.
Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen display cutouts used for software features on Android. 2018’s Honor View 20 offered software functionality such as call info and selfie hints around its punch-hole cutout. We’ve also seen third-party developers creating tools to display battery life indicators around the cutout. But it’s clear that at least one Android OEM is only considering jumping on the bandwagon now that Apple’s adopted similar functionality.
