Apple, in its typical fashion, has yet again started a new trend. This time around with its new Dynamic Island feature which not only hides the camera cutouts on the displays of its iPhone 14 Pro series, but also doubles as a tool to launch certain apps, check messages, control music playback and what have you.
As with most trends, you’re not wrong to assume that sooner or later imitations will eventually pop up for Android devices, especially given the fact that they were the first to implement cutout integrated displays years ahead of Apple’s new devices. Sure enough, some independent developers have already begun trialling their own takes of the Dynamic Island feature merely a week after the iPhone 14 series’ launch, with at least one Android smartphone brand officially announcing their versions not long after.
While it might still be a while before we could give the previously covered Grumpy UI for Xiaomi’s Android platform or see what Realme has in store for theirs, there is already an app which you could try out if you wish to have a Dynamic Island-like experience on your Android phone. The app in question is dynamicSpot, which is reportedly developed by a lone indie developer and XDA community member Jawamo.
As you’d expect, the app adds Dynamic Island-like functionalities to any Android phone, complete with the ability to “hide” the cutouts with a pill-shaped black bar. Jawamo even added in a settings page on dynamicSpot which allows you to manually reposition the bar to a more desired location, as punch-holes on certain devices tend to be situated differently. On that note, the bar is located centred on top of the screen and will even hide itself when there’s no notifications available.
dynamicSpot is still in its early stages, so expect some features to not function properly. Speaking of which, one amusing bug we’ve encountered while using the feature is the date displayed on certain pop-ups, which shows 1 January 1970 for some reason. Another thing we should point out is that even though the app itself is free, there are some abilities that are locked behind a paywall. That being said, these are some features that most users can live without, but if you’re so inclined to support the developer, the fee to unlock all “pro” features is RM 19.
In our test, the feature works as intended – notifying users of new messages or special events, such as low battery percentage and so on. Tapping on app icons that appear on the bar will launch the respective apps, while a long press will enlarge the bar to display newly received messages and so on. While Jawamo promised that dynamicSpot also comes with the ability to control music playback, we couldn’t find a way to activate this when using the phone’s (in our case, a Samsung S20 FE) native music player or Spotify.
Besides that, the app also provides some customisation options such as allowing you to dictate which app can activate the pop-up, as well as deciding whether you want to have more than one notification to appear on the bar. There’s also the option to display battery percentage, as well as the ability to notify you via the bar when your device is fully charged or, as we mentioned earlier, low on power.
Those interested in giving dynamicSpot a romp can download it via Google Play Store. Seeing that this is a work in progress, you can expect it to be hopefully updated with bug fixes and newer functions in the near future.
(Source: Jawamo [XDA Forum], via XDA)
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