Realme is working on a Dynamic Island copycat just as the original gets more useful

Realme, a subbrand of Chinese phone maker Oppo, might be the first Android OEM to clone Apple’s Dynamic Island, a deleted tweet from a company executive and a leaked animation suggest. It comes at a time when Apple seems like it might prove that Dynamic Island is worth copying, as the mostly ornamental UI fixture is finally getting some real third-party support.

This doesn’t come as a major surprise. As 9to5Google points out, Realme basically told everyone it wanted to clone Dynamic Island back in September. It appears that a feature called the “Mini Capsule” has been in the works since then. A photo in the removed tweet indeed shows a pill-shaped UI element at the top of the screen with Oppo’s SuperVOOC charging logo displayed. The animation, shared by reliable leaker OnLeaks via Smartprix, shows the capsule expanding and collapsing to display charging status information. Cute!

In the meantime, Apple’s Dynamic Island has been kind of a placeholder since the iPhone 14 Pro launched. It does a few interesting things, like give you a heads-up when your AirPods’ battery is low. But mostly, it’s been waiting for third-party app makers to utilize it with iOS 16.1 Live Activities API. That went, uh, live in October with an underwhelming list of supported apps — unless you’re a Carrot Weather stan.

That’s finally changing as some big-name apps get on board. Uber is releasing an app update that utilizes Dynamic Island so you can see things like how many minutes away your ride is without keeping the Uber app open. Even as an infrequent rideshare rider, that sounds incredibly useful to me. Google Maps will also be adding Live Activities support “in the coming months,” which could mean turn-by-turn directions in the Dynamic Island the same way Apple Maps uses the feature.

In my book, seeing how far away my Uber driver is or checking that I’m heading the right way to find a coffee shop are two prime use cases for Dynamic Island. They’re the kinds of things Apple promised us the feature would do but just weren’t there when it launched. We’ll have to wait a little longer to find out what a full-featured Dynamic Island can do on iOS and what an Android clone looks like. In the meantime, impatient Android phone owners can download an app for that.