While not directly from smartphone brands, a replication of the Dynamic Island feature on the iPhone 14 series has been created for the Android platform by third-party developers. However, this particular version is only available via a theme known amusingly as “Grumpy UI” when directly translated, which is currently under development for Xiaomi’s MIUI.
First spotted by Vaibhav Jain of TechDroider, who shared a clip of the custom-made feature via his Twitter account. Much like Apple’s own, the dynamic widget is capable of expanding and shrinking itself, displaying notifications, and managing music playback controls. Outside of those demonstrated from the video, its full capabilities are still not known at this time.
Dynamic Island Style Notifications / Now Playing on Xiaomi MIUI. Mi Theme Developers never disappoint 😎 pic.twitter.com/ImHmbkRZnb
— Vaibhav Jain (@vvaiibhav) September 11, 2022
Unlike the actual Dynamic Island feature, the widget does not hide the front-facing camera’s cutout in idle mode but rather, accompanies it. However, it does pull this off perfectly when enlarged – leaving enough empty space for hiding cutouts, regardless of their position on a display. Hopefully, the developers would provide a way to move the widget around on-screen, as locations of camera cutouts differ from one handset to another – not necessarily those from Xiaomi.
When approached, the Grumpy UI developers told Jain that their version of the Dynamic Island feature is still under review and will only go live on the MIUI Themes store on Xiaomi’s approval. It is currently not known which smartphone model from the brand is compatible with the theme, and the developers did not state which device was used in the video demonstration. Unfortunately, the team did not mention anything about the custom UI’s potential availability outside of the MIUI platform.
Inevitably, it’s quite likely that we’ll be seeing even more similar features to appear on the Android platform soon enough. Given that phone brands have the tendency to copy from one another, it might not take long for them to debut their own take on Apple’s Dynamic Island widget. Besides, it only took the Grumpy UI team more or less a week to create their version.
(Source: Vaibhav Jain [Twitter])
