I found a tiny UI Design flaw on the iPhone 14 Pro. And now I can’t unsee it.

Apple is the king of UI Design. I think they do a great job for the most part of having consistent and beautiful design throughout their operating systems and devices.

This has been true for a while now even if you might consider the iOS 7 redesign controversial and/or stark. As you can see, in retrospect, much of the design language that was introduced with iOS 7 is still used today. So while they might be controversial at times, they usually help set the standard for UI design. Enter the notch.

The Notch

The notch is one of those things that is almost unavoidable. It houses the cameras and sensors that are in every current phone. Yes, Apple could’ve gone with an under-screen camera and sensors or something along that vain but I have yet to see a well executed under-screen system. Either they are obviously there or the quality is absolutely terrible. So I have come to terms with the notch. And it seems that other companies have follow Apple’s lead here, as well. But it was clearly still just wasted space.

So what did Apple do? With the introduction of the iPhone 14 pro, they introduced the “dynamic island.”

The Dynamic Island

The dynamic island is absolute genius. It takes something that is a necessity due to the hardware and incorporates the software to make it disappear. Let’s talk about the basics of what it can do. It hides the fact that there is a camera and sensors there. It shows pertinent information such as live activities. And it actually give the user another type of interaction that can technically be classified as multitasking. You can interact with it, tap it, and there are so many possibilities of things that it can do when put in the hands of developers. So by all means, I love the “Dynamic island.”

But now to what I don’t like about it. The actual design of it is awesome…but kind of feels lazy upon closer look. Let me explain.

I find myself looking at the top 10% of my iPhone screen a lot. It has the clock, battery, cell service, and now the island. That is a lot of information to be held in that tiny space. And I was looking at it the other day and I felt as if some of the elements weren’t matching up. Upon further exploration, there are definitely some inconsistencies.

The icons in the toolbar and the dynamic island play in the same area of the interface. But if you look closely, they don’t seem to agree on what vertical space to take up. Not only that, but the icons on each side of the island don’t seem to agree! This is madness! (Obviously I’m being dramatic.)

If you look at the image above, you’ll notice a few things. First off, I just took a screen shot of my Home Screen and cropped it in. I then started to draw straight, red lines across the interface in order to communicate boundaries of the design elements.

The top red line indicates the very top of the island.

The bottom red line indicates the very bottom of the island.

Naturally, my instinct is to center the rest of the icons and the text in the toolbar, on the dynamic island. That’s where things start to get weird.

What you’ll notice is that the spacing is different from the island, to the clock and left side of toolbar, and the right side and its icons. The two middle red lines are the outermost boundaries of the icons on either side.

It just so happens to be the battery icon has the tallest and lowest.

Apparently the bottom of the clock lines up with he bottom of the battery indicator. But the top does not.

And the text in the 5G logo doesn’t match up with the bottom or top of either the battery or the clock.

And the signal strength icon lines up with the top of the battery but not the bottom.

Now let’s talk about the orange boxes that I put there. Each of those orange boxes is the same size. What you’ll see is the padding around the boxes compared to the lines. The space from the upper boundary of the icons is not the same as the space from the bottom boundary.

What that means is that the icons on each side of the dynamic island, while not lining up with each other, are also not even centered on the island itself.

I could probably see past this if I saw any purpose in why the design is this way but it appears to me they just didn’t put enough eyes or time into it maybe?

Now I know, this is extremely petty. But for a feature that they are drawing so much attention to, I think the typical UI of the this design should be almost flawless in execution. People will decide if they like it as a feature or not based on their own preferences and tastes.

But the design of it doesn’t feel “on purpose.” And this doesn’t feel very Apple to me. It feels as if they liked the features that the island could give the consumer but didn’t take the time to make sure that their previous design matched with the new features.

This is absolutely one of those things that could be fixed in an update and my hope is that it is fixed in an update. It doesn’t affect my daily use, and it doesn’t impact the overall design of the OS.

Because as it stands right now, I can’t “not” see it.

Thanks so much for reading! If you’d would mind, give me a 👏 if you enjoyed this article. And make sure and check out my other stories here! I usually write about Apple and technology but will occassionally write about minimalism and such.