One More Thing About the iPhones 18 Pro: the Bigger/Smaller Dynamic Island

Friday, 18 September 2026

Cleaning up my notes this morning, I realized I forgot to write about the new under-display Face ID sensor in the iPhones 18 Pro, and the corresponding change to the Dynamic Island. I just added it to my review. For those of you who’ve already read the review, here’s the new section in its entirety:

A Smaller — or Is It Bigger? — Dynamic Island

Apple moved the Face ID infrared camera under the display. It’s up in the top left, underneath the area where iOS displays the time in the status bar. This means that the dedicated black cutout for the Dynamic Island is now noticeably smaller. But it also means that when iOS is rendering the dynamic features of the Dynamic Island, it’s effectively bigger, because now iOS can draw to the left of it, where the Face ID sensor had previously occupied dedicated space. On all previous iPhones with the Dynamic Island, you can see up to two Live Activities at once in the Dynamic Island. With the iPhone 18 Pro, you can now see up to three. I don’t often have three Live Activities going at once, but sometimes I do — simultaneous sporting events, upcoming flights plus an Uber to the airport, etc. So the permanent cutout for the Dynamic Island is smaller, but the usable space for content in the Dynamic Island is now larger.

There’s a minor tradeoff with this design. Even my middle-aged eyes can see that the pixels on top of the Face ID sensor aren’t quite as sharp as those on the rest of the screen. The time of day in the status bar looks like it’s just a tad fuzzy, like the text isn’t anti-aliased correctly. No big deal, and you need to look for it to notice it.

Over the past decade, Apple has taken this design from a big notch, to a smaller notch, to the Dynamic Island, and now to a smaller cutout for the Dynamic Island. I don’t know if they’re ever going to get there, but the goal, obviously, is to eventually put all sensors under the display, creating a genuine all-display front. Putting Face ID under the display on the iPhone 18 Pro is a significant step toward that.