One of the biggest tipped iPhone 15 upgrades to look for, certainly when it comes to its design, is the Dynamic Island. It's one of the iPhone's newest and most novel features, giving users access to notifications and mini players.
While we're not completely sure what will change with the feature itself, either on a hardware or software level, we should be seeing it on more iPhones than ever this year. It won't be just the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max keeping it all to themselves like their predecessors last year.
Apple normally launches iPhones each September, and leakers are expecting a September 13 launch this year, so look out for official news on the iPhone 15's Dynamic Island and other tipped features soon. If you need more iPhone 15 rumors right now, have a look at our iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro displays round-up for more general details of the new iPhones' screens.
iPhone 15 Dynamic Island
Let's cover the biggest Dynamic Island rumor right here at the top. From what we've heard, the Dynamic Island is coming to the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus as well as the Pro models according to several sources. There's alleged photographic evidence of this too.
Right now, only the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max have a Dynamic Island, with the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus retaining the traditional iPhone notch. So with the iPhone 15, we should have a more unified-looking family of phones, at least from the front, with owners of even the cheapest new iPhone getting the extra screen space and features enabled by the Dynamic Island.
On a hardware level, Apple could apparently change the way the Dynamic Island is built, by moving the sensors within to make room for the proximity sensor (the sensor that tells the iPhone to turn the screen off when you lift it to your face for calls). We're hoping that could mean other changes are being made too, perhaps to the selfie camera or Face ID sensors that sit inside the Dynamic Island, but we've not heard any rumors to support this.
Similarly, no changes to the Dynamic Island's behavior have been rumored for the iPhone 15 yet. With iOS 17, Apple's next generation of iPhone software, it appears to have no big updates either, beyond a couple of new compatible features such as alarms in the Clock app. The last big update came with iOS 16.1's Live Activities, so we really hope Apple's working on some new Dynamic Island functionality to make the inclusion on all iPhone 15s worthwhile.