At its “Far Out” event early this morning, Apple unveiled iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus, retaining much of the design of the iPhone 13 – including the bangs notch for the phone’s self-camera and Face ID sensor. – including the bangs notch for the phone’s selfie camera and Face ID sensor. Apple also unveiled iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max with a “Spirit Island” pill screen to show alerts and background activity, a brighter display and AOD display, an A16 bionic chip, new color options and more.
Starting with iOS 14, iPhone displays a green dot to the right of the bangs notch when the app is actively using the camera. On iPhone 14 Pro Series models, this privacy indicator now appears in the new pill-shaped “Spirit Island.
The repositioned camera indicator can be seen in Apple’s video introducing the iPhone 14 Pro and appears when the built-in camera app is opened. The green dot indicates that an app on iPhone is using a camera or camera and microphone.
The green dot that appears directly next to the front-facing camera on iPhone 14 Pro models is similar to the green light that appears when the MacBook webcam is active, providing a more consistent experience across devices.
An orange dot will also appear in Island when the app is actively using the iPhone microphone instead of the camera, but the footage shown during Apple events indicates that the orange dot will appear to the right of the status bar battery, at least when Island is already in use. This will be the case when it is in use.
The “Island” is unique to the iPhone 14 Pro series and replaces the traditional bangs notch found on all iPhone 13 series models. With the help of software, the “pill” transforms into different shapes and sizes for incoming calls, alerts, notifications, Face ID authentication, timers, turn-by-turn navigation, live events, and more.
