After 6 long months, Android phone finally cloned iPhone 14

Hearty congratulations to Android manufacturer Realme for being the first to clone Dynamic Island for iPhone 14. It’s been a tough six months, but everyone in the Chinese OEM (BBK subsidiary, same as OnePlus/Oppo) came together and created this one-stop product.

Realme C55 launched in Indonesia for around $195 and features a new “Mini Capsule”UI. When it’s time to show a certain type of notification, this phone has two black bars that fly out of the front camera lens, displaying more information than you usually get in a single status bar icon. It looks just like the iPhone 14’s new Dynamic Island notification space. While the dead space on the iPhone’s display is due to the fact that it contains a plethora of FaceID sensors, there’s no new hardware here (which would take a little longer to copy), just a regular front-facing camera that turns into a giant tablet.

Apple’s end-to-end control of the OS and app ecosystem means all sorts of apps use the Dynamic Island notification motif, but Realme is just an Android manufacturer that skins Android, so it looks like the only real notification that pops up in Mini Capsule is your battery status. Connect your phone and you will see the charging statistics. When the battery is low, the tablet will get a red outline and warn you that your phone is about to run out of power. Realme also has plans for an update that will show step counter and data usage.

There is not much to write about the rest of the phone – it is still a budget phone. Specifications include a 6.7-inch 90Hz LCD, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, and a 5,000mAh battery. An additional tier of 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage is also available. The SoC is a MediaTek Helio G88 – a 12nm chip with two Cortex-A75 processors, six Cortex-A55 processors, and an ARM Mali-G52 GPU. It’s not all that bad in a budget country, as you have a headphone jack and a microSD card slot. There’s also a side-mounted fingerprint reader, and the phone comes with amazingly modern Android 13.

The body of the device gives off a “fake iPhone” look thanks to a flat metal band that wraps around the sides, similar to the iPhone 4 or 14. Things are a little different on the back, with two large camera bumps wrapped around two budget cameras. sensors, and the yellow version of the phone has a neat iridescent back panel.

This may be the first iPhone 14 clone, but not the last. Next in line for the copier is Huawei, which is rumored to have prepared a faux Dynamic Island for the Huawei Nova 11. The phone should be out in the first half of this year if Huawei finds chips for it.

Image listing from Realme