Another Papercut from the Always-On Display Feature ⇥ pxlnv.com

In August, I wrote about a number of small usability problems with the iPhone’s Dynamic Island and always-on display features, none of which have been resolved in software updates. Here is another.

Sometimes, I will be listening to a podcast in Overcast, and need to pause it for an extended period of time to work on something else. I cannot listen to words whilst typing different words. The media controls will be displayed on the always-on display. However, when I tap the display, the controls disappear if I have been paused for a long time. I think Overcast has been kicked out of background tasks or something. There are two problems here.

The first is that controls shown on the always-on display do not respond to taps in the same way as when the phone is awake. You might see media controls or a series of tasks, but tapping those controls merely wakes the display; it does not activate the control.

The second problem is the mismatch in the visibility of media controls between changed states.

These are both obvious — to me — user experience issues that should have been resolved when prototype iPhones with this display were being used internally. Yet there are now three years of always-on iPhone models with the same problems. The Apple promise is “seamless integration”, but the display and its software feel like they were developed by two companies who are not on speaking terms.