Live Activities in iPadOS 26 Seem Like a Preview of the All-Screen iPhone ⇥ pxlnv.com

After the Information reported last month that a truly all-screen iPhone would be arriving next year, I wondered how Apple would handle Dynamic Island stuff without the excuse of a camera cutout. I, for some reason, assumed this stuff would just go away.

I probably overthought this greatly. Take a look at how background tasks are handled in iPadOS 26. They are Live Activities spawned from the Dynamic Island when available, but not dependent on the Dynamic Island. While that software convention emerged from a hardware compromise, it might continue to exist even if the hardware has been updated.

Admittedly, Apple has only shown this for background tasks; it has not enabled full Dynamic Island-style functionality on iPads. But it seems entirely possible the fruits of the island will live on.