After three iterations, Apple's Dynamic Island may be seeing a redesign with the iPhone 17 family. The claims comes from regular rumormonger Digital Chat Station on Weibo.
DCS has been fairly accurate over the years, though their most recent post is a bit vague on specific details. The post (machine-translated) says, "The system has a brand new Smart Island UI."
The smaller interface may be made possible from a new part that's been rumored for the upcoming iPhone models for some time. Back in May, a rumor suggested the iPhone 17 lineup was going to get a "metalens" upgrade that could reduce the size of the feature.
Metalens are flat lenses that use "metasurfaces" to focus light toward the image sensor, a big upgraded over traditional curved lenses. That would allow the front camera and FaceID sensors to require less space,
Rumors surrounding the Dynamic Island have been contradictory though. Earlier this year, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said, "I expect the Dynamic Island size to remain largely unchanged across the 2H25 iPhone 17 series." It's also been rumored that a smaller island would only come to the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
If the Dynamic Island changes, it'll be the first update since it was introduced with the iPhone 14 Pro models in 2022.
Whatever happens with the Dynamic Island, we should learn more about the iPhone 17 series in September when Apple usually debuts its latest models, only two months from now.