Apple took its sweet time adding an always-on display feature to its phones, introducing it to the iPhone 14 models with this year's iOS 16 update. However, not everyone liked Apple's approach to always-on displays, which have been a mainstay of Android phones for some time.
If you think the always-on display on your iPhone 14 Pro is too busy, you're going to want to grab iOS 16.2 when the software update becomes available this month. A new version of the iOS 16.2 beta just landed with developers, and it gives users the options to turn off some of the features that appear on your screen when always-on mode is enabled.
Currently, the always-on feature for the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro Max dims the phone's lock screen. The clock and lock-screen widgets you've added to the lock screen still appear, but so do your wallpaper plus any notifications that show up. That's a stark contrast to the way most Android phones present their always-on display, which features the clock and maybe a few other notifications or widgets.
Personally, I like Apple's different take on always-on displays, which I think helps them stand out from how Android phones implement the feature. I also appreciate how the always-on feature takes advantage of the iPhone 14 Pro's ProMotion display to scale all the way down to a 1Hz refresh rate so that the always-on feature doesn't come at the expense of your battery life. But I can understand why some people might feel Apple's approach was too much.
