To me the island looks like a more interactive status bar at top. Samsung doesn't need a pill to do the same thing... just make all the status object on top more interactive by letting you touch... let an app dev the abilty to use that space, instead of making us pull down before being able to do more.
The thing is, looking at the example of being able to put Spotify in the island to show music playing or another app to show sports scores, Apple is giving developers access to the island or status bar or whatever you want to call it and the developers are going to jump at using it to make their app more attractive and useful that it's just gonna be a better product on iOS.
Google is going to have to modify and allow access to developers to have more access to the status bar and don't know if that is an easy task... the use of high res images and animation and movement in the island... did you see the demo with their Apple Earbuds in high res and animated in the island??
I don't know if many here play with iOS but their recent use of widgets that we here with Android have been use to... any iOS users notice how the widgets available and that the third party apps make available... are just so much more cleaner looking, more options or features available to make them more useful... FlipBoard and Netflix are two examples if you compare the iOS widget to Android widget... the Android widgets are a joke. And seems like you can find more developers have made widgets avail for iOS then their Android counterpart. You can't blame the developers entirely for making or not making widgets... Google has to take part of it for not maturing it.
That's what makes features like the island much more attractive to look at and use... you have more ways to use that feature.
Of course it's just used to be a distraction from the cut out which is smart. We do have a better notification system, but I will say this idea is very smart in the sense that it puts important things at the top. It's very convenient to have a stop watch at the top of your phone when working out. I will also say that have a smart watch makes it not necessary. That's the same way I feel about aod. My watch makes it useless, but I do like that Apple allows you to display your wallpaper in full color. Not things that are needed but again if we only bought or use things we need then we wouldn't have a forum like this lol