I've had my first smartphone for about a year, and I still can't get the hang of how (some) notifications are supposed to work. (I have a Galaxy A03s, which I bought from Verizon.)
My general problem is that notifications pop up saying only the most general things – for example, that there are "new updates." But what's supposed to be updated isn't described, and tapping the notification makes it simply disappear. It seems to me, based on my experience with computers, is that the coherent way for a notification to work would be for it to act as a link to a place which is relevant to whatever the notification is about, but apparently they're not designed to work that way.
Notifications re updates aren't that big of a deal, of course, because I can always go to one of several places (e.g., the Google Play Store or the Galaxy Store) to see what's what. But I've received other notifications that were so uninformative as to be useless.
This morning, I got this notification, which said this, and nothing more:
"Activation incomplete
Please contact customer service (800) 922-0204 for assistance."
I haven't installed any apps for the last several months, and am not aware of anything that needs to be "activated," so I have no idea what this message could possibly refer to.
I Googled that phone number, which led me to this discussion on the Verizon forums:
The discussion didn't resolve anything, except to suggest to me that phishing or the like may or may not be involved in some way, so I'm not going to call that number any time soon.
I understand how phishing generally works for phone calls and text messages. But this notification is from "within" my own phone, isn't it? What am I supposed to make of such a thing? If it's legitimate, because something was supposed to be activated, how can I find out what was supposed to be activated – without calling the suspicious phone number? And just how are notifications in general supposed to work, so when I read and uninformative one in the future, I can actually make use of it, or at least understand what the heck it's about?
Thanks.
P.S. I know I can
try to ask Verizon about this, but my experience with their support has not been good, not worth waiting the 40 minutes or longer that it usually takes to talk to someone.