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Help Puzzled about customizing notifications and lock screen

M

mmanna

Newbie
I've had my Stratosphere for all of 12 hours, and figured out how to accomplish nearly everything I want with a little bit of researching effort. There are two things that are perplexing me at the moment, that are probably not specific to the Strato, but Android in general. I can't seem to find the answers to these two concerns:

1. I have tried several different apps for switching sound profiles, but they all seem to lump "notifications" into the same boat. I would like to have a sound profile I can switch over to at night when I go to bed, that will silence notifications for emails, facebook, twitter, etc. but leave notification sounds for SMS and PingChat! ENABLED. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I might accomplish this?

2. A friend of mine has another android-based phone, and her "location and security" settings distinguish between the phone's display timeout (going black) and a separate setting for when it actually locks and requires the slide/pattern/PIN. My strato doesn't offer this setting. Instead, it makes me enter my unlock pattern EVERY time the screen goes black, even if it's only been 30 seconds. This is very annoying! I would much prefer to set the lock time to 5 minutes, but still have the screen shut off prior to that.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can offer this android-noob.

For others curious about the Stratosphere ... I love it so far! It's fast, nice bright screen, decent sound quality, and a nice keyboard (but a little awkward to hit some of the middle keys due to it's width). My only complaint other than the software-related concerns above is that there's no LED status indicator. I really miss the blinking red light I previously had to alert me that I had missed a call or message!
 
Welcome to Android. I think you're going to be happy here!
1. Unfortunately, the beeps and dings for all those things (facebook, twitter, email, SMS, etc.) all fall into one giant category called "Notification," and there's only one volume control for it. The way I see it you have two options for this:
a. The impractical. Every night before you go to sleep, set the notification tone for every app to silent except for SMS, and when you wake up set everything back to normal. This is a pain in the ass and will lead to forgetting.
b. The very limiting. You could grab an app like JuiceDefender or something similar that has a widget to disable mobile data altogether. You will still get basic service (calls & text) but any data-based service won't be able to communicate with the outside world. This probably includes PingChat, unfortunately, and will prevent Facebook or Twitter from updating until you reenable data. Then you'll get a torrent of notifications when you wake up and turn data back on. It's not perfect but it's better than option A.

2. Many different Android versions put the settings into different areas. Just explore some more. On my phone, the screen timeout setting is in the "Display & Security" section of the settings, and the security lock timer setting is inside the "security" part of those settings.
 
Although not the silver bullet I was hoping for, I appreciate your suggestions ... I can probably just sacrifice pingchat overnight and shut off mobile data. I'n loving the 8mb download speed here in Tampa on 4G!
 
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