Tell me about the notification light, please?

[heycal]

Toying with buying this phone, but still trying to educate myself a bit more about it:

I understand that this phone comes with some sort of notifications lights for message, etc.? Can someone explain how this works? I'm not sure I've had this feature on a phone before, but it sounds very desirable if it works the way I think/hope it could. Specific questions are:

1) If someone sends me a text message when I'm out of the room, will there be some sort of light glowing on the phone when I return to the room an hour later? Something I can see from across the room without having to touch or unlock the phone? When it will remain on indefinitely until I retrieve the message? Will it blink, or stay on steady, or is this customizable with the settings?

2) There is a light like this both on the front and the back of the phone?

3) Is it true you can do different colors for different people, or different colors for voice mails versus texts?

4) Is all this standard stuff with the basic version of the phone, or does one have to load third party apps to get these features to work?

5) Finally, how reliable is this feature? If it doesn't work consistently, that could create man headaches and missed messages I'm sure.

If there's anything else that's helpful to know about this stuff, please let me know. Thanks!

 

[lpd50]

if you check under settings-display-notification LED, you will see the choices for the different actions the LED will display. No third party app needed, but there are several that could provide enhancements for the LED.

As far as my experiences, the LED will stay flashing/lit until you read the message or check the missed call. You can see the light from across the room, it's bright enough.

There is a LED on the back side, but it seems to have limited functions. See the settings.

Not sure about different colors for texts or calls on stock, but with an app I've seen that available.

Hope this helps a bit.

 

[heycal]

if you check under settings-display-notification LED, you will see the choices for the different actions the LED will display. No third party app needed, but there are several that could provide enhancements for the LED.

As far as my experiences, the LED will stay flashing/lit until you read the message or check the missed call. You can see the light from across the room, it's bright enough.

There is a LED on the back side, but it seems to have limited functions. See the settings.

Not sure about different colors for texts or calls on stock, but with an app I've seen that available.

Hope this helps a bit.

Thanks, good to know. I'll check it out next opportunity I have. A notification light sounds like a useful feature that can both help you realize you have a message in a timely fashion, and also avoid that obsessive unlocking and checking the phone to see if anything has come in that many of us do.

 

[heycal]

What are the options in terms of controlling the notification light? Can it only blink at set intervals, or can you have it glow steadily, which I personally would prefer?

 

[stef7]

The built-in behavior and colors are fixed. Next time you are at the store, you can go into Settings | Display | Notification Light, and by enabling, then clicking each option in turn, see what the LED behavior will be. Generally one or two blinks fading in/out of a particular color.

You can disable some or all and use a third party app too. Highly configurable, but for what you want, not inherently the way you want it. I'm sure built-in, you'd want to be able to specify the duty cycle, the number of pulses if any, the particular color for a given notification, etc.

Third-party.

 

[heycal]

The built-in behavior and colors are fixed. Next time you are at the store, you can go into Settings | Display | Notification Light, and by enabling, then clicking each option in turn, see what the LED behavior will be. Generally one or two blinks fading in/out of a particular color.

You can disable some or all and use a third party app too. Highly configurable, but for what you want, not inherently the way you want it. I'm sure built-in, you'd want to be able to specify the duty cycle, the number of pulses if any, the particular color for a given notification, etc.

Third-party.

Thanks, Stef. I'll check it out.

 

[Simple_fear85]

There are thirty party apps that you can use where you can set up for different people, emails, calls, anything goes.

 

[heycal]

There are thirty party apps that you can use where you can set up for different people, emails, calls, anything goes.

I guess third party apps are generally the answer to many things I want to do. I remain leery of them, finding them a bit glitchy and slower to react or sync, or just generally not to behave as seamlessly as the stock features do. At least in my limited experiences with them.

Could this because I'm using a 2 year old Lucid 840, and today's phones won't have these issues with third party apps? Or will replacement apps often be a bit less perfect and less seamlessly performing than stock features regardless of what phone one is using?

It just seems to this non-techie, that as a common sense principle, any time you start using 'replacement parts' and modifying things you are increasing your chances of something not working quite as perfectly as the original part/feature generally will. But perhaps I'm wrong about this?

It sounds like if I want to use Android instead of iphone, I must also be prepared to embrace the third party app world to get the most out of them, and that concerns me a bit.

 

[Simple_fear85]

I guess third party apps are generally the answer to many things I want to do. I remain leery of them, finding them a bit glitchy and slower to react or sync, or just generally not to behave as seamlessly as the stock features do. At least in my limited experiences with them.

Could this because I'm using a 2 year old Lucid 840, and today's phones won't have these issues with third party apps? Or will they often be a bit less perfect and less seamlessly performing than stock features regardless of what phone one is using?

It just seems to this non-techie, that as a common sense principle, any time you start using replacement parts and modifying things you are increasing your chances of something not working quite as perfectly as the original part/feature generally will. But perhaps I'm wrong about this?

This is the one I used and works wonders, and its cross compatable. As long as you have a led sensor on your phone it will work.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koo.lightmanager

this one allows for contacts, and more

I really dont think that the age of a phone should matter. I seen apps that were made at the time of these new phones that worked on phones that were made long ago. the one I use works wonders and I yet to find any issues of glitches in my opinion. I am not going to say there isnt any glitches there will always be glitches. there is no program out there that wont have glitches any now and then

 

[heycal]

there is no program out there that wont have glitches any now and then

Perhaps. But I'm wondering if my wonderful experiences in switching from PC to a Mac Air laptop and experiencing about 98% less problems, glitches, freezes, bugs, etc. would translate to my smartphone experience if I got an iphone, instead of going for another android and then settting about trying to mod it up while also living in a world all too familiar from both my current android experience with a phone not working like it's supposed to and my PC experiences.

Very torn on this, as may be obvious. Love many things about the iphone, but there are some limitations to it, and some features these androids offer are also very, very attractive to me...

 

[Simple_fear85]

Perhaps. But I'm wondering if my wonderful experiences in switching from PC to a Mac Air laptop and experiencing about 98% less problems, glitches, freezes, bugs, etc. would translate to my smartphone experience if I got an iphone, instead of going for another android and then settting about trying to mod it up while also living in a world all too familiar from both my current android experience with a phone not working like it's supposed to and my PC experiences.

Very torn on this, as may be obvious. Love many things about the iphone, but there are some limitations to it, and some features these androids offer are also very, very attractive to me...

Yes that is something I love about android you can mod it. To get a true android phone to me is to root it, put on a custom recovery and then use a custom mod. For the lg g2 i use Cyanogenmod 11

 

[heycal]

Yes that is something I love about android you can mod it. To get a true android phone to me is to root it, put on a custom recovery and then use a custom mod. For the lg g2 i use Cyanogenmod 11

I can barely understand half of what you're saying here with this crazy talk, and I don't think I want to know. I'm just not a tech guy at all.

Plus, as an example of my fears regarding these third party apps, here's what I've done on my current LG phone in the last few days and how it's gone:

1) Installed a swifkeyboard to use instead of the LG one. Great in many ways, but a little slow to appear and disappear when it's supposed to.

2) Installed K-9 mail so I'd have greater control over the font sizes. And i can make most of the fonts as big as I need them to be, but not all of them. Plus, there's no little number showing up on the K-9 icon to show how many emails are waiting.

3) Installed handcent text messaging for the same reason, bigger fonts. But it too doesn't display the number of messages waiting for me on it's icon, despite me disabling (I think) my stock messaging app, and there's at least one other glitch so far: sometimes the previous message in the pop up window doesn't disppear when new messages come in.

All this modding required a lot of tweaking and some online research, and for what? All to get fonts and sizes that still don't look as good as what comes standard on the iphone and can be set to my liking in literally three seconds, and a keyboard that perhaps equals the iphone's even if it performs a bit sluggishly at times (though it does have some advantages over the iphone keyboard too.)

So it's stuff like this that scares me about going android again… And of course, these workarounds could have beeen avoided if LG had thought to make the maximum fonts actually maximum sized on this fancy BIG phone they offer! Jeez...

 

[Simple_fear85]

I can barely understand half of what you're saying here with this crazy talk, and I don't think I want to know. I'm just not a tech guy at all.

Plus, as an example of my fears regarding these third party apps, here's what I've done on my current LG phone in the last few days and how it's gone:

1) Installed a swifkeyboard to use instead of the LG one. Great in many ways, but a little slow to appear and disappear when it's supposed to.

2) Installed K-9 mail so I'd have greater control over the font sizes. And i can make most of the fonts as big as I need them to be, but not all of them. Plus, there's no little number showing up on the K-9 icon to show how many emails are waiting.

3) Installed handcent text messaging for the same reason, bigger fonts. But it too doesn't display the number of messages waiting for me on it's icon, despite me disabling (I think) my stock messaging app, and there's at least one other glitch so far: sometimes the previous message in the pop up window doesn't disppear when new messages come in.

All this modding required a lot of tweaking and some online research, and for what? All to get fonts and sizes that still don't look as good as what comes standard on the iphone and can be set to my liking in literally three seconds, and a keyboard that perhaps equals the iphone's even if it performs a bit sluggishly at times (though it does have some advantages over the iphone keyboard too.)

So it's stuff like this that scares me about going android again

 

[heycal]

I don't mean to scare you. I understand where your coming from. To get where I am at today I had done a lot of research to be able to do the stuff I wanna do. Sorry once I got all this down its simple for me. Was just trying to give you advice that's all.

Yes, I understood that, and certainly appreciate it. Thank you. I think the most I'd personally ever do would be simple changes to get the key things I want, and leave the fancy stuff to others.

I really think my personality is about 50% Apple, 50% android. It's a terrible, terrible place to be…. I see this techie jibberish in these android forums and I'm like "Ugh, are you guys kidding me?? I just want things to work and never see weird words like 'skin', 'root', 'rom' 'OEM', etc again!"

But then I go into an iphone forum or thread wanting to know how to do some simple thing or another, and those folks are like "Nope, can't do anyone of that. And why would you want to? It's perfect the way it is. You're saying you wish you could toggle easily between silent/vibrate/ring with the volume keys? Why, what is wrong with you? Just go into settings and click this, that, and the other thing if you really want to do something strange like that!"

 

[Stannis the Mannis]

I can barely understand half of what you're saying here with this crazy talk, and I don't think I want to know. I'm just not a tech guy at all.

Plus, as an example of my fears regarding these third party apps, here's what I've done on my current LG phone in the last few days and how it's gone:

1) Installed a swifkeyboard to use instead of the LG one. Great in many ways, but a little slow to appear and disappear when it's supposed to.

2) Installed K-9 mail so I'd have greater control over the font sizes. And i can make most of the fonts as big as I need them to be, but not all of them. Plus, there's no little number showing up on the K-9 icon to show how many emails are waiting.

3) Installed handcent text messaging for the same reason, bigger fonts. But it too doesn't display the number of messages waiting for me on it's icon, despite me disabling (I think) my stock messaging app, and there's at least one other glitch so far: sometimes the previous message in the pop up window doesn't disppear when new messages come in.

All this modding required a lot of tweaking and some online research, and for what? All to get fonts and sizes that still don't look as good as what comes standard on the iphone and can be set to my liking in literally three seconds, and a keyboard that perhaps equals the iphone's even if it performs a bit sluggishly at times (though it does have some advantages over the iphone keyboard too.)

So it's stuff like this that scares me about going android again

 

[heycal]

Well in regards to number 1, that seems more like a problem with your current LG phone than anything. Swiftkey has never been slow or anything with my G2 or even when I used my old Optimus L9 which had the same processor as the Galaxy Nexus and I didn't experience any hiccups. The G2 is a blazing fast phone, you'd be hard pressed to find any lagging with this thing.

And to be fair none of what the others have suggested is "modding", that's a whole different ball game that I'm not too familiar with either.

Thanks. I think what I will finally do here is just punt on the issue on a new phone since it's causing me agita. Plus my daughter also wants a new phone, so I'll let her use my ugrade now to get a new iphone 5S (of course), and come August, I can use her upgrade to get myself a phone if I can actually decide on a particular one by then

In the meantime, I may take over her iphone 4 and see how I like using those little gadgets in a real world scenario, which should help inform my future course of action.

 

[stef7]

The comment you made about the iPhone forums should be reflected upon.

Realistically, only an Android is going to present you with the ability to customize. I agree, mostly what you are seeing is because of your Lucid, and or you haven't figured out how to do something yet... but you're always going to be looking for something to tweak.

Your issue isn't that you are 50/50 between Android and iOS, it's that you see something and you want to know, can it be made better or more to your liking, your preferences, your expectations, your needs...

With Android, it's possible to do this research and customization, maybe not to 100%, but pretty darn close. With iOS, it's more of appreciate it for what it is and accept it.

Heycal, you aren't that sort of person from all you've posted. It's like we know you now, better than you appear to know yourself.

No angina, just Android.

 

[stef7]

heycal, maybe you can improve the responsiveness of your Lucid in the process and pickup some additional functionality you might be looking for.

1). Go into Settings and Look for App Manager. If there isn't one there, download Advanced Task Manager, run it, select Apps, and for each downloaded program you don't need, uninstall it. For those downloaded you want to keep, see if there is a MoveToSD Card option, and move the programs out of your precious RAM and onto the SD card.

2). Download 1TapCacheCleaner and clear all caches.

3). Reboot your phone

Enjoy better phone responsiveness.

4). Consider downloading a HomeScreen/Launcher replacement. I like Holo Launcher. There is an accompanying Holo Notifier which will put a bubble next to apps like email and SMS with a count of messages waiting.

 

[heycal]

heycal, maybe you can improve the responsiveness of your Lucid in the process and pickup some additional functionality you might be looking for.

1). Go into Settings and Look for App Manager. If there isn't one there, download Advanced Task Manager, run it, select Apps, and for each downloaded program you don't need, uninstall it. For those downloaded you want to keep, see if there is a MoveToSD Card option, and move the programs out of your precious RAM and onto the SD card.

2). Download 1TapCacheCleaner and clear all caches.

3). Reboot your phone

Enjoy better phone responsiveness.

4). Consider downloading a HomeScreen/Launcher replacement. I like Holo Launcher. There is an accompanying Holo Notifier which will put a bubble next to apps like email and SMS with a count of messages waiting.

Thanks, Stef. I've done a few of these already, and will explore the others. This "home screen/launcher replacement" stuff sounds a bit above my pay grade though, just the kind of intimidating android-speak that spooks me. Where would one even find something like that?

And think about WHY I would be doing this: to make a previous replacement part work correctly. So to fix one problem -- a lousy texting app -- I need to put in a replacement. And then to make THAT replacement part work correctly, I must install a different replacement part… Is this really how you Android folks like to live?

The comment you made about the iPhone forums should be reflected upon.

Realistically, only an Android is going to present you with the ability to customize. I agree, mostly what you are seeing is because of your Lucid, and or you haven't figured out how to do something yet... but you're always going to be looking for something to tweak.

Your issue isn't that you are 50/50 between Android and iOS, it's that you see something and you want to know, can it be made better or more to your liking, your preferences, your expectations, your needs...

With Android, it's possible to do this research and customization, maybe not to 100%, but pretty darn close. With iOS, it's more of appreciate it for what it is and accept it.

Heycal, you aren't that sort of person from all you've posted. It's like we know you now, better than you appear to know yourself.

No angina, just Android.

You think I'm more android at heart? I don't know. When a non-mechanical guy with no interest in how things work has to do a bunch of research and tweaking just to make his phone do some of the same things the iphone offers out of the box, I'm thinking a good portion of my personality must be in that camp too.

 

[stef7]

heycal - you are like a moth to a flame. :smokingsomb:

you like doing this investigation and tweaking.

but to my previous point - you really can't with an iPhone.. So you'd miss these opportunities if you go that route.

come on - embrace your authentic self.

A Launcher is just a home screen management program that takes over the functionality the OEM put into their core load. With one, you can manipulate how the screens transition when you swipe them, how densely packed your icons are, if you want icon labels or not, how you want your row of home buttons to look, and a bunch more.

On the LG G2, the out-of-the-box launcher is very nice and has many many features.

Now, on my LG G2, the SMS messages waiting are shown. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't see the same for K9 mail. You could write the developer. Maybe it works in the normal mail application, but for me, I see an icon in the status bar, and I know email is waiting, so I can pull down the notification shade and go to the mail program (K9 handles a comcast account, and GMail handles Google Mail). K9 could do it all.

I know, I hear your point, why isn't all this consistent?

Holo Launcher and Holo Notifier are in the Playstore waiting for you to try on your Lucid.

 

[heycal]

heycal - you are like a moth to a flame. :smokingsomb:

you like doing this investigation and tweaking.

but to my previous point - you really can't with an iPhone.. So you'd miss these opportunities if you go that route.

come on - embrace your authentic self.

A Launcher is just a home screen management program that takes over the functionality the OEM put into their core load. With one, you can manipulate how the screens transition when you swipe them, how densely packed your icons are, if you want icon labels or not, how you want your row of home buttons to look, and a bunch more.

On the LG G2, the out-of-the-box launcher is very nice and has many many features.

Now, on my LG G2, the SMS messages waiting are shown. Yeah, unfortunately, I don't see the same for K9 mail. You could write the developer. Maybe it works in the normal mail application, but for me, I see an icon in the status bar, and I know email is waiting, so I can pull down the notification shade and go to the mail program (K9 handles a comcast account, and GMail handles Google Mail). K9 could do it all.

I know, I hear your point, why isn't all this consistent?

Holo Launcher and Holo Notifier are in the Playstore waiting for you to try on your Lucid.

Sounds like one nightmare after another. I just wish they'd let ME design a phone from scratch. I'd do it right!

 

[stef7]

heycal, I just discovered this morning that if you installed K9 mail, there is a Widget (not an App Icon) that you can put on your homescreen, that will show unread messages. Enjoy.

 

[heycal]

heycal, I just discovered this morning that if you installed K9 mail, there is a Widget (not an App Icon) that you can put on your homescreen, that will show unread messages. Enjoy.

Thanks, Stef. Where might I find this widget?

 

[stef7]

Let's see. I think you install the app, then you long press on your home screen and you'll be asked for application or widget and you select widget. You scroll through them looking for the dog icon and the bubble with the number in it.

Otherwise if you go into the applications drawer, there may be a tab for widgets. Hard to remember the version of the os on your Lucid.

Of course, you can Google widget and ice cream, or jelly bean, or what have you and you'll find the technique described....

Come on, you love doing research on this stuff... look at the things you've learned recently. Think of it as adding to neural plasticity..

 

[heycal]

Let's see. I think you install the app, then you long press on your home screen and you'll be asked for application or widget and you select widget. You scroll through them looking for the dog icon and the bubble with the number in it.

Otherwise if you go into the applications drawer, there may be a tab for widgets. Hard to remember the version of the os on your Lucid.

Of course, you can Google widget and ice cream, or jelly bean, or what have you and you'll find the technique described....

Come on, you love doing research on this stuff... look at the things you've learned recently. Think of it as adding to neural plasticity..

All right, I'll research this fun topic soon. But starting yesterday I'm using my daughter's old iphone 4 to see how the world of iphone's suit me. Oh boy… much to love -- and HATE -- with that phone...