Message indicator light?

I don't know if that is possible.

How about the option to have it repeat the new message sound/vibration every 15 minutes if you have a new message. It's easy to miss your message's imo.

Cynicalone said:

I don't know if that is possible.

How about the option to have it repeat the new message sound/vibration every 15 minutes if you have a new message. It's easy to miss your message's imo.

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I'd prefer to have this over just a little light in the corner. But I'd take either at this point I always miss messages.

superstrikertwo said:

I'd prefer to have this over just a little light in the corner. But I'd take either at this point I always miss messages.

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Yeah and how about for email? I miss my new email all the time.

Cynicalone said:

How about the option to have it repeat the new message sound/vibration every 15 minutes if you have a new message. It's easy to miss your message's imo.

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I would really like this as well.

brian4610 said:

I just can't see how this would be that tough to do...all though i feel the same way about MMS, copy and paste, video recording, etc.....

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The problem is you can't selective illuminate parts of the backlight, so even if you have a black screen with a tiny red "light" in the corner, lighting it up would require turning the backlight on and off, which wouldn't do much for the battery life.
A much better solution (IMO) would be an LED under the home button that could be flashed or pulsed when a message was waiting.

I doubt that this will be possible to be honest, as it involves turning on the LCD, which brings the phone out of sleep mode and therefore battery life will be affected - big time....

An LED somewhere on the device would be nice to indicate a message. My blackberry does this and I can see it across the room.

Bambeezer said:

An LED somewhere on the device would be nice to indicate a message. My blackberry does this and I can see it across the room.

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Wait for 2.1. I hear it adds a nice little LED over the right corner of the screen, just like the blackberry...

Hopefully the next iphone has a dedicated indicator. In the mean time, the phone should absolutely have a reminder feature that reminds you every few minutes with audio or vibrate. It's asinine that you have to check your phone every time you leave the room for a second and don't take it with you. Hopefully apple takes care of this, because I don't think even the jailbreaking community has anything reliable for this - and if they do, I'd like to know! They have an SMS alert one that doesn't work at all for me, and I think for anyone that it does work for it only works when the phone isn't in deep sleep, so it isn't very reliable / it's kind of useless unless you've only just left the room (correct me if I'm wrong), and I think intelliscreen can do repeat alerts too, but I don't want to shell out $20 when that's the only feature I want or will use. And I'm not sure how reliably it does it either.

The speculation is that apple left this feature off due to battery life problems, but honestly, I'd personally sacrifice battery life for this option, and for people who don't want/need it, they could just turn it off.

The guess the idea is ...

you're either available to check your phone (cause you're holding it, or it's in front of you or something) and thus don't need an indicator light.

or

you're not available to check your phone (cause you're sleeping, or it's in a bag or something) and thus an indicator light would be useless.

While we're on the topic of notifications, it would be nice to show my most recent email message much like an unread SMS or missed call, or voicemail on the lock screen.

pj rage said:

Hopefully the next iphone has a dedicated indicator. In the mean time, the phone should absolutely have a reminder feature that reminds you every few minutes with audio or vibrate. It's asinine that you have to check your phone every time you leave the room for a second and don't take it with you. Hopefully apple takes care of this, because I don't think even the jailbreaking community has anything reliable for this - and if they do, I'd like to know! They have an SMS alert one that doesn't work at all for me, and I think for anyone that it does work for it only works when the phone isn't in deep sleep, so it isn't very reliable / it's kind of useless unless you've only just left the room (correct me if I'm wrong), and I think intelliscreen can do repeat alerts too, but I don't want to shell out $20 when that's the only feature I want or will use. And I'm not sure how reliably it does it either.

The speculation is that apple left this feature off due to battery life problems, but honestly, I'd personally sacrifice battery life for this option, and for people who don't want/need it, they could just turn it off.

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Agree 100%. The biggest shortcoming of the iPhone isn't copy/paste, MMS, Flash, etc. etc., it is its lackluster notification system. Considering the control iPhone gives you over all its other elements (email retrieval, brightness, etc.), it would be so easy to put in an option for repeated notifications of missed calls/texts.

I posted this idea last year for a thin LED embedded around the earpiece...

I think Apple should work on a notification front-end.

I hate when I get an SMS and I get the full text. I just don't like it (when my carrier txts me something it's all illegible). But I like having a pop-up like "ContactX New email".

So they should add options

1) Show pop up
2) Show notification icon next to the battery icon
3) Audio and vibration notifications (alredy there..) BUT with repetitions.

Then, if a pop-up is chosen, select detail levels

1) Minimal (would only show "New Email" "New SMS" "New Call")
2) Short (would say "ContactX Email received"
3) Detailed (would show a summary of the email or sms contents or the date and time of the missed called).


then they could wrap this together with teh push notification for 3rd party apps.

But they DO need to sort this out. I would hate to get all kinds of silly notifications from 3rd party apps and lose all control on how these are displayed on my iphone.


I also see inconsistencies: why can I choose detail levels in previews shown in the email app but not in the SMS app? (I don't like the previews.. everything gets all messed up, I prefer to take one at a time)

jmmo20 said:

I think Apple should work on a notification front-end.

I hate when I get an SMS and I get the full text. I just don't like it (when my carrier txts me something it's all illegible). But I like having a pop-up like "ContactX New email".

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This you can control. Enable passkey protection, and then you have the option to turn off SMS previews. If you turn previews off, when you get a text, then popup (on the lock screen) only says "Text Message from [contact name]"

CrzyCanuck72 said:

This you can control. Enable passkey protection, and then you have the option to turn off SMS previews. If you turn previews off, when you get a text, then popup (on the lock screen) only says "Text Message from [contact name]"

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yes I know but that only works if the iphone is actually locked (or suspended).
I don't like getting a pop-up message with the SMS contents right in the middle of a chat, or composing an email, or playing supermonkeyball... with a little popup saying I have something new, it works for me

cellocello said:

The guess the idea is ...

you're either available to check your phone (cause you're holding it, or it's in front of you or something) and thus don't need an indicator light.

or

you're not available to check your phone (cause you're sleeping, or it's in a bag or something) and thus an indicator light would be useless.

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For me, I leave my phone on the counter in my kitchen where I can hear it from the kitchen (obviously) and my living room where I spend most of the time. Sometimes I run into the bedroom to do something and leave my phone on the counter, or maybe I go to the bathroom where it's likely that I can't hear the phone. Or maybe I take a shower, whatever. It's just annoying that every time I leave the room I have to run over to the phone to see if I missed something. (I don't usually actually do this, because I don't rely on getting messages/calls/etc right away, but I WOULD enjoy knowing sooner than later that I've got a message, and for me, a simple audio or vibrate alert would be fine for when I'm back in the room).

The other big case where I want repeated alerts is for when I'm in the car or a busy area. If the phone is in my pocket, it is nearly impossible to hear the [never-loud-enough] audio and sometimes tough to discern the vibration of new mail and SMS. Switching to 3 vibes for SMS has helped, but it's still not perfect. If the alarm were to keep repeating, eventually I would catch it.

I guess the real trouble I'm having is that more often than not, the way I find out that I have a new email/SMS/voicemail (when I was no in service and someone called - happens alot with AT&T lol) is by reading it on the screen intsead of the audio or vibrate alerts as I have been accustomed to with all my phones up until this one. It always makes me wonder "hmm, I wonder how long I've had that there." And sometimes it was time-sensitive like my gf stopping for food on the way home or whatever.

Ya, I hear ya man. Just the other day I was lamenting the lack of an elegant and useful indicator light to my roommate (a new Bold user).

pj rage said:

If the alarm were to keep repeating, eventually I would catch it.

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HOWEVER, having the alarm or vibrate repeat until checked would result in A LOT of "OMG my battery is dead!" threads on here. A lot.

I really would like the idea of a configurable, vibrate / notify every XX minutes for a max Y times.

Also, how about letting you choose what YOU want for a notification tone instead of locking it down to a list of tones that last only a second or so. Like being able to pick from a ringtone. What is the ideas of limiting the choices anyway?

How about also having a feature built into the iphone that uses the motion sensor and can tell when you pick up the phone or undock it and it will then show the screen with the number of missed messages and vibrate.

- James

cellocello said:

The guess the idea is ...

you're either available to check your phone (cause you're holding it, or it's in front of you or something) and thus don't need an indicator light.

or

you're not available to check your phone (cause you're sleeping, or it's in a bag or something) and thus an indicator light would be useless.

Click to expand...

As for the missed alerts (vibrate, alert, screen flash), you can jailbreak your phone and install intelliscreen. It also displays the email, sms, calendar notification and more on the lock screen. Check it out!

By the way its shareware with a limited trial before you buy!

This has been my biggest complaint for the iPhone. I feel it has the worst notification system when compaired to other smartphones.

Apple really needs to start over on this one and give us more options!

This was one of the reasons (the other being the very buggy 2.x firmware) that has caused to me switch to a blackberry curve and revert my iPhone to iPod Touch type of use only.

jamesarm97 said:

I really would like the idea of a configurable, vibrate / notify every XX minutes for a max Y times.

Also, how about letting you choose what YOU want for a notification tone instead of locking it down to a list of tones that last only a second or so. Like being able to pick from a ringtone. What is the ideas of limiting the choices anyway?

How about also having a feature built into the iphone that uses the motion sensor and can tell when you pick up the phone or undock it and it will then show the screen with the number of missed messages and vibrate.

- James

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That is actually a great idea.. somehow detect when you pick up the phone (motion sensor for now; in the future it could detect the user's face thru a front camera!!) and show a little pop up with all the info, with no need to tap/push/slide anything!