Looking at all the features that older phones uses to have compared to newer ones, I never hear anyone talk about the removal of the notification LED. I personally really liked that feature, being able to see if I got an email, a text or missed a call without turning on my phone was awesome. My Samsung note 8 had this feature, but to my knowledge, newer phones (in the major companies anyway) have abandoned this feature. Did everyone else unanimously agree they don’t care for this feature?
am I the only one who misses funky antenna bobs that would flash like old nokias? that was handy
Afaik they don’t work on modern phone anymore because of the different frequencies and much lower transmit power. Those old phone has pretty high transmit power to the point of causing radio interference if you receive a call near an active speaker. Even if there is a version that work on 4g/5g phones, it’ll be very annoying because it’ll light up all the time due to modern smartphone’s persistent data connection.
sounds like a whole new line of bluetooth accessories are n lol
causing radio interference if you receive a call near an active speaker
Oh damn, this just bought a flood of memories back from nowhere. That distinct sound that would comee out of the speakers right before you got a call. I don’t think I even noticed that it doesnt happen anymore.
Nothing phones have excessive notification LEDs at the back of devices, and they are customizable.
Nothing is a OnePlus’ successor
Wait do you mean oneplus doesn’t make phones anymore?
They still do but as far as I know the company Nothing was founded by the same guy who founded OnePlus, and I think he has nothing to do with OnePlus anymore
I think it just got sort of replaced by the “always on display” as Android calls it, where the screen is “off” but still displays the system clock and any notification icons received. For me, it’s accomplished the same thing while being more specific than the LED
It’s also worth noting that most phones these days always have at least one item in the “notification” bar at some point. Like, right now I’ve got two apps taking up a slot, and Google’s weather thing up there, and that’s a normal day.
The LED would always be on.
Nah. They used to flash different colours for different events, and you could filter what created an LED event. Even with the OLED screen, leaving the notification/clock on all day drains the battery noticeably more than having it disabled. I find it better to only have that on at night when charging. Not to mention you didn’t need to look at the screen. You’d see the flashing light and know there’s something to check.
But, what they COULD do is simulate a series of LEDs properly with OLED. That should in theory take a similar amount of power (for the screen at least) as a real LED. But, I suspect driving part of the screen would require the screen controller active. I suspect the older phones with LEDs had some separate low power driver storing the most recent events from when the phone last “woke up” using minimal power for the flashing LEDs.
So, in all it genuinely is a missing feature that has no equivalent in modern phones.
Maybe older models were a lot less efficient with always on display, but I just checked for my Pixel 8 Pro and the ambient display was <1% battery usage.
Don’t think an S20+ is that old. I turned it on full time just after I posted that last comment, just on the edge of the screen. Low brightness. 3.5% of the battery use in 5 hours.
That’s not true, it didn’t work that way. You could set it for individual notifications and even have custom colors. I would have it orange for K9 emails and green for text messages and red for a missed call… it was extremely versatile and much better than screen always on which I always disable on my phones because it looks bad and is a distraction in my opinion and it uses more battery.
Those would never show up in the notification LEDs. Only temporary stuff like you’ve gotten a text would.
I am pretty sure you can exclude permanent notifications.
I use third party apps to disable permanent icons, for me it’s the alarm. I always have repeating alarms on, so the icon is pointless, I disabled it in the app settings. I’d like for a first party way to do that, but oh well
True, OLED have the always on screen, but a lot of phones (mainly low/middle range) don’t have OLED and have no LED notification :-/ I remember I found this very useful on my old zenfone/nokia (my latest cell is OLED)
I always enjoyed that feature. If memory serves, my Galaxy S4 had that and I found it useful.
Not on newer phones. Similar to the headphone jack, most phones got rid of it to expand the bezel. You do get some phones that fake one by using the display, but an actual notification LED seems to be a thing of the past.
They flash the flashlight now. I was in a meeting last week and this marketing dipshits flashlight kept flashing on and off every time his phone vibrated with a notification
This is an accessibility feature. My deaf friend uses it because he can’t hear the chimes and wants to know about notifications even if his phone is on the desk. That being said, it would be super distracting in a meeting.
That makes sense for the deaf, hasn’t thought of that. This guy isn’t deaf, just works in marketing so has to be as annoying as possible
There was a guy in the cinema recently who had this feature turned on. He didn’t even bother to turn on do not disturb after the first time and he just didn’t give a fuck that it was bothering everyone.
My classmate uses that and it’s really obnoxious.
This used to be a feature that you could filter by on GSMArena, but alas it has gone from even there.
I think very few people cared. The Nothing Phone has a feature similar to that though, where the back of the phone lights up depending on what’s happening (notification, call, etc).
My phone has a blinking white light. Pretty useless with the always-on display showing the notification icon, but it does work. I’m pretty sure the two phones I had before that had one as well, my Oneplus One had a customisable colour per app as well.
I think manufacturers could implement this by simply lighting a few pixels on the always-on display if they wanted to, but I guess there’s just not enough interest. Why brightly light a few LEDs when you can light an entire shape dimly? Add a basic clock too and you’ve got a modern AOD lock screen.
I like notification LEDs, but I don’t use them for notifications. Instead as a battery/charging indicator.
For notifications I have Mi Band. This allows me to always have my phone on silent.Fun fact about one phone I have: The Moto G5s Plus does have a notification LED, but there’s no way to use it with stock ROM. The hardware is there, but it’s not used. I am not sure what weird decision has led there. Anyway, it can be used in PixelExperience (custom ROM).
I think there were multiple Motorola phones that had the LED unused in stock ROMs, which makes me think it was a patent/legal issue, rather than an engineering decision.
That feature gave me a lot of anxiety and also was often not right. It would get stuck on even though I didn’t have any new notifications. In any case having to make sure to not get distracted by the ominous “check me now” light was not a good thing for me personally
I didn’t realize the LED was no longer ubiquitous! I rely on mine, and I take it a step further with missed notification reminder for a repeating audio tone every few minutes. I don’t like having to stare at my phone all day long looking for work messages.
The major companies stopped doing it. Samsung, Google, not sure if Apple ever had one. But it seems like there are some companies still using LEDs, which is awesome. I really miss the feature.
I actually really don’t like this feature, but I just went and checked on my S21, as well as my work S20, and both of them have a Flash notification option, which flashes the camera LED when a notification goes off. Is that what you’re talking about?
I think OP means a designated RGB-LED on the display side which flashes in user specified color when you have unread messages. My Sony Xperia active used to have one and I am missing that feature too.
The Sony Xperia 5 series has them and they are equipped with higher end parts.
Unfortunately, the Xperia 5 V no longer has a notification LED. Source.
iPhones definitely have this feature in the accessibility options still. I use it.
They don’t mean flashing the flashlight. They mean a small (often RGB) LED that’s usually next to the front camera.
It does the same thing. That’s just nitpicking.
No, not really.
One is an annoying fairly bright flash on the back of the phone and the other is a small dim LED that mainly shows information passively by shining constantly until a notification is addressed or acknowledged.
The notification LED can be seen discreetly by just glancing at your phone at any time, the flashlight on the other hand actively interrupts you and is useless if you didn’t see it when it blinked.
They serve different purposes.
