The Apple iPhone is just about perfect in every way, but its notification system is its Achilles’ Heel. Regardless of what you’re doing on your phone, if you receive a text message or push notification, it will pop up and remain prominently on the screen until you deal with it. Nothing is more annoying and in-your-face in the mobile OS space than the iPhone’s notification system.
However, it looks like a crafty designer just figured out an elegant way to deliver notifications without being obnoxious. The downside is that it’s just a mock-up right now, and there’s no telling whether Apple will take cues from the design in future iOS updates.
Android and webOS have brilliant notification systems. They’re mostly unobtrusive and are sitting quietly in a bar or dock until you’re ready to view and manage your notifications and messages. The mock-up for the iPhone does something similar. When a push notification is received, a small pop-up surfaces at the bottom of the phone. You have the option of viewing it immediately, or ignore it and it will disappear in five seconds. Brilliant.
The left-most page indicator at the bottom of the screen – the little dots that show you the page you’re on when you’re flipping through your screens – will turn red when you have unread notifications. Swipe to the left, and instead of seeing spotlight, you’ll see a line-up of messages and notifications. A toggle bar at the top of the screen lets you switch between notifications and spotlight.
It’s really a beautiful system that makes the current system seem antiquated and inelegant. It seems almost perfect, but I’m sure Apple could improve it a little. If not, it’d be nice to see it implemented as-is in an update so we don’t have to be bothered every single time someone replies “LOL” at a friend’s Facebook status or when spammers decide to “at reply” us on Twitter.
[Via: Talking Pengwin]