The notifications on iPhone are really poor compared to Android or Blackberry.
First of all, the list of default sounds are all so horrible! They irritate my ears. Why not include some soft and pleasing sounds as well as the loud and harsh ones?
On my android I used the vibrate function to discretely notify me of an incoming message. On iPhone the vibration is so loud that it can be heard by the entire room, it's as loud as the notifications themselves - what's the point in that?
Then there's a central list of notifications settings. But lots of apps (even Apple's built-in apps) don't allow you to configure the notification sound from that list, e.g.:
- Built-in clock's Timer function. Not in the notifications list, only configurable in-app, and limited to a set of loud, harsh sounds. "Buy More Tones"...? Yeah, right. Why can't I choose my own sounds for this?
- Built-in clock's Alarm function. Again, only configurable in-app. At least here I can "Pick a song" and use any mp3 I can come up with. But no vibrations possible.
- WhatsApp - only has a switch to turn sounds on/off. Notifications are in the app, and severely limited to one of seven loud, irritating sounds that are impossible for me to use at work. And there is no custom vibration possible. Okay, maybe this one's not Apple's fault, but I was perfectly happy with notification in the Android version of this app.
Why is it important that all apps appear in the notifications list? Simply because any improvements to the central notification functionality will then be usable with those apps. If it's not in the list, it will be left behind with a lame in-app out-of-date feature-less custom notification system.
In the accessibility settings you can set the LED to flash when a message comes in, but it only flashes once! Not very useful - what if you miss it? On Blackberry you can make it keep flashing until you see the message.
In the Sounds section of iPhone settings, there's "Sounds and Vibration Patterns". An excellent feature where I can tap the screen to design a vibration pattern pleasing to me, such as a vibration hard enough to be felt by me, but soft enough so no-one can hear it. Unfortunately there are some fatal flaws in the feature:
(1) It only lists Apple's built-in apps, plus Twitter and Facebook (i.e. no WhatsApp). Why isn't this feature connected to the central notifications list?
(2) It's damn difficult to tap in the right way to produce the vibration I want. I need to be able to design the vibration using numbers like some apps on other platforms: On for 100ms, off for 1000s, on for 100ms, etc.
These are killer features for me and ultimately they will prevent me from using the iPhone for any length of time. I'm sure things will be
slightly better with iOS7, but I'm sure Apple's built-in apps will still fail to integrate consistently with any new central notification features.
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