PROOF the Apple iPhone 6 rumor mill hype-gasm has reached its logical conclusion As Apple reveals a new iPhone around about this time of the year, speculation on a refreshed smartphone is rife. Today, the rumor mill hit a new low – or high depending on your level of fandom. A set of "leaked" "images" suggests the next iPhone will sport a translucent Apple logo on the back of its case, which will light up …
Yes, but theirs is APPLE shaped and just indicates something happened, turn me on and see.
Better than nothing and, of course, virtually ubiquitous in other, lesser, phones.
Sadly, I only have a low-power-usage, proper notification of different events even-when-the-screen-is-off system.
Perhaps if I save up...?
Will the notification light be similar to early Android where it could flash in a vast array of colours for different notifications or will it be the single, dual or tri-colour that most manufacturers seem to use now? This is the one thing that has really bothered me about nearly all Android manufacturers. The ability to customise and pick a notification colour allowed me glance at my phone and immediately know what was waiting. Are multi-colour LEDs that expensive? I'm counting 10+ as multi-colour here.
Not more expensive: it's just an RGB LED. Depending on how you control it depends on how many colours you get.
Plain GPIOs? You'll get 8 "colours": Black (off), Blue, Green, Cyan, Red, Magenta, Yellow, White.
PWM? You get a very large selection of colours, depending on the resolution of the PWM module. The PWM output appears "analogue" if fast enough to the human eye, and 8-bits resolution is sufficient to fool most people.
Where it becomes more complex is in the software: the Linux kernel leds_class would represent that RGB LED as 3 separate LEDs as a virtual directories under '/sys/class/leds'. Each directory would contain a file called 'brightness' which you adjust between 0 and the contents of a second file, 'max_brightness'. Or, you'd write to the file named 'trigger' to make it flash according to some event.
As for cost, it's maybe 10c extra, and the engineering time, maybe an hour. In this world of trying to drive costs down and big volumes, these niceties are usually the first to be culled.
"The ability to customise and pick a notification colour allowed me glance at my phone and immediately know what was waiting."
Well, that would be nice I guess.
Even better would not being a slave to my phone.
There was a time when people lived quite happily without mobile phones that constantly nagged them for their attention. Hard to believe I know.
Instead of putting a simple LED in the top corner of the front screen somewhere that isn't visible when it's not lit up Apple instead are going to go with a flashing logo on the back?
So what are the users going to do? Look like idiots when they take their phone out of their pocket and look at the back of the device instead of simply illuminating the lock screen then switching it off again.
I know we have Gorilla glass and whatever scratch proof tech and I've seen videos doing the rounds where someone is testing a 'iPhone 6' front screen by scratching it with sandpaper, but even with my galaxy S4 I still feel uncomfortable placing the phone screen down incase it scratches. I'm happy to place the back on any surface because lets face it who looks at the back?... This is a stupid idea that just smacks of apple vanity and I say that as someone considering the new iPhone for my next phone not as a rabid Frandroid
If the phone is kept face up you don't need a notification light, because the screen turns on with the notification already. I guess this is intended for those who keep their phone face down, though I imagine the camera flash at 1/10th normal brightness could serve equally well as a notification in this case.
This is probably something someone saw in an Apple patent a couple years ago and decided they've had sufficient time to design it into a product. Thing is, companies file patents all the time that never see the light of day in actual products...
"Instead of putting a simple LED in the top corner of the front screen somewhere that isn't visible when it's not lit up Apple instead are going to go with a flashing logo on the back?"
Not only that but they will have to continue making cases (like Otterbox) that have a hole in the back to show the Apple logo... making them basically useless.
Its nothing to do with message notifications. Its to more clearly inform the world how old your phone is:
"A phone model's age is revealed by it's Apple crystal embedded in the back of their iPhone that changes color every seven months, yellow (age 0-6), then blue (age 7-13), then red (age 14-20), then blinks red and black on Lastday, and finally turns black at 21."
Those whose phone shows a yellow logo will be able to more easily show off to the world that they have the latest phone. Blue should be seen as a sign that the user should start planning their next phone purchase. Red will be a cause for embarasment that the phone is so old. Black is to minimize the logo's visibility, anyone with such a phone shows a lack of commitment and they should be spurned just the same as those with other phones.
None of this peer pressure inducement is required, Apple's technique is to ensure that successive* iOS upgrades make your phone run so badly that you buy a new one.
The risk is the new one isn't made by Apple, but the other manufacturers seem to skipped the UI course at college so at the moment that risk is still tragically low.
* mandatory of course, because features and apps slowly break and "require" the latest version.
I speak as a rabid iPhone fanboi.
So when I leave my phone face down on the night stand to stop any lighting up disturbing my partner or I they resort to making the back light up so the whole room is still illuminated.
For a company that thought the sun shone out of its leaders arse they've finally eulogised him in his product...
I think a lot of people are missing the point on this and are too happy to bash apple.
Currently in you Accessibility settings you can have the flash go off when you receive a message and the like. As the flash is a little harsh it can sometimes be obtrusive, so maybe a pulsing apple is a good addition. Same function, just gentler.
Hmm no tell me, does your android / winphone or blackberry do that?
Blackberry were arguably the first to have them built into the phone (you could also get those flashing dangely things that worked off the phone signal pickup back in the days of dumb phones) and Android phones like the Moto G have it too. I don't think any winphones have it yet, well at least the nokia range don't. Though this really doesn't bother me with my 520!
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