ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

["Bill R. WASHBURN" <dygituljunky@xxxxxxxxx>]

On a desktop interface, the management of alert sounds has occurred within
the program providing the alert because no central alter management system
has traditionally existed. Even on a desktop device, this is less than
ideal.

While this same management setup works OK on a phone, Android has shown
that it ends up being clunky and somewhat inflexible.

One of the things that the BlackBerry platform got right was central alert
management (which they do in the settings app). Their notification
management is superior to Android's for several reasons:
- the user has the ability to create profiles or use the default profiles,
- all programs that will make notifications must register with the
notification system thereby ensuring that the notifications can be managed
(not overridden as with alarms on an Android),
- the user can quickly scroll through the notification settings when
configuring a notification profile to make sure that the settings for each
notification source is correctly configured,
- the user has more options for notification schemes than just noise,
vibrate, and silent.

My real-life usage scenario is this: I have to attend court more often than
the average user. To keep the judge from taking my phone, I want to make
absolutely certain that the phone won't make a peep. With my BB, I could
quickly scroll to the "Court" profile and even the highest priority alerts
would be limited to a very short vibration (the flaw being, if I remember
correctly, that alarms could still trigger sounds despite the profile
selection and even power on the device so I pulled the battery, anyway).

With my Android, I have such a lack of confidence in programs paying
attention to the alert and sound settings that I power down the device and
pull the battery for safety.

Here's what I would like to see in a notification management system:
- central management,
- notification profiles with program by program settings,
- user-definable overrides by contact for certain alerts (certain family
members should always be able to reach me, my job mandates that they always
be able to reach me),
- methods for selecting profiles (NFC stickers, 2D bar codes, or other
wiz-bang methods),
- an option to require extra steps to exit certain profiles (to prevent my
pocket from taking the phone out of the "Court" profile).

Thanks,

Bill R. WASHBURN