ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Bruno Girin <brunogirin@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 26/02/13 14:26, Octavian Damiean wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 26, 2013 2:57 PM, "Bill R. WASHBURN" <dygituljunky@xxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:dygituljunky@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
>
> I like the idea of profiles and think that it would be nice to have.
>
> Regarding Android. If you put your phone into silent mode no alert
> will be audible. That's systemwide.
>

A very nice implementation that actually fits the Ubuntu design is the
one on the Nokia N9: you pull down the top menu and it presents you with
3 simple options: silent, beep, ringing; both silent and beep are single
option controls while the ringing one is actually a slider so you can
set the volume at the same time as selecting the ringing profile. The
other nice thing about that implementation is that the ringing profile
is separate from the generic volume profile so you can still have volume
quite high for sound in apps while the phone is set to silent when
ringing (and that includes all alerts).

Having the ability to set up custom profiles would also give you the
ability to do that. The downside would be that it would make the UI to
select the correct profile more complicated as it would have to take
into account the number of profiles.

Bruno