When talking to iPhone owners, one of the things we hear over and over again is how they don’t like the notification system. It’s intrusive, it’s big and it’s annoying. It pops up right in the middle of the screen when you’re playing a game and pauses it.
Thankfully there are developers out there who feel the same way, such as Peter Hajas. Peter has created an app called Mobile Notifier – an alternative notification system which can be installed on Jailbroken iPhones, iPod Touch and iPads. Mobile Notifier is without doubt the best notification system available for iOS, and something I hope Apple will take note of when creating the next iteration of the iPhone OS.
When receiving a notification from any App on your iPhone, Mobile Notifier displays it in a slim bar at the top of the screen rather than the big blue box that appears normally. You can then tap the notification and choose whether to open it, or tap later, which will hide the notification bar but keep the +1 icon on your app tile.
You can also double tap the Home Button to bring up a separate page, displaying all notifications (as below). Tapping each notification opens it, alternatively you can swipe across a notification and tap delete, or clear all notifications. One press of the Home Button takes you straight back to your homescreen.
Finally, Mobile Notifier will display ‘Missed Notifications’ on your lockscreen, which you can tap and view recent notifications much like the notifications page I mentioned above. These can be deleted or just ignored, which is very handy if you don’t want to unlock your phone just to find you have a spam email!
The only downside to Mobile Notifier is that it is currently only available through Cydia, which is an app store installed when you Jailbreak your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Either way, we really hope Apple have taken note of how the notifications system can be done, and maybe even include some similar features in iOS 5.
What do you think of Mobile Notifier? Do you think Apple should create something similar for future devices? We’d love to hear your thoughts so let us know via Twitter or by leaving a comment.