Tech Rant - iOS/iPhone Notifications

Notifications on iOS are cluttered

I’m looking at my iPhone 6 right now – on my main screen, I have red badges everywhere. 1 unread text message, 7 calendar invites, 5 new Twitter notifications, a Swarm notification a missed phone call, and over 100 unread emails. And then when I swipe down to get into notification center, I see a list of a bunch of notifications from a lot of different apps, many of which I’ve already dealt with on different devices; Swarm and YouTube are good examples. Some notifications are consistent with the red badges. Some aren’t. I have no idea. But the worst part of iOS notifications is that if the screen is on and I miss a notification, I’ll actually have no idea that I missed it. I spend a great deal of my day on calls with my clients or team members. The iPhone will usually be on speakerphone, with the screen dimly lit as I may be referencing emails on it, or doing something else on it while I’m on the call. I’m not always looking at the phone as I might be reviewing notes, looking at some documents, or looking around the room. Once I’m done with the call, I don’t get a list of all of the notifications I might have missed while I was on the call. As we all know, iOS lockscreen notifications disappear as soon as the device is unlocked. I have to hunt around to see what is it that I truly missed out on. 

Versus Android

On Android, I know what notifications I missed at all times since the top status bar gives me that information. More information is provided when I swipe the notification drawer down. No mess, no fuss. Even with hundreds of unread emails, new SMS and Hangouts messages, and various apps telling me information that I have to know, I always know what it is that I have going on that’s truly a NEW notification.

iOS7 came and went without making major changes to the OS - yes, we got increased translucency, got rid of skeumorphism, and introduced some additional features, but the core operation of iOS and its notifications remains unchanged. Hopefully, Apple looks to reinvent iOS soon in the future, with a major focus on notifications.