The Biggest Remaining Blind Spot in iPhone 4

Image courtesy Juanjo Alvarez

A variety of circumstances, all of them terribly uninteresting, have prevented me from commenting on the recent introduction of iPhone OS 4 hot on the heels of the iPad launch. Since I’ve missed the window, I’ll keep the big picture thinking short: I think Apple has done exactly what it needs to maintain its lead in mobile operating systems. I wish I had it now. I will be annoyed if paid apps get over-run with iAds, but I don’t think such paid apps will sell well enough to survive.

But there’s a lot more to discuss in the details, and here, I have one big quibble with iPhone OS 4 – and it’s also a strength of WebOS and Android. Why haven’t notifications been fixed yet? If you own an iPhone, you know exactly what I mean. As you browse the web, or play a game, or even compose an e-mail, a blue box with white text pops up in the middle of the screen, letting you know about an imminent appointment, an incoming text message, a bill due through Mint.com, or even a Facebook friend request from your high school nemesis.

All of these notifications have exactly the same level of priority (you can manage them manually, but I really shouldn’t have to let my phone know that I care less about a new comment on one of my Facebook threads than I do about a new text), all of them are capable of pulling you out of your current mode of activity, and none of them – not one – is capable of returning you to your prior state. They lack a back button, and it’s really obnoxious.

Now, app switching in iPhone OS 4 will improve this experience, without any question. Instead of having to hit the home button and scan or swipe through your apps collection to find your previous activity, you’ll simply double-tap to bring up the multi-tasking interface and then switch to whatever you were doing previously. But that’s still more steps than are warranted by reading and replying to a text in the middle of watching a TV show ought to.

Moreover, none of the notifications in the iPhone OS aggregate into a list. If another notification comes in before you get to the previous one, you’ve missed it, period. That can be pretty annoying if you leave your phone on your desk for an hour or two during a particularly busy period.

This is most frustrating, because both WebOS and even Android 1.0 have great fixes for this. Instead of the persistent popover, an LED blinks to let you know that you have unread notifications, and a simple swipe down from the top of the screen pulls down a panel that aggregates all notices into a single place. And one button press dismisses the panel and returns you to doing exactly what you were before.

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Apple is (in)famous for waiting until they have exactly the right solution before it will implement any solution at all (iPhone Copy and Paste being the most-discussed example). I absolutely believe in the creativity of Apple’s software team to come up with something even better than the Android Notifications Pane and the WebOS switcher. But right now, the iPhone OS is noticeably inferior to Android and WebOS on this one front, and it’s high time to fix it.

In short, a tip of the hat for iPhone OS 4 as a whole and a wag of the finger for leaving notifications as they have been.

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