The nothing phone has led glyph indicators on the back.
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five
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When you have questions like this, the answer is almost always money.
For this particular question, it is money - the cost of the LEDs (which is of course minimal, but multiplied by millions of phones), but also manufacturing (need to have a hole in the case to let the LED shine though which can let water ingress into phone). To make those holes water tight would add more cost so instead they decided to use the screen itself as the notification method. I think Motorola's implementation of this was the best - they had their always on display to show notifications and a single tap would let you see what the message was even if the phone was locked.
Why did LED notification lights silently got removed from phone?
What's the normal sound of removing feature from the phone?
On more serious note, this is why I have smart watch.
What's the normal sound of removing feature from the phone?
People bitching and complaining about it being removed.
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My phone still has the LED but I turned off the feature long ago including the battery low and charge indicators. More annoying than useful.
I hate the LED and I'm so glad my current phone doesn't have it. It's especially the charging indicator that bothers me because it's so bright at night
what the hell are you talking about
For just a fraction of a second I considered showing you, by taking a screen shot... 🤦 I'm my defence, I'm suppressed to be asleep now.
Many phones used to have - some still have - a separate LED facing you that could light up to notify you of, uh, notifications. The first generation android phones just had green LEDs, eventually they all supported colour as well. Some OS'es or apps enabled you to set up per-app colour, blink/fade, and pattern configurations. Super neat, I was a huge fan.
On most modern phones [such apps] (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rageconsulting.android.lightflow) rarely work anymore, but on my OnePlus 5 I still have different colours for different notifications.
thanks for explanation
if this feature got rare around 2010 or so, then i had no way of ever seeing such a phone in the wild