Notifications on your smartphone play a very important role, after all they are placed right on the lock screen to grab your attention. Depending on the type of phone you use (iPhone vs Android), you might find notifications to be annoying or useful. If implemented correctly, notifications can be very useful for accessing the right information very quickly. As someone who has used both Android and iOS devices, I have found notifications on iOS/iPhone to be a very big mess that leaves the user more frustrated and confused. In this article, we will compare notifications on Android and iOS (iPhone) as the user experience is significantly different depending on which platform you use.
iOS vs Android Notifications: The Similarities
Before we get in to the differences, let’s look at the similarities between Android and iOS in the notification department. In both Android and iOS, notifications can be accessed with a swipe down from top no matter what screen you’re on. Both platforms offer many options via settings menu to manage your notifications. However, the similarities between Android and iOS stop here as both platforms are quite different in how the user interacts with notifications.
Why iOS notifications are a mess
On an iOS device (i.e. iPhone), you can respond or see more information by swiping left over the notification and tapping View option (on iPhone 6s or later, you can deep press the notification). You can swipe right over the notification to open the app. Finally, notifications can be cleared by tapping the X option (on iPhone 6s or later, you can deep press on X and tap clear all notifications). As mentioned before, you can also manage alert styles and settings for notifications.
On iOS, Apple has designed notifications so that user doesn’t have to interact with any of them. I have notifications from home security camera system, but I can’t easily interact with them to access the information I want. The notifications are also not organized so you end up with an endless list of notifications without any order. Most importantly, when notifications are received on an iOS device, a notification box appears as a banner that blocks the top portion of your screen. The banner notification not only provides a visual distraction but it also interrupts the user by being intrusive and the only option you have is to select Temporary vs Persistent alert in the settings. If you decide to dismiss the notification in the hopes of going back to it later, good luck trying to find it in the notification drawer.
What Apple can learn from Android notifications
Unlike notifications on iOS devices, Android actually offers interactive and actionable notifications that are informative and easier to manage.
Priority Notifications
Android has settings to set importance of a notification to dictate interruption level of the notification, both visually and audibly. The higher the importance, the more interruptive the notification. The priority of notifications is set as follows:
- Urgent: Makes a sound and appears as a heads-up notification.
- High: Makes a sound.
- Medium: No sound.
- Low: No sound and does not appear in the status bar.
Expandable Notifications
On Android devices, additional content and action buttons can be accessed by revealing expanded view after dragging down on a notification.
Actionable notifications
In addition to the default action of opening an app when a notification is selected, Android (7.0 and above) users can complete an app-related task from the notification using action buttons (without opening the app itself).
Notification updates and groups
Android (7.0 and higher) avoids bombarding the users with multiple or redundant notifications when notifications are received from the same app. It can also show inbox-style notification to show conversation updates. Grouping of separate notifications collapses multiple notifications into just one notification with a summary. The user can then expand the notification to reveal the details for each individual notification.
Do Not Disturb mode
In Android 5.0 and above, Do Not Disturb mode can be enabled to silence sounds and vibration for all notifications. Unless the user specifies, notifications still appear in the drawer so that they can be accessed at a later time.
The following options are available in Do Not Disturb mode:
- Total silence: blocks all sounds and vibrations, including alarms, music, videos, and games.
- Alarms only: blocks all sounds and vibrations, except from alarms.
- Priority only: Allows the user to configure categories of notification that can interrupt (e.g. only alarms, reminders, events, calls, or messages). In addition, messages and calls can be filtered by the sender or the caller (very useful when you are expecting urgent calls or messages from someone but don’t want to be interrupted by others).
In conclusion, Apple and Android’s approach with notifications is fundamentally different. Apple tries to use one size fits all approach when dealing with notifications, which leaves a big mess behind for the user to figure out. Android on the other hand provides useful tools to manage the notifications in a meaningful way so that user has total control over the notifications. If Apple can learn the five things listed above from Android, notifications won’t be something that users would have to run away from on your iOS device.
I am officially a tech addict and enjoy providing my views on matters related to this industry. I am always interested in trying out new tech gadgets and I have owned multiple smartphones including the legendary HTC One, SGS2, Nexus 4, iPhone 4, 5S, 6S, XR, Note 9. You can ask me any tech related questions in the comment section or on twitter @hookedNav