Led?

[kevins686]

I traded up from a RAZR Maxx to a Droid Maxx this afternoon.

I notice right away that the LED that was in the top left corner of my RAZR's screen - and which I loved going all the way back to my OG Droid - are absent in the new phone. So absent an LED notification, is there a way to know when you've got a new message (text, email, Facebook, etc.) when your phone is silenced and without picking it up?

 

[donzz]

Yep, right under the clock display on the front of the phone. If you have mail, you'll see an envelope. If you have a text you get the message icon. You will see different icons there for what ever type of message you have.

 

[dashaus28]

That's what the active notifications are for. It's kinda a major selling point for the phone.

Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk

 

[FoxKat]

Yep, they're right. The new active notifications is a huge selling point. It uses a completely devoted processor core to manage that function, and can turn on individual pixels of the display to show the messages without energizing the entire display. This allows it to be very conservative with battery power and yet be even more informative than the LED.

To see if there are any notifications when the screen is black, tap firmly twice in the middle of the screen and the active notification will show on the screen. If there are items to be viewed you can grab the notification in the middle of the screen and without letting go it will give you brief previews of the notices. If you want to go right to them, slide your finger to the top and release when you are at the top.

Alternatively you can simply pick up the phone from where it was laying and it will wake to show notifications. It's better than having to press a button to unlock since it is ready to unlock based on the motion sensor detecting that it's been moved.

I absolutely love the active notifications.

 

[kevins686]

I can tell Active Notifications is the "next big thing" for Motorola, and i think it's a novel idea, but I loved the LED on my other Motorolas. Just a personal thing, I guess. The one thing that I know is going to bug me about Active Notifications is that it's apparently sensitive to movement, because when it was sitting in my car last night, it would come on every few seconds, even though I didn't have a new text, email, etc.

 

[doogald]

I can tell Active Notifications is the "next big thing" for Motorola, and i think it's a novel idea, but I loved the LED on my other Motorolas. Just a personal thing, I guess. The one thing that I know is going to bug me about Active Notifications is that it's apparently sensitive to movement, because when it was sitting in my car last night, it would come on every few seconds, even though I didn't have a new text, email, etc.

Yes it is. Even sitting still it will "breathe" occasionally to allow you to slide to unlock from that screen, or see the status of any notifications. The Maxx/Ultra (and Moto X) have a low-powered chip that is watching the accelerometer and which display the notifications, and the AMOLED display only lights the pixels it needs for the notifications, so it doesn't take as much battery as you may think. After three months with this phone I now prefer active notifications to LED.