Two things from Samsung I love. Doable with Graphene?

possiblegrapheneosuser

Every person has their favorite features, or things that they find a priority in a phone.

Two things Samsung has available that distinguish it (for me) from other brands are these:

Always-on display has an enablement option of "For New Notifications", meaning it is off unless I get an unread notification. This is the closest thing to the "Notification LED" from the olden days of Android phones, where a cursory, no-contact glance at the phone from afar was enough to see if a message is waiting. Does GrapheneOS have this option?
Colored notifications on screen: Bright "moving" lights along the border of the screen when receiving notifications, which are color coded based on application. I doubt this is available, but might as well ask.

For both of these features, I have a question for any AOSP/Graphene devs: Are these the kind of things that could be feasibly developed into Graphene? Or would it architecturally be difficult?

raccoondad

possiblegrapheneosuser GOS looks and acts (user side wise) mostly like standard vanilla AOSP, not anything fancy

Its benefits are security and privacy based

ezlover

Not a dev but I seriously doubt that these (mostly) aesthetic features will ever be included. Especially the notification border lights. GOS is a "security first" endeavour and as such, it's safe to assume that these type of additions are not priorities.

Meanwhile, Samsung are a company who bloat their phones more and more with each model release, it seems. Apps such as Meta/Facebook and Mobile Sevices Manager are uninstallable. The latter of these has the sole purpose of...wait for it.....automatically installing more apps in the background.

I only mention this because I think there might be some irony somwhere here. Samsung do have some nice features, though. I love the Clipboard Edge Panel and I also low-key like the aforementioned animated, color Edge Panel Alerts "light show". But don't tell anyone...just make sure to look at me when my phone rings and I Tik-Tok dance to my One Direction ringtone.

;)

edit/add: Just to be clear, I'm just kidding with the snarky 1D comment at the end there. And between my kids and I, we have multiple Samsungs, ourselves.

user

There are plenty of apps that can offer you many options for display notifications similar to Samsung's and more. No need to be integrated at the OS level.

spiral

user

Is there an app that can alter the Always-On Display behavior as OP presented in point number one?

possiblegrapheneosuser

user Eh, both of these things exist at the OS settings level, not a per-app configuration. I honestly don't know whether standard apps can alter system-wide features like notification lights or AOD settings, but it'd probably be easier to add the features if they could.

taishan

I love the Always-on Display on Notification, too. It would be very good if it could be implemented in GrapheneOS.

I often let my phone lying on a commode and its very good to instantly see if i got a message. A LED would be even better but Always-on Display is also okay.

I am missing this feature that much that currently i am thinking about to get shot of my Pixel and buy a Samsung again.

missing-root

I think if you care more about blinking (and distracting) notifications than a secure and private Phone, GrapheneOS will never please you.

To say it friendly.

If I was unfriendly I would say you dont have a sense of priorities.

Just use vibrations on messages, so you will know you got one. Displaying anything on the lockscreen defeats its purpose in my opinion.

But "display on with notifications" is available and as far as I know even default.

notification settings: glow on notifications
Privacy: show messages on lockscreen (apps set the "messages are sensitive" themselves)
Display-Lockscreen: activate display on messages

taishan

missing-root I think if you care more about blinking (and distracting) notifications than a secure and private Phone, GrapheneOS will never please you.

You did not understand me. I just want to see if there is a message when i want to take a look at the phone. I dont want it blinking and distracting on every message. If i would to have that i could enable vibrations (like you said) or even a ringtone.

Edit: To say it again in other words. I want something that works like a LED.

other8026

missing-root If I was unfriendly I would say you dont have a sense of priorities.

If you know that it's unfriendly to say so, then why say it at all?

Also, keep in mind that different members of the community might want different things from their phones. Everyone can benefit from security and privacy improvements in GrapheneOS.

missing-root

Did you have a look at "flash notifications"?

other8026

I understand your point. But saying "I will use Samsung because my phone doesnt blink" is a sign that the person is not valuing the work, or an exaggeration that I dont understand.

Samsung is so many world apart GrapheneOS in privacy, that this makes no sense.

taishan

I do not want too much from my phone. Just want to make calls, messages and some important apps. I care about privacy and do not want to upload my photos into cloud or something like that but there are limits in broken functionality or broken usability. For example: i do not care if the privacy-friendly weather app has an ugly interface as long as it just shows me accurate weather data. A LED or an replacement of that is something i count as basic functionality which just has to work.

I even think Google removed LED without replacement even because it does not disturb the user. They want to get your attention. They want you to take the phone and giving attention to things Google presents to you. They want you to download much apps and watch a lot of advertising which is the thing Google makes money with. And they want your data with the reason that the advertiser pay more money to Google for presenting their ads to you.

taishan

missing-root The difference between Samsung and GrapheneOS is not big enough to miss a feature that is handy that very much. All other missing features are okay, but this is not okay. What makes no sense would be to use a phone with that pain just to reduce the amount of data sent to the internet a little bit. I gave it a try but without that killer-feature it is not a phone i want to use every day.

missing-root

The difference between Samsung and GrapheneOS is not big enough

That is a veeery subjective opinion. That was a Samsung Galaxy S9, no idea how bad they are now. Worst amount of crap ever seen, Huawei & Xiaomi are nothing in comparison.

missing-root

It is a core OS, which could be used by other projects like /e/ that are more on the visual side.