LED notifications do not work

[Linn]

Saving energy? Are you having problems with your battery? Mine was charged 12 hours ago and is currently at 75%. It is predicted to last for another 31 hours. Am I missing something?

Also, I get the need not to disturb others, however, when you’re saying something might require an immediate response, you’re already taking your phone out and using it, so I guess you’re in a situation where that is okay anyway.

Especially vibration seems neither energy consuming nor disturbing to others, why is it not a good alternative?

I’m still going to stick to sound and vibration off and people having to accept that I am not available to them 24/7. When at home I might switch the sound on when I expect an important call.

[HolosericaCaligo]

@Linn

Especially vibration seems neither energy consuming nor disturbing to others, why is it not a good alternative?

the little, but important difference is: the LED light-notification is flashing until you see the notifications. Imagine the same behavior with vibration
I totally understand the need of LED-notifications: while working in loud areas - e.g as a carpenter - or even at home while listening to music: I don’t want to check my FP all the time for new notifications.

[Linn]

Haha I think a problem I might be having is responding to one person’s needs, and then having a reply from someone with other reasons for wanting LED.

So someone said they wanted to know immediately whether they had a message because it would be important to respond immediately, and I was responding to that. That would exclude the option of the phone vibrating for a long time since the person was already primed to receive something and respond immediately.

So summarising my opinion, I would say notifications are quite useful, but I think it’s pushing it to say one couldn’t live without them and there are alternatives, which may have to be different according to your personal needs.

Now, feel free to carry on bewailing the absence of the LED notifications, I’ll leave you to it as this is quite clearly not my support group

[ArtureLeCoiffeur]

I lived the major part of my life without a mobile phone. Even more without a smartphone. And even more than that without a LED notification. I could still live with a mobile phone, without “smart”, without a notification LED. The point is that I don’t want to. I’ve become used to that state of the art.

Ah, forgot this: “Waily-Waily!”

[fp3user9]

If i understood correctly:
a) the FP3 hat only a LED “notification” just to inform about the charging state of the battery:
red color low 0-x% charge and before y% will be reached and
green one y-100% is reached
No LED light or no color the battery charge is normal.
Right?
b) It could be good to have another type of LED “notifications”, right?
c) Is there a place where the “suggested or requested” features can be registered
and follow up?

Thank you.

[AnotherElk]

@fp3user9

c) Is there a place where the “suggested or requested” features can be registered
and follow up?

Improving the software of FP3

This thread should contain mainly possible improvements that could be come with software updates to the phone. There is also a wish list where the fancy stuff could find space. This is a wiki, so feel free to add your points here in one of the two categories. For clarity reasons please add only key points, please. Probably possible improvements: Hardware implementation Making “hardware button actions” selection available in settings menu, such as “long press power button for torch light” …

[fp3user9]

Very good, thanks a lot!

[Dosenheini]

Why do you assume I want to react immediately? I just want to know if something is there without having to turn on the display. Nice that your battery lasts so long, with the small LED it would last even longer.

[Linn]

@Dosenheini

Why do you assume I want to react immediately?

I did not assume that at all. Like I said, the confusion arises when I respond to someone, in this case HaukeFP3, taking his situation into account, and then get told what a bad idea it is because someone else’s situation is different. I already explained this in my previous post.

[tjeb]

Any way to +1 a suggestion there? I want to use my LED for notifications again too. I consider this quite a regression from older models.

[AnotherElk]

@tjeb

Any way to +1 a suggestion there?

This would perhaps be convenient, but it would not be relevant in any way other than demonstrating your support for it to this forum, which is a community of mainly users, not the company.

If you really, meaningfully want to express your wish to Fairphone to get this feature, then currently there’s no way around telling Fairphone directly …

@Monica.Ciovica

for the time being we are monitoring and quantifying any the issues that are reported via the customer support form/calls.

@Monica.Ciovica

I encourage all to contact customer support with this information.

So, contact support: https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us.

[QuiaAbsurdum]

Thanks, AnotherElk! I can’t believe they didn’t make a feature/bug out of this one yet (that I have been able to find at least). I contacted the helpdesk to ask about getting this working. Let’s hope it’ll be implemented soonish!

[QuiaAbsurdum]

Thank you, I contacted customer support. It’s easy at https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/requests/new (have your IMEI number and ordernumber at hand for this)

[QuiaAbsurdum]

Thanks for an informative reply

[fyrkrans]

@fp3user9

a) the FP3 hat only a LED “notification” just to inform about the charging state of the battery:
red color low 0-x% charge and before y% will be reached and
green one y-100% is reached

y is 89 or 90 from what I’ve seen btw. Also it seems to me that that LED emits yellow light below y%. Maybe it’s really red if the battery is very low, but IIRC my battery has never dropped below 35% so far so I can’t really say anything about that.
__
Generally speaking I don’t care too much about the notification LED–FM radio for instance would be much more important to me–it would be nice to have however. So let’s hope for the best.

[lklaus]

Right now I’m quite happy with my Tasker profile. As it’s unaware of the led usage while charging I’m doing it this way:

echo 31 > /sys/class/leds/green/brightness; 
echo switch0_trigger >/sys/class/leds/green/trigger;
echo 1 >/sys/class/leds/green/breath

Switching it off is a 0 into brightness.

[JeroenH]

There is another alternative: use a smartwatch, set up which notifications get forwarded, and then put vibration on during on hours.

I have my smartphone almost always on DND, and I still hear calls from the vibration motor alone. If I was deaf, I’d probably use the vibration motor more, or the above mentioned smartwatch solution. Remember, there’s more ways to vibrations. I came across one innovation where the vibration motor was on the arm, and different parts meant different things.

[basxto]

If the notification LED is incredibly important to you and you are willing to tinker around: it works for me on ArrowOS GSI. Telegram makes it blink blue.
This also indicates that everything is right with the drivers and the kernel, fairphone only has to fix their android.

[Dosenheini]

Does ArrowOS contain google apps?

Edit: Ok, I see there is a vanilla version: https://blog.arrowos.net/posts/inlining-minimal-gapps

[basxto]

No, it is not included in the GSI based on Anrdoid 9. It has the january updates and was the GSI with the most recent security patches, I could find.
Open GAPPS should work as far as I read: https://www.androidweblog.com/open-gapps-google-apps-custom-roms#How_to_Install_Flash_Open_GApps
But I never installed it, because I personally don’t connect my phones with google.