Does your Android device lack a notification light? Try the NoLed app

With all the advancements in mobile technology it still comes as a huge surprise when a smartphone manufacturer neglects to add a notification light to their device. There are not a whole bunch of phones that are plagued with this dilema but for the ones that are, it’s known to be a pain in the arse.

For some reason Samsung has decided to crank out a few popular mobile devices and at my dismay, they are sans notification LED. I , like many others, own a Samsung device and hate not knowing that I have a message waiting for me unless I activate the screen and check for myself. Sounds like an easy task but when you find yourself checking for messages all day long it gets old real fast.

XDA member, MADMACK, has come up with a solution by using the phone’s display as a notification light. When you receive a message (or anything that you want a notification for) your screen will activate flashing different color dots or icons based on the type of message received. The dots/icons are customizable allowing the user to create different notifications for each type of reminder making it easy, for example, to differentiate between email and text messages. There are many ways to tweak this app from battery conservation to delayed notification, NoLed  gives more options than most factory notification lights.

With over 10,000 downloads from the Android Market and an average rating of 4.4 stars, MADMACK seems to have come up with an acceptable solution for not having a notification light. I have been using it since I got the Samsung Charge and I highly recommend checking it out for yourself.

Join us after the break for more screenshots, download links, and a NoLed explanation from the creator himself.

The application does the following:
1. When your phone receives a notification, it switches the screen on and displays a notification. The notification bounces around every 3 seconds (changeable via an option). This will guarantee using different LEDs so that the same ones won’t be burned out.
2. You can customize whether to have a dot or an icon for each type of supported notification. Users may also customize the colors of these icons/dots.
3. NoLED will work with SMS/MMS, Gtalk, Gmail, Missed calls, Voicemail, Calendar and K-9 (email client) without any additional permissions. Any other 3rd party software (e.g. Whatsapp, Email app, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail) will need to be checked under Monitored Apps and will require granting Accessibility rights to NoLED.
4. The app runs as a service, after installing, you have two ways to activate the app. (a) by restarting. (b) by loading the widget into your home screen and clicking on it.
5. To get rid of the notification screen, you may use the home or the back key. You can enable dismissal via more keys in the Miscellaneous submenu. Once your notifications are dismissed, all notifications disappear and will not come back up.

You can download NoLed from the Android Market . Wether you love it or hate it, be sure to let us know what you think!