If I receive a text message, an email, Facebook message or any other kind of notification, the iPhone switches on for a couple of seconds and displays a brief notification telling you what just happened. I like to keep it on the desk beside me when I am working and it regularly dings, switches on and lets me know of a new message, update or whatever. It then switches off again.
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I wish the Samsung Galaxy S4 did that. Well, it can if you install the NiLS Notification Lock Screen app. It is in the Google Play store and it is free.
It is a small download of just 577K, although when it is running my phone reports that it uses 41MB of memory (it's a slight irritation and I'm sure it could have a lighter footprint).
Wake an Android 4.2.2 device and swipe right across the top of the screen and a plus panel appears. Tapping this enables you to add lock screen widgets. These are like regular widgets, but they appear on the lock screen before you've even swiped to unlock the device. Tap the plus and you can add the NiLS widget.
NiLS is confgured in settings where it installs an accessibility service. There is a clock and notifications. Initially when the phone or tablet is woken up NiLS displays a brief summary of notifications. Press, hold and then drag down to display an expanded version.
Both the compact and expanded notifications can be configured and you can choose the text colour, background colour and background transparency. The number of lines for a notification can be set too.
In some ways it is better than the iPhone because instead of waking up and showing one notification, it shows them all in a compact list. However, I would prefer the expanded list to be the default or to show just the most recent notifications. Sometimes I find the compact list too brief and the expanded list too long. It is still a great app though and the phone is better with it than without it.
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