Well hello community,
I beg some patience in your reading before we get to the problems themselves, as this is, for what it’s worth, my first post altogether.
I don’t know about you but for me the expectations for the gliph matrix after the teasers and release were way past what it actually delivers in the present. And I’m talking here specifically about the essential notifications portion of the matrix. It’s true, Nothing (3) is my first nothing Phone, I’ve wanted a Nothing for a long time but needed a flagship before I could make the switch from the newly found disappointment of what OnePlus has achieved nowadays. So i can’t say I’ve interacted with the previous glyphs in order to adjust my expectations, but the idea of switching to the matrix to allow further evolution should make that pretty irrelevant if you’ll allow me to say so.
So what makes the essential glyph so disappointing?
In short it’s the lack of customization options. When I think of the glyph matrix allowing me to check my phone less and filtering through the endless notifications to what I care about more, I want it as a shelf of my most important notifications, and here, the glyph fails to deliver
My first issue is the always on glyph icon:
- Let’s say I have set a giraffe icon for messages from “John”. John sends me a message while I’m in a meeting at the office. My options are either to let the giraffe on for minutes up to hours while I’m unavailable, for me to not forget that John messaged me, or expand the notification from John on my lock screen, thus dismissing the giraffe altogether (I’ve even created a bug report in the first days thinking it was a bug that when I would reject a call but the glyph wouldn’t show it, when in fact it was the phone thinking I already knew about it) . I would like the option of that giraffe coming up for the 15 seconds that my glyph is set for and then a subtle single pixel being lit up (or maybe get playful and light up a number of pixels based on the number of people set in your essential space, that you have notifications from) telling me that I have notifications in the shelf.
- If the first bullet is implemented my toys would need to be, let’s call them “disabled”, as I would want my glyph button to let me navigate through the icons of my essential space. So I would need to either I unlock my phone to dismiss the essential shelf from the matrix, or long press the button to clear it. So basically add an extra layer on top of the toys that needs to be cleared for the toys to come back.
- At the same time, I would like to keep the option of always on for only certain rules, like for example I’m constantly away from my PC while in the office, maybe working on hardware or something, I want my teams notification to turn on my glyph and stay lit on, because those would be a prio 0 rule that overtakes my social messages. So adding priority and setting rules for priority would really make a difference.
Now the next issue is with the difficulty of making the rules, specifically adding the people. If it’s a phone number it’s real easy, so as long as they call, text or use WhatsApp glyph will work. The issue is when they use other platforms that don’t use the phone number.
- It would be really great to be able to create a person’s profile allowing you to combine phone numbers, profile tags, or other descriptions from the notification all related to the same person, thus including them in the rule at the same time instead of creating 3-4 rules for that person depending on the number of platforms.
Now these are my personal issues with the interaction of the glyph, however I’m well aware that everybody has different uses for their phone or their matrix, so i would like the matrix to be way more customizable such that everybody can make it work fitting to their needs.
Let me know your opinion on the matrix in the comments below. I don’t know if there’s a certain tag or section where people recommend changes, or if tickets should be created for each suggestion, but it would be nice if we got a section of “write to the devs” about changes or upgrades we would like to see in our phones.
That’s all folks!!!
