I
find that when I’m in meetings, I don’t want my phone to ring, or even buzz,
when I get an email or a text. On the other hand, I’d still like my phone to
indicate that someone tried to get hold of me. Is there some way to use the
camera’s flash LED as an indicator?
Clearly, you’re not the first to
think of this excellent idea! It’s funny, you think when you put your phone in
“silent” mode that it would be silent, but the buzz that the phone makes when
an alert occurs is clearly audible to everyone around you. This sound can be
disruptive during meetings!
To avoid the irritating buzz, on an
iPhone, select Settings, then General, and then Accessibility. Select the LED
Flash for Alerts option. You’ll also
want to ensure that you turn off the vibration, so you don’t hear that noise:
Select Settings, then Sounds, and make sure to switch off the Vibrate on Silent
option.
On an Android phone, you can set
things up similarly. Go to Settings, then Accessibility, and find the Flash
Notification option. Again, you’ll want to turn off the vibration, so that you
don’t hear the sound of the vibration motor.
Note that setting up the LED
notification only causes the LED to flash once. Things work differently on
Android phones (and you’ll need to look up for your particular phone how to do
this), but for an iPhone, for each application for which you get notifications,
you can indicate how many times you want the alert repeated. For example, you
could go to Settings, then Notifications, then Messages, and find the Repeat
Alerts option. Set that to indicate the number of times you want the phone to
wait two minutes, and blink the LED (or whatever notification you have
selected) again.
Android:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-eo7cpFwBY
iPhone:
http://www.imore.com/how-use-led-flash-your-iphone-notification-alerts