iOS Notification Concept Based on the iPad 2 Smart Cover

It’s no secret that Apple’s system for notifications in iOS sucks. Many other mobile operating systems, like Google’s Android, use a more unobtrusive method for delivering new notifications.

Apple is definitely working on making the notification system in iOS better, but until then, we can only gawk at interesting concepts of what a complete iOS notification redesign would like like. The latest and greatest concept uses the iPad 2’s new Smart Cover…

The current method of delivering notifications in iOS is not conducive to the modern mindset of multitasking. Especially in the mobile sphere, people want to be able to do as much as possible in the shortest amount of time.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at the car next to you on the highway and see the woman talking on her iPhone while eating a burrito and driving with her knee.

If you want a notification system to be streamlined, you try to design it so that it gets the user’s attention, but also stays comfortably out of the way. Notifications in iOS don’t work that way. When a notification pops up, it demands immediate and total attention from the user (even if that “total attention” is tapping the cancel button).

What if notifications worked differently on the iPhone? What if Apple introduced a more customizable and discreet system?

Until they do, designers and develepors will continue to come up with ideas on how it could be done. Robin, from the popular App Store development team at Tapmates, has come up with a new idea for iOS notifications that incorporates the iPad 2’s new Smart Cover accessory.

If you didn’t understand what you just saw, make sure to watch it again and not blink. The concept is that subtly wonderful. When slightly pulled back, the Smart Cover reveals a line of apps that have unseen notifications. Pretty cool, huh?

While this concept looks great in a demo video, it doesn’t really seem that appropriate for the iPhone. Since Robin’s idea relies so heavily on the Smart Cover, it simply wouldn’t work on an iDevice that didn’t have a similar covering.

Apple would be hard pressed to design a functional Smart Cover for the next iPhone. A foldable screen protector on a bigger device like the iPad makes sense, but it doesn’t translate well to a handheld device like the iPhone.

If you jailbreak, you’ve got several replacement options for the current iOS notification system (like the newly released MobileNotifier).

What do you think about this iOS notification concept? If you have thoughts as to how a similar idea could be implemented on the iPhone, share it with us in the comments!

[via Macgasm]