Low power notifications are unclear and look the same
Current low power notifications
We currently have 3 low power notifications, shown for 20%, 5% and 2% battery:
For me, these notifications can blur together. It can be hard to know what is happening, and I often end up ignoring them because a) it's unclear what the precise situation is, and b) I've become desensitised to them.
There's a bunch of reasons for this:
- The notifications for 5% and 2% have the same heading. The heading for 20% isn't that different.
- They all use the same
battery-caution
icon - Instead of stating specifics, the notifications for 5% and 2% both use vague language like, "soon" and "about to". There's no specifics about what the actual battery level is or how long is remaining.
- The notifications aren't coordinated with the power icon states, which contributes to mixed, unclear messaging:
- 20% - we show a notification
- 19% - the status icon changes to show an exclamation mark
- 9% - the status icon changes to turn red
- 5% - we show a notification (no icon change)
- 2% - we show the final notification (again, no icon change)
- The scariest status icon (the red one) is shown continuously below 9%, which can last a reasonably long time, and particularly confuses the messaging in the notifications
Some obvious steps to address this:
- Give each notification a distinct heading
- Include specifics! Provide details about the power level in each notification.
- Use different icons in each of the notifications, by adjusting the levels at which the icons are shown, and using the icon for the current battery level in the notification.
Proposed low power notifications
It would be good to expose a live countdown for the critical action. This could be in the notification (not sure if that's possible), or possibly in the top bar.
In my testing the time estimate can sometimes be roughly accurate, but it can also be way off, so the design removes the time estimate from the 20% notification. I think we'd need to take steps to increase its accuracy if we were to include it.
Suggested power icon changes
Synchronising the notifications with the status icons might be achieved like this:
A more detailed set of mockups is available.