Soft notifications

Soft notifications are reminders that inform the user of events that have occurred in the user's absence, or while the user was busy with an application. Text and graphics, can be used to communicate the message to the user. Soft notifications are displayed in pop-up windows in the idle state.

The user can respond to the soft notification by using the softkeys. The left softkey is used for activating a function, for example opening a message that has arrived. The right softkey is used to discard the notification without taking any further action. In touch layout, the softkeys are placed inside the pop-up component

Figure: Soft notification indicating missed calls

Soft notifications are displayed only in the idle state. If an event that causes a soft notification (for example, a missed call) occurs when an application is active, it may cause other kinds of UI events to notify the user. If the user does not react to these, the soft notification appears only after the phone is back to the idle state if the event still requires it.

The application that launched a soft notification can control it and also discard it. It is possible to use the Home/Menu key during a soft notification; in that case, the soft notification disappears, but reappears when the user returns to the idle state, unless the application responsible for the notification has discarded it.

Soft notifications can have two different appearances:

• Ungrouped soft notification: These notifications contain one piece of information each. The appearance of the notification window is the same as that of a note. The soft notification figure show earlier is an example of ungrouped soft notification.

• Grouped soft notification: Many different items of information can be combined into one soft notification where the items are displayed as a list. The user can pick up one of the items at a time and react to it. The appearance of this soft notification type is the same as the appearance of a List query (see Queries).