nexus s bln

The Nexus S is a fantastic device, but users found themselves often missing the blinking notifications found on the Nexus One. Rest assured Nexus S owners, because our friends over at XDA have brought Backlight Notifications to your device thanks to a custom kernel. Please find a video of the notifications after the break.

This is amazing news and a testament to how hardworking the development community is. For the download, head over to XDA. Note: There are some users reporting that they have experienced issues with the kernel, so follow the thread and whether it's working or not, give feedback to the developer.  [XDA] [XDA thread]

 YouTube link for mobile viewing


Reader comments

Nexus S receives BLN notifications thanks to custom kernel


I thought this was already built in since the Motorola Charm does it. Wow, so odd that there is no sign of notifications until now. Are all Samsung phones like this too, is that why the Nexus S doesn't have it?

Can we get this for the Optimus phones, too? I've got an Optimus S, and it has the same buttons, that could be used for notifications, but aren't. Would be awesome to get this fix to use the button lights as notifications (preferably in an app that doesn't require root).

All it needs is for someone to hack it into the kernel, so maybe if other Optimus S owners want it, or a dev just feels like doing it for himself, it can certainly get done.

Does it do it via some sort of vendor-intended function, or is it a hack? This has existed a long time for the Galaxy S phones, but never worked quite right (terrible battery life, bad performance while on call, and to top it all off the control feature was part of a "premium" app that they wanted money for.) What a nightmare! I hope they can manage to do it a little better on the Nexus S.

Can this work for the HTC Incredible 2? While it does have notifications, they suck! You can't see them while charging and they only stay lit for 5 minutes.