The beauty of Android notifications is that the pull down notification bar is visible in almost all applications, so wherever you are, you can just pull down the menu and switch to the notifying application.

Imagine you’re driving and using a GPS app, a notification appears but you are busy so after 5 seconds it vanishes, Hickman’s method requires you push “Home” button, go back to the springboard and slide probably several pages to check notifications, with Android you can just pull down the status bar while being in the GSP application and either read the notification or directly switch to the notifying application without having to go to the homescreen.

Android notification is much better, in fact it’s the best notification implementation and the feature I like the most about Android.

Also, in its ‘dormant’ state (i.e., iPhone on table, screen locked or not visible due to inactivity) I also would like it if the small white box inside the home-key gently “pulsated” a color or light so that you can see you have some sort of notification/email etc. without having to pick up phone (sort of like the red light ob BB, but less obnoxious).

The white box could bel lit by LEDs, red for email, green for txt, purple for 3rd party apps, etc. and the colors could rotate if you have more than one type of notification