14 DAY TRIAL // The switch to the Infinity O display with a punch hole camera forced Samsung to give up on the LED notification light on the Galaxy S10.
And while this is terrible news for those who’ve been using the LED notifications for several years, it was originally believed that Samsung would come up with a much more innovative approach that came down to an animated light circle around the camera cutout.
As seen in several demos, the Galaxy S10 displays a grey light around the cutout when opening the front-facing camera for selfies or video calls, and many believed this feature could also double as a customizable notification light for other apps, messages, and calls.
But right now, the first Galaxy S10 units that ship to customers come without any customization feature for the light around the camera cutout, and for what it’s worth, this only shows up when launching the selfie camera exclusively. I also didn't come across any features or options to customize the camera ring light.
Third-party tweaks
By the looks of things, the S10 doesn’t use a dedicated LED around the camera to display the light, but it actually uses a part of the screen for the animation. Despite this, however, if third-party developers can access the API that calls this feature, it can very well serve as a notification light too.
While it remains to be seen if the camera cutout light can be used as a notification light and if it can be further customized with other colors, Samsung apparently wants to unlock this feature on its own, if a Samsung Care Ambassador is anything to be believed.
“The camera cutout will indeed function as the notification light. It will be automatically colored based on the notification. I, along with a couple other Ambassadors, learned this from a Samsung executive after the Unpacked event in San Francisco. There will be a software update that will enable this on or slightly before launch,” user VerbumVeritum posting in the Samsung Community forums said (emphasis is ours).
In other words, Samsung could very well unlock this feature in a software update, but for the time being, it’s better not to hold your breath for its release and take everything with a healthy dose of skepticism.
We’ve reached out to Samsung for some clarification and will post an update when it’s offered.