The Samsung Galaxy S10 and its siblings, the Galaxy S10e and Galaxy S10 Plus weren’t the first phones with a camera cutout. They weren’t even the first Samsung phones with a camera hole in the display. But they were probably the best selling phones with a camera hole in the display and they also grabbed media attention. Something else they grabbed was the attention of developers. Even Chainfire has an app for the Galaxy S10’s camera hole. It’s called Holey Light and it turns the camera hole into a notification LED. If you want to get rid of the extraneous system apps that are of no use to you, you should also consider removing bloatware on your Samsung Galaxy S10.
Holey Light takes advantage of the hole-punch camera and adds an outlined Notification LED to it. Just in case you want to hide the hole-punch on your phone’s display, here are 100 holde-punch wallpapers for the Galaxy S10 and S10+.
Holey Light (S10 LED Notifications)
The current version is not a finished product. It can be a little rough around the edges. It’s getting there though.
This app requires a LOT of permissions. If you are not comfortable with that, don’t use it. The sources are available on GitHub for anyone security-conscious to scrutinize.
[googleplay url=”https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.holeylight”]Related Apps: Plus Beat & Pixel Pulse – Best Notification LED Alternatives
The app works similar to Energy Ring which is another great app inspired by the camera hole on the Galaxy S10. It overlays a ring around the front camera cutout with animation making it look a lot cooler than a boring LED. Not that one needs a notification LED on Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10e or the Galaxy S10 Plus. These phones have features like the Ambient display and even an Always On Display should the user choose to turn these on.
Those pretty much make the notification LED seem redundant. However, there are many people who still prefer a notification LED. Always On Displays do such up some of the battery and Ambient Displays only work when you pick up the phone or you’re looking at it when a notification arrives. A notification LED, therefore, is still better and more convenient.
Holey Light is completely free, without in-app purchases, without ads, without tracking and it’s also open source.
Key Features of Holey Light
Due to some Android limitations, functionality was limited when the app launched at first. Consequently, it wasn’t a great experience. For instance, it couldn’t display the notification ring on the lockscreen because apps aren’t allowed to draw over the lockscreen on Android. It also couldn’t display the notification ring while the screen was off. That changed with recent updates as Chainfire found workarounds to those problems.
The new updates have allowed the app to support the Always On Display on the Samsung flagships. Chainfire even managed to reduce the CPU and battery usage by the app. As it stands now, Holey Light truly brings a notification LED on Galaxy S10. Some of the major changes are listed below.
- Screen off + battery enabled
- Migration from fake lockscreen to AOD-base
- Migration from application to accessibility overlay (Google frowns on this, though)
- Any notification can now be used for the LED. The ones that don’t ask for an LED show up under Colors as black by default.
- Lottie renderer has been replaced by a sprite-sheet based rendered (up to 5x CPU reduction)
- Battery saving animations added (up to 3x CPU reduction), blinking and pie-chart (decided based on full or on-tap AOD)
- Several leaks and crashes have been fixed.
That said, Holey Light is only meant for the Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10e, and the Galaxy S10 Plus. If you install it on any other device, even an unsupported Samsung device, the app will detect that and push you out.
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