ZTE Axon 7 users can get rid of the notification bell using Floatify
The ZTE Axon 7 is a pretty good effort at a flagship phone for under $400, but there are some annoying quirks that you won’t find on stock devices like Nexus and Pixel. The most annoying is a notification bell that ZTE implemented on the lock screen that hides notifications until you tap it. That may seem like nothing, but it’s an extra action you have to perform to see your notifications, which means it gets annoying quick.
To ZTE’s credit, they’ve posted on the community forums to let their users know an update is on the way that makes the notification bell an optional part of the lock screen. However, if you’re like me and you can’t wait, there’s an app that can help you. Enter Floatify.
Floatify is designed to give you heads up notifications, but it works really well with ZTE’s official lock screen. You’ll have to disable notifications on the stock lock screen to let Floatify handle them all, but that’s not a big issue when Floatify does what ZTE’s lock screen doesn’t.
The free version has some caveats. First, it’ll only show one notification at a time on the screen. If you want to see them all in list mode, you’ll need to upgrade to the pro version for $1.49. If you don’t want to do that I’d wait for the OTA update that’s making the notification bell optional.
However, if you want Android N style notifications and more it’s definitely worth it to be rid of the annoying feature. Kudos to ZTE for listening to its community, but the phone has been available for a little over six months now and it’s not inspiring when it takes this long to get an annoying feature removed or fixed in the first place.