Android’s notification system has always been its strength, right from the beginning. In fact, the notification system was so good that the almighty Apple actually implemented a similar notification system in iOS5. However, the Android notification system has one major flaw. Users will only get a audio notification of a new email or SMS, when they are using a full screen app or playing a game.

While Apple rectified this problem in iOS5, Google only enhanced some aspects of the notification bar in Ice Cream Sandwich, but did not rectify this problem.

This is where TextNotify comes in. The app runs in the background, and will automatically detect if you are running a full screen app or game, and will show a small text notification, when a new email or SMS comes in. The small text notification does not pause your existing game, and is enough to let you decide whether you should pause your current game or quit the app to reply to the SMS or email.

The only downside of the app is that it does not work with the stock GMail client. For email notifications to work, users need to use a third party email client like K9-Mail. While this is certainly not an elegant way to be notified of your latest SMS or emails, it does work! TextNotify can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.