iphonenotifications
My mother has just moved from an Android phone to an iPhone SE and she misses the fact that she no longer gets a text message notification icon at the top of the screen. This is a small envelope shaped icon in the same region of the screen as the WiFi connected symbol.
Is there any setting or application that will give her this functionality?
It looks like the application is adding that icon. I checked the Level application on my phone (sort of a free demo for Carpenter) and it has a button with the same design in the upper right corner:
Tapping the button gives this screen:
Google still has some update notes cached where the developer listed this as a new feature in the App Store:
Added Quick Switch button on the top right corner to quickly switch between iHandy apps without getting back to home screen.
Normally, apps can't add custom icons to the status bar. According to this thread, they may just be overlaying the Quick Switch icon over the battery indicator: Customizing iPhone app taskbar
Your girlfriend's Account preferences have all her messages going to her iPad.
On her phone, she should go to Settings -> Messages -> Send and Receive and make sure that all the addresses under "You can be reached by " are checked.
Best Answer
If your phone is jailbroken, you can install a tweak which modifies banner notifications such that they appear in the status bar, such as ThinBar or Resero. There are also a plethora of tweaks which let you display icons in the status bar when an app icon has a badge on the home screen.
Otherwise, this is not possible.
Edit: As Monomeeth mentioned below, jailbreaking is a somewhat technical and sometimes buggy process, which in many cases voids the warranty, so I would not recommend jailbreaking the phone of someone who isn't utterly familiar with what that means, such as (I assume) your mother.