Agreed, this is annoying. I liked my DX where gmail notifications gave a short vibration, whether the ringer was on or vibrate (nothing in silent mode). Since the S3 ringer does not get quiet enough at its lowest setting for my tastes, I just put it on vibrate during the day at work. But gmail notifications are the long heavy vibration (even though I've changed it to "heartbeat"). Furthermore, when I do have the ringer on, it doesn't vibrate at all even though in the gmail notification settings I have it set to Vibrate - always. So I did find a short, quiet chime on Zedge that I set for gmail notification. But as for the vibration, I did find where you can change the vibration intensity in the sound settings: Sound>General>Vibration Intensity. So I have left "call intensity" higher, and turned down "notification intensity". I haven't gotten an email in vibrate mode since I found that setting, so don't know if it worked yet. Since changing the vibration pattern to "heartbeat" didn't work for gmail, I'm not getting my hopes up.