A secondary display system on a mobile device to allow a user to check the status of mobile device services without having to turn on or otherwise rely upon the primary display of the mobile device. The secondary display presents a count of messages that are waiting to be accessed by the mobile device user. When a new message is received for the user, a summary of the message is displayed to the mobile device user. When a user accesses one of the waiting messages, the count of unopened messages is decremented. The secondary display system may perform queue management to ensure that only counts of recently received messages are displayed. The secondary display system may offer different status modes to highlight the status of different mobile device services or states. The secondary display system may also allow a user to respond to a received message in a limited manner.