When I safely remove hardware from nautilus I am used to seeing the icon go away in nautilus and the light on my hardware to go out. Neither of these things happened for me in dolphin. Is there a way to make both of these things happen in dolphin?

In Dolphin, you will notice that the eject icon disappears. If it doesn't, check the status bar, as the unmount may have failed (due to open files, or other causes)