Get ready, big changes are coming to your phone’s lock screen

How often do you have your call every day? No matter if it’s just once or too many to count, you’ll always be the first to be greeted with our lock screen wallpaper. Maybe it’s a photo of your pet, a photo of a beautiful sunset from a recent vacation, or just a great piece of art. This could all change very quickly.

The lock screen has always been an intimate space for personal photos, important notifications, and gadgets like a flashlight. But companies are increasingly looking to do more with this precious real estate, as evidenced by: Apple’s iOS 16 update And other changes reported that android phones.

Apple’s iOS 16 update, which Released in public beta On Monday, it will bring more customization options and new widgets to the iPhone lock screen when it arrives this fall. You can quickly see more information and apply stylistic photo lock screen effects similar to the portrait mode photography feature on iPhone.

Tips:a Google-backed subsidiary of the mobile advertising technology company InMobiHe also reiterated his intention to bring the lock screen platform to the United States. Google plans to embed more information into the lock screen widget on Pixel phones.

All things considered, changes like this suggest we may not want to bypass lock screens so quickly in the future.

iPhone lock screen gets a makeover

One of the greatest features available in iOS 16 is New lock screen. Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of software engineering, called it “the biggest update ever” when he previewed the update in Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June. You can customize font styles and colors for date and time and give your background image a magazine cover aesthetic.

As such I wrote beforeThese are really the new tools that will bring more benefits to your iPhone lock screen. The iPhone already lets you place widgets on the secondary Today View screen of the lock screen, which you can access by swiping right.

But iOS 16 adds widgets to the Home Lock screen to show information at a glance, such as temperature, episodes of activity on your Apple Watch, and upcoming calendar events. Android phones have offered this kind of functionality for years and it’s good to see iphone follow. You can also create and browse multiple lock screens, such as Apple Watch faces.

Since you can add widgets from apps like Spotify, Google Maps, and Outlook to Today View on iPhone, I wouldn’t be surprised if third-party tools are also available for the new lock screen. . If you look closely at Apple’s WWDC demo, you’ll even see an option for a Nike widget. This means that developers may soon have another way to reach iPhone owners and prevent their apps from being sucked into the depths of a user’s App Library.

It’s impossible to say how useful this new lock screen will be without spending a lot of time with iOS 16. But as I’ve written before, it looks like the new iOS 16 widgets will make your iPhone look more like yours. apple watch, which looks like an upgrade. Like the Apple Watch, the new lock screen should make it easier to see important information without having to dig into apps or even unlock your phone.

Android phone owners may soon have new lock screen options

Glance, which brings entertainment and other digital content to the lock screens of select Android devices in India and Southeast Asia, is in talks with mobile carriers to launch it in the United States in both coming months. Take some crunch. While the company hasn’t revealed when it will launch in the US or any other details, it did provide a preview of the lock screen in the US on Monday.

Glance’s lock screen will appear as what it calls “spaces”, which are lock screens designed primarily for specific themes. For example, a dedicated fitness lock screen shows stats like calories burned and exercise goals, as well as a music player. The news “space” will include headlines and weather, while the music version may include live concerts. It reminds me of how the new iPhone lock screen in iOS 16 is tied to various “focal points” such as work or personal mode.

The Take some crunch The report of Glance’s arrival in the US has raised concerns that ads may also appear on the lock screen. Company page appears at a glance Examples of advertisers who used his platform to reach potential customers on the first screen they see when they pick up their phone. Case studies include Intel, Zomato and Garnier.

But Rohan Chowdhury, vice president and general manager of Glance Feed, told CNET that the US version will be ad-free.

“It’s very clear that in the United States we won’t have any ads on the lock screen,” he said.

The company also released Monday press release Saying, “We don’t intend to display ads on the lock screen.” However, Glance will have to prove that the lock screen offers offer more value than many other tools and options already available to Android users. It will also need to find the right balance to show useful information without being distracting.

The company said it plans to monetize its service with news subscriptions and shopping links on retail platforms appearing through Glance. But these choices must be useful and relevant, otherwise they may seem intrusive, like advertisements. The company claims to have a 60% retention rate and presence on 400 million phones in the markets in which it currently operates.

In the meantime, Google has its own resources to make the lock screen more useful. Business overview function for Pixel Phones It displays relevant information on the lock screen, if any, as the name suggests. recent report from 9to5Google It is suggested that new information will soon be visible in this tool. Rideshare updates from apps like Lyft and Uber could be one of the new alerts available in At a Glance, which could make it easier to see urgent notifications from the lock screen.

Regardless of the implementation, these expected changes prove that the lock screen needs an update. As our phones have become hubs for accessing information, controlling home appliances, and ordering everything from a taxi to running errands, the lock screen has taken on an important new role. It is not enough to display alerts at the right time.

Whether it’s iOS 16’s new widgets, updates to Pixel’s At a Glance feature, or Glance’s “Spaces” lock screen, the goal seems to be the same: to make screens better. lock to organize the flow of notifications and updates. every day. It remains to be seen how successful these efforts will be.