Most of the time, we just put our favorite photo on our smartphone’s locked screen and don’t really care about what it can do or what we can see. But if you want it to have a little more frills and a little more of your personality, there are tons of locked screen apps out there. The newest one is from Microsoft Garage, their experimental incubation program that has produced several good ones. It’s called Favorites Lock Screen and it lets you put your favorites (duh) and interests front and center, without having to unlock your device at first.
The idea behind the app is to highlight your favorites and interests not just to show off your personality, but also to give you news and information that you may want to know even before you unlock your smartphone. You actually get two screens with the app. The first has an HD image of your current favorite athlete, sport, musician, animal, or automobile. You also get a search bar (Bing of course), and a camera icon in case you need to take a picture quickly. If you swipe down, you get toggles and icons for apps you’ve favorited, as well as notifications
The second screen features news and trends about your favorite topic, which you choose from the settings when you set up the app. You can, of course, change it to other topics if your mind suddenly changes. The app also lets you choose which from your secure, unlock mechanisms you want to use. Since the app is still in the Microsoft Garage phase, this means it’s not yet a clean and perfect app. It doesn’t have the polished feel yet, as compared to Microsoft’s other locked screen app, Next Lock Screen, which has already graduated into full-blown app status.
But if you’re willing to give it a chance to grow, you can download Favorites Lock Screen from the Google Play Store, if it’s available in your region. It seems to be geo-locked in certain areas, so it may be just a testing it out phase for now.
SOURCE: Microsoft
