Your phone’s lock screen is the most interesting new real estate technology. Apple turned the iPhone’s lock screen into a central piece of iOS 16, giving users more control over how theirs looks and works. But while Apple talked about beautiful watch fonts and ingenious wallpapers that match the colors, it also showed a world where the lock screen is more than a security measure: it’s becoming another surface where companies they can put information, apps, and even ads. . Apple is far from the only company that also thinks about this. TechCrunch reports that Glance, a lock screen content company (which seems like a thing!) Is already in talks with US carriers and plans to launch some Android phones in the US in the next two months.
The competition for your eyes and attention has already come out of the apps and your home screen, through widgets and notifications. Now it seems to go a step further – towards the first one you see when you turn on your phone, even before you pick it up or unlock it. That could be at least a step too far.
If you’ve never seen a Glance-powered device, one way to imagine the app is like a Snapchat Discover source on your phone’s lock screen. The company offers a rotating set of headlines for news, videos, quizzes, games, and photos that appear every time the phone screen is turned on. Glance calls these content cards “looks,” of course, and says users consume those looks 65 times a day on average.
Glance is an endless content machine, on the lock screen Image: Glance
And of course, everything is full of ads. Glance is a subsidiary of InMobi Group, an Indian advertising technology company. It has partnerships with several manufacturers, including Samsung and Xiaomi, and the company says its software is integrated into more than 400 million phones across Asia. Google is an investor in the company; so is Peter Thiel.
In a certain light, Look or something like that is a totally sensible idea. You don’t need to constantly go in and out of apps looking for news and information, you don’t even need to unlock your phone, just trust that your device will offer you something interesting every time you turn it on. And a couple of non-intrusive ads won’t hurt, right? After all, I bought the Kindle with ads on the lock screen to save a few bucks, and it doesn’t bother me. (Although I would never have bought the exclusive Prime phones that came with lock screen ads, and apparently, no one else.)
The lock screen can help you use your phone less or it can be a new source of distraction
Apple has echoed this idea, talking about how it sees a feature-rich lock screen as a way to help you use your phone less. Apple chief software officer Craig Federighi referred to the lock screen as “the face of your phone” and said features like Live Activities could make it easier to get information quickly without having to unlock your phone and open yourself to all the distractions inside. “If you can get the answer at a glance, don’t unlock it,” he said, “and once you unlock your phone, you’ll almost forget why you’re there in the first place!”
Allowing yourself to customize the lock screen is a good idea! Image: Apple
But by opening up this space, these companies offer apps and advertisers a chance to get even closer to you. The developers will surely create Live Activities that will be held long after they’ve been useful, so they’ll catch you better every time the phone is turned on. Platforms will find ways to enter more content on lock screens by trying to connect to the channel before pressing a button.
In general, most users do not change their settings, and you better believe that developers will use it to their advantage. “Consumers will go from looking for content to consuming what is shown to them,” InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari told Forbes when Glance was launched. This is super bleak! And probably true!
Above all, a Glance-like future is a way to turn smartphones even more into consumer-only devices. And is it really a goal worth “easier access to endless sources of content of average interest”? As we seek to re-establish our relationship with technology, I would say we should find places to add friction, to give you what you need when you look at your phone … but also to help you realize you don’t have to look . on your phone at all. And if, as Federighi said, the function of the lock screen is to help you avoid distraction, I can’t imagine a worse idea than putting a TikTok-style video channel between you and your home screen. .
Glance will surely have competition, but it’s already a good example of where all this is headed. In June, it held Glance Live Fest, a three-day virtual festival that took place entirely on users ’lock screens. It streamed live concerts and challenges, live tutorials and interviews and lots of live shopping content to over 70 million users. It’s like a disabled music festival, to which you are transported every time someone sends you a text message. This sounds distracting, frustrating and just exhausting.
There is no doubt that our lock screens could be better. The whole “running notification list” isn’t great, and a push for further customization will make many users happy. But this space should belong only to users and users, not become a breeding ground for distraction and advertising. We should regain control of our phones, not give more.