Lock Screen Ads Are Coming to Some Smartphones

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Right now, if you live in the US and are familiar with ads on your lock screen, this is probably from your e-book, your computeror maybe even your refrigerator. Many devices with screens like to subsidize costs by showing ads, but American smartphones do a surprisingly good job of clearing the lock screen. Until now.

“Nothing” experiments with advertising on the lock screen

If you haven't heard of Nothing, I don't blame you. The Android phone company made a splash back in 2022, thanks largely to its founder, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, but that's just recently started make phones on par with flagship devices How Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy. Basically, instead the brand became known for its middle class accessories and budget phones that pack a lot of power for their price range but otherwise feature a trendy and minimalist design. It's a smaller market, but a loyal one.

That's why it's a little strange to see a company putting its minimalism and fandom at risk by placing ads on lock screens with its new “Lock Glimpse” feature.

Added to Nothing OS 4.0 late last week, when enabled, the feature will show you one of a rotating wallpaper, all of which are linked to the content via text at the bottom of the image. For example, a wallpaper with a picture of strawberry ice cream may look fancy, but in practice it is essentially an advertisement for a page with a strawberry ice cream recipe. Don't take my word for it: if you're looking for smoking gun, Reddit users discovered permission agreements linking this feature to Chinese digital advertising company BOYUAN (more on this later).

Users were unhappy, as seen in social media platforms such as Xwhere some threatened flash your own operating systems on your phones instead of using Nothing's own design, while others compared this move to similar “features” from OnePlus And Motorola who mostly do not live in the United States. Not a very good option for a company that sells itself through its image.

To Nothing's credit, this feature is disabled by default. But the company's response to the backlash paints a picture that these fans may be unhappy with, no matter where they live.

“Going forward, on select non-flagship devices, we will begin to include a thoughtful selection of third-party apps and services that don't disrupt the Nothing operating system you love,” Nothing wrote on its website. website on the weekend. Lock Glimpse was named as one such service.

The reason for all this? Expenses.

Nothing was explicit about the “tiny margins” the company must operate on to keep up with big players like Apple and Google, and it was said that both Lock Glimpse and “pre-installed partner apps” would be a way to continue to hit the mid-range price point for which it has become known.

To make matters worse, while the company has said that the feature will continue to remain disabled by default on its current Phone (3a) model, it has made no such promises for the upcoming Phone (3a) Lite, which launches later this week and will be “the first entry-level smartphone to feature Nothing's signature transparent design.”

While Nothing has said it intends to give users “full control over features like Lock Glimpse” in the future, it's not hard to imagine a future where the feature is enabled by default and pre-installed alongside apps that the owner hasn't requested, even in global releases.

Nothing ads on your lock screen matter even if you don't have a Nothing phone.

Then again, Nothing is not the first smartphone brand to place ads on the lock screen. Other low- and mid-budget phone companies are also doing the same – most notably Motorola with its Glance feature and OnePlus with its Lock Screen Magazine feature. But Nothing's decision to join the band signals a potential sea change, both from a production and distribution standpoint.

First, Nothing puts more emphasis on hardware than experience. Even the most powerful phone at the moment uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s chip, which is a weaker version of the Snapdragon 8 line that you'll find in phones like the Samsung Galaxy series. So the advantage is software like Nothing OSwhich the company calls “clean,” “beautifully functional,” and “attentive.”

Lock screen ads don't fit that vision, at least for me, and the fact that Nothing felt obligated to include them means the company is willing to risk its main differentiating factor in order to increase revenue. By my standards, this is the canary in the coal mine that any smartphone company currently faces that isn't big enough to cover development costs. There's nothing explicit about his communication, so I've reached out for more information and will update this post if I hear back, but it's not a good sign for the industry as a whole.

This brings me to my second point: although Motorola and OnePlus lock screen ads have been around for a while, they only exist recently began arriving in the US through test launchesand Nothing's implementation makes them available to everyone who has an affected phone, regardless of region, and breaks the promises that the company behind most of these advertisements made previously.

As it turns out, BOYAUN, the company behind Nothing's Lock Glimpse, also supports Glance and Lock Screen Magazine. And although Glance previously said Android Police that it has no plans to introduce lock screen advertising in the US, as it has in regions like India, instead relying on charging users a “subscription fee for access to premium news on the lock screen”, here they are.

I try to avoid speculation whenever I can, but taken together, these two facts mean that it's entirely possible that other low-to-mid budget phones will follow the Nothing's lead in the future. Lock screen ads were bad enough overseas, but US users may have to get used to it now.

Silver Lining

However, while you should be prepared for ads on your lock screen, they won't necessarily ruin your phone. They'll just make the setup even more annoying.

I believe Nothing when it says it will give users control over Lock Glimpse, largely because even Take a glimpse And Screen lock log can be disabled. The latter two companies are much less image-oriented than Nothing, and it would be strange to see Nothing breaking its promise here if that's not the case. The same goes for Nothing, which says pre-installed apps will be “easy to remove.”

But still, any additional action you require from the user means that more people will simply accept the default. Don't be surprised if, as more phones start displaying ads on the lock screen right out of the box, you'll see your less tech-savvy friends end up using them without even realizing it.

That's why this is still an issue, and why it's encouraging that, at least in the case of Nothing, Lock Glimpse will only appear on certain phones (again, the Nothing blog says flagship models will be retained). Since this brand is already a bit niche, it probably won't be a company that normalizes lock screen ads, especially since cheaper models that are more likely to get Lock Glimpse have limited US carrier support.

However, Nothing phones with Lock Glimpse are technically available here, so this may be the first time some Americans are seeing ads on the lock screen. Plus, they're also subject to the same market pressures as all of their competitors, meaning we probably won't see the last of them. Advertising on the lock screen in the US is no longer a matter of “if.” Just from “when”.