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-via Gizmodo
Brand new design, better battery life, seamless device switching! The newest version of Android brings a lot to the table. But its best feature is a little further under the surface: Smart lock screens that will let you be super secure without ever entering a PIN again.
Teased back at Google I/O but now appearing in the developer build of Android Lollipop, the new feature works like this: Pair a gadget with your phone—maybe a watch or a speaker or a pair of bluetooth headphones—and Android will ask you if it’s a “trusted device.” If you say that it is, you can set up your lock screen to disable whenever your phone and that device are paired. So when your phone is close to the fitness tracker on your wrist or connected to the speaker in your bedroom, there’s no lock screen. But if there’s nothing familiar around, lock screen engage! Phones like the Moto X have had features like this before, but now the functionality is coming to stock Android.
It’s a simple little change, but one that can make all the difference for security. Yeah, we all know we should have lock screens—preferably passwords over PINs—to stay safe, but it’s easy for convenience to win out. I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t had a lock screen on my phone for months, and I love every second of it. With this new feature I can—and will—set up some wildly obnoxious password that’s insanely secure, but that I’ll almost never have to type in. Strong security I never have to see! It’s the same logic behind phone-unlocking NFC tags like Motorola’s Skip (or whatever insane DIY setup you can gin up), except it works with the gadgets I already have.
The catch, of course, is that its utility is limited to how many Bluetooth devices you have and use. Folks without a smartwatch or other Bluetooth wearable will get way less use from this than nerds who are all gadget-ed up. That and constant Bluetooth connections will gnaw away at your battery life ever-so-slightly. The alternative is to disable the lock screen when connected to trusted Wi-Fi, but that still takes a little tweaking. Still, this is a step in the right direction: More secure and less annoying. Now if only two-factor authentication could be this smooth. [h/t Android Police]
– via Field Guide/Gizmodo
Lock screen widgets have been around since Android 4.2, but it’s not always easy to find apps that can take advantage of the feature, and many users simply forget that it’s there. But lock screen widgets are great! You can check them without the hassle of keying in passcodes or drawing out a pattern, and there are more useful ones available than you might realize.
We’ve picked out a selection of handy lock screen widgets in the list below, but there may be other gems out there that we haven’t spotted—if so, let us know in the discussion below. These instructions are for stock Android, so if you’re running a Samsung/HTC/Sony/LG variant they should be good enough, but they might not line up exactly.
You have to do a little bit of housekeeping before you can enable lock screen widgets on your device. From the Settings app tap Security and then tick theEnable widgets box under the Screen security heading. Obviously this is only going to work if you actually have a lock screen in place—the widgets won’t appear if your device loads the home screen straight away.
On the lock screen itself, swiping left brings up the camera. Swipe right and you can add a new widget via the large plus icon. If the widget has any options to configure, these will appear next. Up to five widgets can be configured, and to remove (or re-order) one, tap and hold on it just as you would with a widget that’s sitting on your home screen.
It’s no surprise that Google’s own apps are ready and waiting to make good use of lock screen widgets. Google+, Gmail, the Email app and Hangouts all have widgets of their own, so you can stay on top of your messages with one swipe, no unlocking required. Remember that also means anyone who gets hold of your phone will be able to do the same, although to actually read messages in full and respond to them will require unlocking.
Several options are available in each of the widgets. In Gmail, for example, you can choose which label to sync and display on screen. Hangouts simply shows your inbox on screen with the most recent message on top. As for alternative services, you’re mostly out of luck—neither the Outlook or Yahoo Mail apps offer lock screen widgets at the moment.
When you think of important, at-a-glance info, weather is at the top of the list.HD Widgets offers a number of lock screen widgets in its collection, as does theBBC Weather app (developed in the UK but available anywhere). Google Now has a lock screen widget, which usually has a panel displaying the weather.
Yahoo Weather is another option, and its widget can load up a suitable picture from Flickr if you’d like it to. As for widgets that display the time, there are a host to pick from. The Digital Clock one comes free with Android, or you can use something really radical like DashClock, which replaces your lock screen entirely and provides notification options for many different apps.
If you’ve ever ripped your phone out of your pocket to try and find the name of a song playing at the bar, then there’s some good news: The What’s this song? Sound Search tool integrated into Android/Google Now does, so you can use it to quickly find out what you’re listening to even if you don’t have time to type out a passcode and launch an app first.
For music playback you’ll have to turn to Rdio rather than Spotify or Google Play Music to get your tunes onto the lock screen. Rdio can display your synced playlists as a lock screen widget, and you can launch them with a single tap without having to unlock your device. Of course if your music is playing in one of these apps already, you can control it from the lock screen.
Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat don’t have lock screen widgets butWhatsApp and Twitter are two that do. WhatsApp can show a list of incoming messages, while Twitter shows either recent tweets from your timeline or tweets mentioning you.
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