- Nothing has rolled out a ‘Lock Glimpse’ feature on some of its phones
- This shows a rotating wallpaper selection on your lock screen, along with a link to a related article with adverts
- It’s likely that more companies will start doing this sort of thing soon
When you pay for a product – especially something as expensive as a smartphone – you probably don’t want or expect to see adverts on it, but they’re something we’re starting to see on some phones. What’s more, it might only be a matter of time before more brands start including them.
Already we’ve seen Motorola phones ship with a ‘Glance’ lock screen, which will show you things like news stories and the local weather along with adverts, and now Nothing has started including lock screen adverts on its phones too with what it’s calling ‘Lock Glimpse’, a much stranger system.
It’s actually less intrusive than Glance, with the feature showing rotating wallpapers on your lock screen, with no actual adverts or other content included. What they do have is a link to some content that’s related to the wallpaper.
If you open this link, you’re then served up the article on a page that very much does include adverts, and the articles themselves are – according to 9to5Google – mostly “recipes, random DIY projects, or random information without any sourcing at all.”
So they’re not very useful, with 9to5Google speculating that they’re AI generated and “exist solely to get people to waste time and view ads.”
Nothing itself hasn’t meaningfully commented on these articles, saying in a community post that Lock Glimpse will “surface timely updates and useful content, designed to enhance your experience, not distract you.” Which sounds like the opposite of what it’s actually doing.
The good news is that Lock Glimpse isn’t so far coming to the company’s high-end devices, with it currently being limited to the Nothing Phone 3a series. You can also choose to disable it, and with the exception of the Nothing Phone 3a Lite it’s off by default.
The new normal
Still, it’s hard to imagine this is a feature that many people want, and it’s odd that Nothing hasn’t tailored the experience to at least offer more meaningful content. We’ve reached out to Nothing about why this content in particular is offered and we’ll update this article if we hear back.
But with both Nothing and Motorola now showing some form of lock screen adverts, and us also seeing adverts creeping into other tech products – with even the likes of Samsung smart fridges getting them – it feels like it might only be a matter of time before this becomes more common, or even the default.
So hopefully the responses to these recent advertising attempts will be negative enough to make companies think twice.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.
Add Comment