arise technologies: Featured Android App Review: Active Lock Screen [Personalization]

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Featured Android App Review: Active Lock Screen [Personalization]

Customizing lockscreens are getting quite popular lately. There are already a number of apps, but a new one recently hit the Google Play Store called Active Lockscreen by Celltick Ltd. Just like any lockscreen replacement the focal point is shortcuts to apps, but Active Lockscreen gives you more choices as in the number of apps you can choose to open to. Most custom lockscreens give you around four apps, but Active Lockscreen has four customizable sections, and each section can have multiple apps. Of course you can simply unlock your phone to whatever you were doing last.

It?s quite simple. At the bottom center you have the lock icon. If you drag it to the left, you will unlock your phone to whatever you were doing last. Dragging it to the right will give you the opportunity to switch to mute or vibrate. The fun begins when you slide up to either the Phone/Contacts, My Apps, Camera, or Recent Apps section. By thumbing over each area, you will be presented with more apps based on your settings. They can be the most recently used apps for each section or they can be pre-defined apps. For the Phone/Contacts you will get the shortcut to the phone dialer, but you can also set up to four recent numbers from your history or pre-defined contacts. The My Apps section will allow you to have as little as two or as much as eight apps that can be classified as recently used or any fixed apps you choose. The same goes for the Camera and Recent Apps section. The Recent Apps section doesn?t have to be recent apps, it can be whatever you define.?When you first install Active Lockscreen, it will set all the sections to recently used and it will categorize them. For example the Camera section will deal with apps that involve the camera or media.

Of course with any custom lockscreen, you might want to change your look. You can do that too. With the plugins section you can add photos from your gallery or even your Facebook feed. More plugins can be downloaded from the Play Store for Free. What about the overall theme? You can change that as well. It comes with a stock theme, but again you can download more themes from the Play Store for Free. Some examples are Deep Sea, Black, Equalizer, etc.

Now if you like to use a pin or pattern security lock, you might find that it works well or is inconsistent depending on your phone. At times the security lockscreen would appear right after I unlocked the Active Lockscreen and other times it didn?t. If you ever want to stop using Active Lockscreen, you can go into the settings and uncheck ?Enable Lock Screen?.

Now there is one more thing that is very cool about Active Lockscreen and that is that it?s absolutely Free. If you like customizing or just want to add a little fun to the look of your phone than give it a shot. Check out my hands on video (as well as their demo video) below and hit one of the download links to get started. Don?t forget to let me know what you think.