Not too long ago, the folks over at teehanlax provided some pretty compelling mockups of an overtly more informative and useful iPhone home screen (when locked).
And some vertical scrolling action would also be a nice touch…
Apple obviously isn’t going to let any third party developer screw with its homescreen, but don’t fear that Apple doesn’t see the merit in providing more information on what is now a black hole of a locked homescreen.
An Apple patent originally filed back in 2007 shows a varying number of iPhone homescreen mockups that each make pertinent information available to users at a glance when the phone is locked. We can only hope that Apple implements something like this sometime soon.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Wow they sure put a lot of effort and taste into a nice mockup … and completely failed to understand the heart of the lock/unlock screen: the slide to unlock.
With their beautiful mockup, putting an iPhone or iPod touch in one’s pocket would result in all kinds of random mischief, prevented easily with the sleep/wake + followed by slide to unlock which currently exists and is obvious in Apple’s patent application.
Like Jobs said, design is not how it looks, it’s how it works. And the beautiful mockup would NOT work.
January 14th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
@Jared
If I understand you correctly, I think you may have missed the point here. This is about having at least some basic, highly relevant functionality even in the Locked screen. Other than allowing a vertical scroll, no other in puts allowed.
I think it’s a good idea.
Why have to unlock to check if there are any incomings?