Right now, if you live in the U.S. and you're familiar with lock screen ads, it's probably from your e-reader, your PC, or maybe even your refrigerator. Plenty of devices with screens in them like to subsidize costs by running ads, but American smart phones have been surprisingly good at keeping your lock screen clear. Until now.
That's why it's a bit odd to see the company put both its minimalism and fandom at risk by putting ads on its lock screens, via a new "Lock Glimpse" feature.
Users were not happy, as seen on social media platforms like X, where some threatened to flash their own custom operating systems to their phones instead of using Nothing's own, while others compared the move to similar "features" from OnePlus and Motorola that are largely not live in the United States. Not exactly a great look for a company that sells itself on image.
"Moving forward, on select non-flagship devices, we'll start including a carefully considered selection of third-party apps and services that don't disrupt the Nothing OS experience you love," Nothing posted to its site over the weekend. Lock Glimpse was stated as one such service.
Nothing's post was upfront about the "razor-thin margins" the company has to operate on to keep up with major players like Apple and Google, and said that both Lock Glimpse and "pre-installed partner apps" would be a way to continue to hit the mid-budget price point it's become known for.
While Nothing 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 didn't ask for, even on global releases.
Nothing's lock screen ads matter, even if you don't own a Nothing phone
First, Nothing does not focus on hardware so much as experience. Even its most powerful phone at the moment uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s chip, which is a weaker version of the Snapdragon 8 line you'll find in phones like the Samsung Galaxy series. The selling point, then, comes in software like Nothing OS, which the company pitches as "clean," "beautifully functional," and "mindful."
Which brings me to my second point: While Motorola and OnePlus' lock screen ads have been around for a while now, they've only recently started making their way to the U.S. via test launches, and Nothing's implementation both makes them live for everyone with an impacted phone, regardless of region, and breaks promises the company behind most of these ads has made before.
I try to avoid speculation when I can, but taken together, these two facts mean it's very possible that other low- and mid-budget phones will follow Nothing's lead in the future. Lock screen ads have been bad enough abroad, but it's something that U.S. users now may have to get used to.
The silver lining
I believe Nothing when it says it will give users control over Lock Glimpse, largely because even Glance and Lock Screen Magazine can be turned off. The latter two being far less image focused companies than Nothing, it would be strange to see Nothing break its promise here if they aren't. The same goes for Nothing saying pre-installed apps will be "easy to remove."
Which is why this is still an issue, and why it's reassuring that, at least in Nothing's case, Lock Glimpse is only coming to certain phones (again, Nothing's blog said that flagships models will be spared). Being that this brand is already a bit niche, it's probably not going to be the company to normalize lock screen ads, especially because the cheaper models that are more likely to get Lock Glimpse have limited carrier support in the U.S.
Still, Nothing's phones with Lock Glimpse are technically available here, and so they might be the first time some Americans are seeing lock screen ads. Plus, they're also exposed to the same market pressures as all of their competitors, which means they're probably not the last time we'll see them, either. Lock screen ads in the U.S. are now no longer a question of "if." Just of "when."
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