Lock Screen Ads Are Coming to Some Smartphones

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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.

"Nothing" experiments with lock screen ads

If you haven't heard of Nothing, I don't blame you. The Android phone company made waves back in 2022, largely on the back of its founder, OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, but it only recently started making phones on par with flagship devices like the Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy. Mostly, the brand has instead become known for its mid-range accessories and budget phones, which pack in a lot of power for their price points, but otherwise stand out through trendy and minimalistic designs. It's a smaller market, but a loyal one.

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.

Added in Nothing OS 4.0 late last week, when turned on, the feature will show you one of a rotating selection of wallpapers, which all feature linked content via text at the bottom of the image. For instance, a wallpaper showing a strawberry sundae might look spiffy, but in practicality, it's essentially an ad for a page with a strawberry ice cream recipe. Don't take my word for it—if you're looking for a smoking gun, Reddit users have found permissions agreements linking the feature to Chinese digital ad company BOYUAN (more on that later).

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.

To Nothing's credit, the feature is off by default for now. But the company's response to the backlash paints a picture that those fans may not be happy with, regardless of where they live.

"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.

The reason for all this? Cost.

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.

Worse, while the company said the feature would continue to remain off-by-default on its current Phone (3a) model, it made no such promises about the upcoming Phone (3a) Lite, which comes out later this week, and is the "first entry-level smartphone with Nothing's signature transparent design."

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

Again, Nothing isn't the first smartphone brand to push lock screen ads. Other low-budget or mid-budget phone companies do so as well—most notably Motorola with a feature called Glance and OnePlus with a feature called Lock Screen Magazine. But Nothing's decision to join the flock points to a potential sea change, both in terms of manufacture and distribution.

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."

Lock screen ads don't match that vision, at least to me, and that Nothing felt compelled to include them means it's willing to risk its main differentiating factor to up earnings. By my measure, that's a canary in the coal mine for the pressures any smartphone company that's not big enough to eat development costs is facing right now. Nothing tends to be pretty upfront in its communication, so I've reached out for more information and will update this post if I hear back, but it's not a great sign for the industry at large.

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.

As it turns out, BOYAUN, the company behind Nothing's Lock Glimpse feature, also powers Glance and Lock Screen Magazine. And while Glance had previously told Android Police that it doesn't plan to introduce lock screen ads in the U.S. like it has in regions like India, instead relying on charging users a "subscription fee for access to premium news on their lock screen," here they are.

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

That said, while lock screen ads are something to be ready for, they aren't necessarily going to ruin your phone. They're just going to make it more annoying to set up.

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."

But still, any extra steps you require of a user means more people are just going to put up with the default. Don't be surprised if, once more phones start to display lock screen ads out of the box, you see your less tech-literate friends end up using them without even knowing that's the case.

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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