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Better lock screen?

P

pmontanarella

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 12, 2012
321
7
Vancouver, Canada
Hi all,

I think many of us have noticed that the lock screen has become way to sensitive and the iPhone may often unlock in our pockets and mess itself up... I've designed this re-designed homescreen showing what I think may be a better idea for a lock screen where there still is a single place to slide (like iOS 6) and you need to complete a full slide to unlock the phone. I've designed this following the design of iOS 7 and I think it would fit nicely with the rest of the UI design.

Let me know what you think.

Please note: This is my first time designing something using Pixelmator and I know this design isn't great but I just thought I'd share my ideas on here and see what you guys think.

If any of you would like to download the image and work on it further you're most certainly welcome to.

Pietro
iOS-7-Lock-Screen-576x1024_zps885078b9.jpg
 
I think Apple's new giant red and green bars are not intuitively buttons for pressing or swiping. Particularly for new users.

But your solution is ugly. Sorry.
 
I like the current slide to unlock better, your jeans must be too tight if the phone unlocks in your pocket. Just set a passcode then.
 
I think if the slide to unlock sensitivity was restricted to the bottom, it would cause less issues for people with this problem. The slider graphic you put in looks okay to me, however I would see this more as a volume change, or a brightness slider than i would a way to unlock the device.
 
tymaster50 said:
I like the current slide to unlock better, your jeans must be too tight if the phone unlocks in your pocket. Just set a passcode then.
Click to expand...

Most adults do not wear jeans that "must be too tight." I wear loose fitting slacks every day to work, and yet my phone feels the need to unlock itself, and attempt to enter the passcode so many times that I am locked out of my phone for several hours.

I really like the look of the lockscreen, but think we could definitely use a smaller slide field to help prevent this..
 
pmontanarella said:
Hi all,

I think many of us have noticed that the lock screen has become way to sensitive and the iPhone may often unlock in our pockets and mess itself up... I've designed this re-designed homescreen showing what I think may be a better idea for a lock screen where there still is a single place to slide (like iOS 6) and you need to complete a full slide to unlock the phone. I've designed this following the design of iOS 7 and I think it would fit nicely with the rest of the UI design.

Let me know what you think.

Please note: This is my first time designing something using Pixelmator and I know this design isn't great but I just thought I'd share my ideas on here and see what you guys think.

If any of you would like to download the image and work on it further you're most certainly welcome to.

Pietro
Image
Click to expand...

No just NO. that thing at the bottom is horrible and very ugly.
 
Tyler23 said:
Most adults do not wear jeans that "must be too tight." I wear loose fitting slacks every day to work, and yet my phone feels the need to unlock itself, and attempt to enter the passcode so many times that I am locked out of my phone for several hours.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt you, but I can't for the life of me understand how this could happen. The phone would have to accidentally awaken (maybe a notification would cause it. An accidental button press seems unlikely), and then, at the exact same time, a screen input that is interpreted as a left-to-right swipe, followed by additional screen inputs that are interpreted as button presses on the passcode screen, all apparently caused merely by the phone in your pocket rubbing against your leg.

As I said, I don't doubt that this is happening to you, but the sheer improbability of it makes me wonder if it's a glitch in the OS or the hardware, or both, and not a design flaw in a properly-functioning lock screen.

Nothing like this has ever happened to me, and I carry my phone around in my pocket all day. So do thousands of others. Yet I've only heard of a few people having this problem. Again, this makes me think it might be a glitch that is unique to your phone (and the handful of others who are having the same problem).

If so, then Apple doesn't need to redesign the lock screen, and you may find that the problem resolves itself with the next beta release. For your sake, I certainly hope so. It must be very frustrating.
 
sometimes my phone forgets to sleep I guess so when I look at it again I'm typing a nonsensical message to someone, maybe that's the bug you guys are referring to?
 
tymaster50 said:
sometimes my phone forgets to sleep I guess so when I look at it again I'm typing a nonsensical message to someone, maybe that's the bug you guys are referring to?
Click to expand...

My phone is asleep though, and somehow with walking/sitting, it gets woken up. That happens, though, and can/has happened for people even on iOS 6. The problem, from there, it's a simple matter of it bouncing around and rubbing against the leg, which is more than enough with this new swipe-anywhere lock screen to bring it to the passcode entry page, where random digits are selected repeatedly, locking the phone.
 
tymaster50 said:
I like the current slide to unlock better, your jeans must be too tight if the phone unlocks in your pocket. Just set a passcode then.
Click to expand...
passcode doesn't help the issue necessarily and can make it worse by locking you out of your phone.

The lock screen has become easier to open that's at least partially behind this. There are many more controls and actions available on it now and the action to unlock it is now much simpler in that the whole screen can be used for it (instead of a particular confined area) and the slide gesture only needs to continue for just a little before it activates (rather than across majority of the screen to really make it a purposeful action).

All of this kind of stuff is discussed much more in the existing ongoing thread about this type of issue at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1596364/
 
Nice idea, but I don't think the texture on the slider knob matches IOS. It reminds me of a volume control. I would tone it down, maybe just make the whole thing white.


There's nothing wrong the phones that are pocket dialing. It's not a glitch in a "handful" of phones. It's a design flaw in the OS. This is obvious to anyone who isn't brainwashed to think Apple can't possibly do anything wrong ever.

Interestingly, I can unlock my iPhone/iPad using my knee -- through my jeans. The touch screen doesn't require direct skin contact and can be operated through fairly thick fabric.
 
bobbysmith said:
There's nothing wrong the phones that are pocket dialing. It's not a glitch in a "handful" of phones. It's a design flaw in the OS.
Click to expand...

You might be right, but if that's the case, why isn't it happening more often to more people? It seems to have happened to a relative handful of people. If it were a design flaw, I would think it would be happening to just about everyone.

bobbysmith said:
This is obvious to anyone who isn't brainwashed to think Apple can't possibly do anything wrong ever.
Click to expand...

I've seen Apple do plenty of things wrong, but I'm not sure this is one of them. It seems obvious to me that if this were a design flaw, it would be more pervasive. I would expect to see it happening to almost everyone, and be a dominant topic on the message boards.
 
Gogurt48 said:
You might be right, but if that's the case, why isn't it happening more often to more people? It seems to have happened to a relative handful of people. If it were a design flaw, I would think it would be happening to just about everyone.



I've seen Apple do plenty of things wrong, but I'm not sure this is one of them. It seems obvious to me that if this were a design flaw, it would be more pervasive. I would expect to see it happening to almost everyone, and be a dominant topic on the message boards.
Click to expand...
A design flaw doesn't have to happen to everyone for it to be a flaw. They have car recalls from millions of drivers just because a few have had provable issues that have been determined to be related to a flaw that essentially all particular models have, even if owners of the vast majority of those models never experienced those issues. Fairly common occurrence actually, and certainly far from unrealistic or even unusual.
 
It's more about the thickness of your pocket bag fabric than anything else; dress pants pockets in particular are usually quite thin.

Tight or not, if you have your phone facing your leg in your pocket and the fabric is thin enough to conduct, the motion from simply walking is enough to unlock the screen if a notification comes in. And when you're sitting, the phone generally rests on your leg regardless of how tight your slacks are.
 
Gogurt48 said:
You might be right, but if that's the case, why isn't it happening more often to more people? It seems to have happened to a relative handful of people. If it were a design flaw, I would think it would be happening to just about everyone.

I've seen Apple do plenty of things wrong, but I'm not sure this is one of them. It seems obvious to me that if this were a design flaw, it would be more pervasive. I would expect to see it happening to almost everyone, and be a dominant topic on the message boards.
Click to expand...
Why don't you go play with your lockscreen and see how little it takes to unlock, bring up the control center or notification center, and then put two and two together. You don't have to be a genius to see the design flaw here.

Things can exist even if they don't affect you personally. If we were to make up statistics by extrapolating from complaints on this forum then this issue would still affect millions if the OS is released in this state.
 
My Concept

If I were to "improve" on the lock screen, I would simply limit the slide input to the bottom of the screen in an area the same size as the dock. Then I would have it match the same effects of the control center so that when you do slide up, the dock expands upward and the design elements are the same. Now I'm sure some users won't like the coverage over their wallpaper, so there is room for tweaking transparency/blur and placement.

Here's a mockup:
iOS-7-Lock-Screen-Concept.jpg

EDIT: Here's another idea that uses the same size slide area from the phone app "slide to answer"
iOS-7-Lock-Screen-Concept2.jpg
 
Last edited:
ominx said:
If I were to "improve" on the lock screen, I would simply limit the slide input to the bottom of the screen in an area the same size as the dock. Then I would have it match the same effects of the control center so that when you do slide up, the dock expands upward and the design elements are the same. Now I'm sure some users won't like the coverage over their wallpaper, so there is room for tweaking transparency/blur and placement.

Here's a mockup:
View attachment 423572

EDIT: Here's another idea that uses the same size slide area from the phone app "slide to answer"
View attachment 423573
Click to expand...

I honestly think both of your ideas look great, and would be very happy to see Apple implement either.
 
Tyler23 said:
I honestly think both of your ideas look great, and would be very happy to see Apple implement either.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I actually think the second one is better because it has a clearly defined space between the control center arrow and also its horizontal nature implies the user need to slide horizontally and not vertically in order to unlock.
 
ominx said:
Thanks. I actually think the second one is better because it has a clearly defined space between the control center arrow and also its horizontal nature implies the user need to slide horizontally and not vertically in order to unlock.
Click to expand...

I agree. As I said, I definitely like both, but yeah, the second might be the better implemented of the two. Still, even the first would be a drastic improvement!
 
Tyler23 said:
I agree. As I said, I definitely like both, but yeah, the second might be the better implemented of the two. Still, even the first would be a drastic improvement!
Click to expand...
Yup. The second one is so far the best one overall that would likely address majority of the issues and still fit in with the new design quite well in that it would even be consistent with the other OS sliders that appear for calls or powering down the phone (even the first one would be an improvement too, even if it might not fit into the overall design as nicely).
 
I've had an iPhone for 2 years now, I'm 21 years old and a middle of the road tech junky. I can absolutely see where people are having issues unlocking the device. I love that you can access the CP from anywhere, but that damn arrow is killing me. :mad:
 
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