Microsoft has released a new Lockscreen app for Android devices, called Picturesque Lock Screen.
It is a Microsoft Garage project, and brings the company’s famous Bing home page images with it.
You can change the image on your lockscreen by shaking the phone, or by swiping the lockscreen. Swipe from left to right to access the images, and then again. You get images from the past 6 days, and can also set them as your homescreen’s wallpaper by tapping on what appears to be a download button.
But it doesn’t seem to have an option to save the images permanently, as they are not visible in the Gallery.
Notifications for missed calls and messages will appear on the Lockscreen, and you can directly reply from it. The Lockscreen gets a Bing search bar, which you can use without unlocking the phone. Swiping from the right to the left brings you a screen with three sections in it.
- News – You can choose the Topics you like and set the refresh interval.
- Muhurats (Regional Calendars) – Only available in India, and could be pretty handy for spiritual and religious people.
- Weather: Details about the current temperature at your location, and forecasts for the week.
You also get shortcuts for various functions such as Phone, Camera, Wifi, Bluetooth, Volume Control, Brightness Settings, and a Torch (Flashlight).
You can customize the favorite apps which you want to be displayed on the lockscreen from the app’s settings menu.
[appbox googleplay com.microsoft.androidapps.picturesque]
The app is far from perfect however and has issues unlocking the device, and sometimes jumps straight to the app’s settings instead. Hopefully Microsoft will iron out such issues in a future update.
