 "Facebook Home's lockscreen may get more customisable")
Facebook’s Android launcher Home was a spectacular failure when it launched earlier this year. After the initial curiosity dying down, there weren’t many takers for Facebook Home and regular updates to the service did not do much to help it.
However, one glimmer of hope for Facebook Home has been the ability to let the Android device turn on the much-appreciated Lock Screen, instead of having to use the whole Home experience. Now, a report has emerged showing a custom lockscreen update for the next update of Facebook on Android.
Phone Arena reports of this new custom Home experience as revealed on a thread on the XDA forums , complete with screenshots and a video. The custom lockscreen was spotted in a leaked version 4.0 of the Facebook application, one forum member managed to get his hands on. When you head on to Home Settings on the Facebook app, you will be able to set a custom lockscreen on your Android device. While the guy who leaked the feature, TheDemon7x managed to find this feature on his Nexus 4, it was not available on the publication’s Nexus 5.
When you turn on the feature, you can change your wallpaper, choose to make ongoing notifications and status bar show up. Most importantly, you will be able to choose how much data use you want Facebook Home to take up. You can choose between High, Medium and Low use. Swiping to the left will open up the camera and swiping to the right will bring up stories from your News Feed.
You will also be able to connect apps like Pinterest, Tumblr and Flickr with Facebook Home. This feature has been around for a while now and it allows Home to pull in visually rich stories from your accounts on all three of these platforms to make your lockscreen look jazzed up.
With a more customisable experience coming up for Facebook Home with the next update of Facebook for Android, the launcher ought to find wider acceptance amongst users. Just when you thought Facebook had lost the plot with Home updates being less than impressive, this leak will reaffirm Facebook power users’ faith in the company’s Android venture.
Intrigued by all things social, Nishtha will invariably tweet about you. When not tweeting or writing about the next viral video, you will hear her proclaiming her love to Metallica, James Hetfield, Opeth, Akerfeldt and all bands that go 'growl'. She also obsesses about ACP Pradyuman and South Park and you will always find her moving around with a book. Her focus is on all the happening stuff in the tech domain, and she won't hesitate to take a shot at some of the oddball devices that make their way to our labs.