The little screen lock slider is one of the more contentious features of the Nokia N97. Some find it a little small and fiddly, while others appreciate having a quick, easily findable way of (un)locking the screen with instant vibrating feedback. Mr. Lock is here to help the naysayers take control of the button and access their favourite knock any way they choose. Find out how we got on with our Mr. Lock software review...
One thing the Nokia N97's screen lock is not is flexible, with auto lock options being basically limited to 'on' or 'off'. Mr Lock aims to give a bit more control both in when the phone locks, and when it doesn't.
The first thing we notcied is that Mr Lock is very polite, carefully explaining that it might have to connect to the internet if you access its help screen and that turning it on will cause the program to auto-start whenever the phone is switched on. It may seem silly, but little touches like this really do make a difference in how much we 'trust' a new app - particularly important in one that stays resident in memory, we think.
Mr Lock launches and presents you with one option: Enable or Disable. Seting the app to Enabled will activate the aforementioned auto-start and then present the actual meat of the app - the lock settings. You can select which of your defined profiles (e.g. Outdoor, Meeting, General, etc.) Mr Lock will affect, the length of time it takes for automatic screen locking to kick in and also the circumstances where this timeout will be active.
Mr Lock will let you autolock while any app is open, or just when you are on the home screen. If you choose to allow locking in 'every' program you can also specify exception - say, if you never want your phone to lock while you are reading Twitter, for example. The exception management is particularly in-depth, listing not only named apps but hidden applications and services.
Do you need this? Well, we always leave autolocking turned on (the N97 is just to easy to activate in a pocket, otherwise) and the ability to turn it off automatically in certain circumstances is proving to be more useful than we anticipated. It would have been nice to let us define each profile with different settiings, but for a free app we can't really complain about this minor oversight.
Details
Size: 0.11 MB
Price: Free
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