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November 21st, 2009 
admin 
Alright, so here’s the deal. Lately, there have been a burst of various lockscreen mods/apps/hacks/widgets. It’s extremely hard to actually figure out which one someone should actually use. They each have its own design and set of features. Some are free, and some cost money. We won’t go over every feature. We have extensively used each application and have come up with the pros and cons of them. Which one is for you? Continue reading to find out.
- LockInfo: 14-day trial, then $4.99
- SmartScreen: ‘Lite’ version available, $4.99
- IntelliScreen: trial, then $9.99
- QuickWidgets: free (currently in beta)
- Cydget: free
First, let’s start out with LockInfo. Made by David Ashman, the man behind the reflective dock mod, WeatherIcon, and others, you can expect this product to look and feel great; It really does! There are lots of nice add-ons and themes for LockInfo. With LockInfo, you don’t have pages for widgets. It’s all on your main lockscreen in a vertical scrolling manner. You can view weather info, Twitter, Facebook, calendar, mail, and more. At this point, LockInfo is on the top of the chart for our pick of lockscreen mods.
Next up is SmartScreen. Released yesterday, SmartScreen offers multiple pages of widgets as well as easy organization of them. Currently, there are only 4 widgets available, and these widgets are available from the developers of SmartScreen. There are about a dozen other widgets created by third-party developers that they made using the SmartScreen SDK. We emailed a few of these developers, and they all said that they were going to be charging for their widgets. Now, if we remember that the app costs $4.99 (plus tax?), then maybe $1 for each widget, this will bring the total price to over $15, which is a lot for anything mobile related. As for the 4 widgets that are available, they are fairly basic. Organization of the widgets can be done by tapping and holding on one until it wiggles. SmartScreen can also let you toggle various system settings like wifi, 3G, bluetooth, and EDGE. Shake to shuffle can also work while the iPod controls are being displayed. At this moment, the lack of widgets make this something that shouldn’t have been released until more widgets were completed. So, at this point, SmartScreen is second.
Third is IntelliScreen. You can use this as a trial, but then you have to pay [a whopping] $10 for the full version. We’ve heard a lot about this and decided to give it a try. Our first impressions were bad, and these were basically lasting impressions. Setting up the widgets was a very unorganized and painful task to complete. After coming up with something that looked half decent, we just weren’t satisfied with anything. At this point, IntelliScreen is third on our list of lockscreen modifications.
Fourth up is QuickWidgets, aka QuickBoard. Currently free and in beta, we really enjoy mod. There are a number of neat widgets, some with hidden and interesting features. Widgets can be organized by tapping on a widget until it wiggles, and letting go. You can then move the widget to other pages. Some widgets have options that you can change right from the lockscreen (denoted by a red dot on the upper-right corner of the widget). What’s different about QuickWidgets is that you can use these widgets to call external actions, like unlocking your device and opening mail, reply to a text message, make a phone call. You can even open the camera by double-tapping on the camera widget. The camera will then do a page peel over the lockscreen. Most of the widgets have multiple sizes, which can be achieved by making the widgets wiggle, then double tapping on one. We would like to see more widgets in the future, such as Twitter and Facebook. If that happened, this would easily be the best jailbroken mode money can buy. At this point, QuickWidgets is second, right under LockInfo.
Last, is Cydget. Cydget is a lockscreen framework that allows people to make widgets for the lockscreen. At the moment, the majority of these ‘widgets’ are very poor and offer very little functionality. Let’s just leave it at that, okay? Cydget is instantly at the bottom of the list.
So, in order of what we like the most, here is the list:
- LockInfo
- QuickWidgets
- SmartScreen
- IntelliScreen
- Cydget
We really do like LockInfo. There are more and more widgets and themes for it that really expand its functionality and design. QuickWidgets is also very nice, but we would all like to see more widgets. SmartScreen has had a lot of hype, but didn’t really live up to it. IntelliScreen is just sad, with its high price and with its poor… Everything. We just aren’t going to talk about Cydget anymore.
So! If you’re looking for something to spruce up your lockscreen, take a look at LockInfo and its 2 week free trial. Or, you can try everything else. All is either free or has a trial.
Please let us know what you like the best, either by posting in our forum (link up top), or by commenting on this post.
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