Despite our handsets having a keylock, whether manually, timed or automatically, it’s not always convenient to do things when the keys of our Symbian-powered handset is locked. Many times I’ve been frustrated over that I first have to unlock my handset to then be able to skip a track when listening to my music on the go.
SBSH, they guys behind the revamped FExplorer Pro have released an new and free application called PocketLock. With this application you no longer have to worry about locking your phone before putting it into your pocket. The application simply will do this for you. Being as small as only 3 kb in download size the install size is a miniscule 34 kb.
Unfortunately though the application is only available for Symbian^1 or S60 5th Edition handsets.
The application installed without any nag screens thanks to the automatic installation process included in the OVI Store application. Once installed the main screen popped up. This main screen is one of the better ones I’ve seen as it explains what you need to know about the application right from the start. The left softkey is used to access the options whereas the right softkey is used to hide the application which runs in the background. From the options you can choose to activate the autostart or turn it off, easy as pie. Get more opens up the built in browser and points to the OVI Store and if you have the OVI Store application installed it will be automatically launched. Should you choose to exit the application it takes two keypresses namely options and then exit.
When the application is running the phone will be locked when you slide it into your bag or into a pocket and then unlocked when you take it out, just like the description says in the main screen. This it does by monitoring the front facing camera on your handset. While this is the application’s strongest point it also remains it’s weaker point.
Not surprisingly it will detect if there are light or not in front of the camera and act accordingly by locking or unlocking the keypad and screen of your handset. Light equals unlock phone and darkness equals lock phone. It’s really a brilliant idea and unfortunately it doesn’t always work in the real environment.
Unless you have really small pockets light from outdoors or your surroundings can shine into the pocket and thereby accidentally unlock your phone leading to unwilling key presses. (This happened quite a lot with me). It’s not the worst thing to happen, but still something to take note of. From the about screen you can clearly see that this application is in version 1.0 and I hope they can provide new functions to this application in a later version such as providing an option to set a timeout for when it should unlock your phone after it detects light.
Another thing I noticed was a small bug. When you deactivate the autostart function and then exit the application you can’t open the application again. You have to restart your handset to be able to do so. When you power up your handset the application automatically launches without you actively launching it, something I find a great feature. When you choose to enable the autostart function and then exit the application, a second launch is possible. All in all just some minor bugs is found here.
You can download the application for free from OVI Store. Does this application provide you with a truly missed function or do you stick with the old manual lock and unlock approach?
