It’s always interesting to see tweaks that modify our lock screens because iOS has had the same lock screen style since the beginning. It’s always refreshing to have a change.
A new jailbreak tweak called FXOSLock by iOS developer Alexander Meiler changes the way you unlock your iOS device by removing the slide to unlock slider and replacing it with a new slide to unlock knob.
The slide to unlock knob sits in the middle of the bottom of the lock screen. It’s round and has two arrows inside of it on both sides to indicate that it can be dragged either to the left or to the right. The overall simplistic look of the knob is both minimalistic and appealing.
When you grab the slide to unlock knob and drag it in either direction, you will see text appear at the bottom of the lock screen, as well as a button to land the knob on. The button to the right is the unlock button, and the bottom of the lock screen will say “slide to unlock” as you get closer to it, while the button to the left is the camera button, and the bottom of the lock screen will say “camera” as you get closer to it:
Once you drag the slide to unlock knob over one of the buttons and release your finger, the device will either unlock if you landed on the unlock button or open the Camera application if you landed on the camera button.
FXOSLock does appear to play the iOS unlock sound whether you have the setting turned on or off in the Settings application under the Sounds preferences pane. If this becomes a problem, it’s always possible to put your iPhone into silent mode and you won’t hear the unlock sound.
FXOSLock is available right now in Cydia’s BigBoss repository for just 99¢. It supports iOS 5 and later on the iPod touch and iPhone, although the iPad is not yet supported. The tweak doesn’t come with any options to configure.
