In order to do pretty much anything on an Android phone, you need to hit the power button and then slide your finger across the unlock button in order to get to the home screen. That is, unless you install FlyScreen, an application that lets you add widgets to the lock screen. Then all you have to do is hit the power button to interact with weather, email, social networking, or news apps.
The idea behind the lock screen for touchscreen devices like the iPhone and most Android phones, is that you could accidentally trigger actions by sticking the phone in your pocket and letting it jostle around if there wasn’t some sort of unlocking mechanism in place. But the default Android unlock screen doesn’t give you a lot of information. You get the time and date, and that’s about it.
FlyScreen lets you customize the home screen with interactive widgets including calendar, email, music, news, weather, and social widgets. You can pick and choose from the list of available content or you can add pretty much any RSS feed. The social category lets you see your Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, or Google Reader information.
In order to keep you from triggering actions accidentally, you can’t just click on an item like an email to read it. You’ll need to perform a swiping motion to unlock that action — which may leave you wondering why you would want to install FlyScreen in the first place. But the program does give you at-a-glance information on your home screen, letting you check the weather, look at your calendar, or perform other actions just by tapping the power button once and then putting your phone back into your pocket.
FlyScreen is available as a free download from the Android Market (
http://www.android.com/market/), or you can grab it from the FlyScreen web site (
http://www.myflyscreen.com/).
