Your phone is probably full of apps. And that’s great! Apps are fun! But having a million of ’em is less fun when you need to get to a specific one, and right quick. A new Android app called Cover has your back though, and it can turn your lockscreen into a simple menu of only what you need right now.
Cover does its magic by learning where you live and where you work, and then keeping track of what apps you use at home, at the office and in between. Then, it shows you its idea of your favourite apps right on your lockscreen. Even better, it lets you unlock to whatever app you need, or even peek behind the lockscreen curtain to see what’s going on back there, pulling the lockscreen back just far enough to get a look at a sliver of the app, before letting it fall right back into place.
Sound familiar? It is. This “phone that knows what you want” idea is very popular right now. You may remember Aviate from a few weeks back, operating on the same basic concept. Or any number of other variations on the theme.
But Cover is worth nothing though for a three reasons: it’s simple, pretty, and good. Cover just puts some apps on your lockscreen, that’s it. The rest of your phone stays just how you like it.
We got to play with Cover a little bit before release. Not quite long enough for it to learn completely, but it looks pretty promising. The downside is that Cover’s predictions are always automatic, and it doesn’t seem like you can just tell it what you want. But Cover’s dev tells us that an option to change this should be coming in the future. All in all, it’s one of the smartest applications of this idea we’ve seen.
So if that sounds like something you’d want to check out, you can sign up for the beta over at Cover’s homepage.