One of the coolest features of Windows Phone 8.1 is the lock screen customisation option, but it wasn’t made available with the developer preview of the mobile OS because Redmond still needed time to work on it.
There was no fixed timeline for the release of this option until a few hours back when Joe Belfiore revealed that the lock screen app should be released in a couple of weeks time as beta.
“New lock screen app– probably a couple weeks as beta for 1GB devices. A bunch of us are running it now, working on polish. dev-preview next” tweeted Blefiore.
We are not sure if everyone will be able to test the beta version as no information about that has been released yet. However, it is evident that if given a chance only users with 1GB Windows Phone 8.1 devices will be able to install the app and use it as 512MB devices are not yet supported.
In a follow-up tweet, Belfiore said, “Why not 512? To make lock fast/stay in memory. 512mb for lock app will probably be awhile.”
This means that one of the most popular Windows Phone devices – Lumia 520 – will not have support for lock screen app from Microsoft and users may have to wait a long time before they can get their hands onto it.
When the lock screen customisation options were initially revealed, Microsoft had said that it is working with Rudy Huyn, who is known for popular apps like 6tag and 6sec.
I know I’m not going to be in the majority here, but I agree with the way Microsoft is handling this. I would much rather they take the time to ensure that this new feature works properly rather than release it to the world and have half a million bricked Windows phones out there. For those who will complain about not getting this for phones with only 512 mb RAM, i ask, what do you expect? You can’t have everything! I have a top end WP device (Icon) and I don’t have Glance. So what! It’s not like I may NEVER get Glance, and Microsoft has already stated that you WILL “eventually” get the lock screen app on lower end WP devices. You purchased a lower end device with less RAM. This was a risk you took that perhaps it would not support higher end features for WP. Given that Microsoft has created an operating system that supports your low end device on a majority of the OS, unlike Apple whose iOS 8 won’t be available to any iPhone under iPhone 4s, I’d say Microsoft is doing a very good job at keeping the lower end devices in perspective. Now if only Microsoft will provide a new Glance feature for the Icon! 🙂