Microsoft Garage, the developmental lab behind a number of Android apps, released another title this week. Called Picturesque, it’s a way for Microsoft to deliver Bing homepage images to your lock screen. Available at no cost, it supports notifications and includes news and weather update integration.
They say:
- Beautiful Bing Homepage images: Your lock screen will be updated with the beautiful daily Bing image; you could swipe through the images from past 6 days or shake your phone to change the image on your lock screen.
- Search on the lock screen: You could search for anything on the web directly from the lock screen and read all the linked pages without having to unlock your phone.
- Latest news: Keep yourself updated with the latest news headlines and tap through to read the full articles.
- Weather: Find out what the weather is at your current location; long tap through on the icons to get the detailed weather predictions for the week.
- Notifications on Screen: See your missed calls and Messages quickly from your lockscreen. Quick call or reply from the notification from Home screen itself.
- Regional Calendars & Muhurats (Only for Indian users): Personalize the lock screen to access your favorite regional calendars and Muhurat. Now you can figure out what festival is on for the day, rahu kalam, chogadiya/hora timings all from the lock screen itself.
- Camera & Phone controls: Access your phone camera from the lock screen; Change your WiFi, Bluetooth, volume, brightness settings; also use your phone as a torch from the lock screen.
We say:
We love to change up our home screens and lock screens and we’re always on the lookout for something from bigger players. We appreciate having the images automatically cycled throughout the day and there’s plenty of customization to be had. Does it try to shoehorn in other Microsoft apps and services? Sure, but we’d expect that. Google does the same every chance it gets so why not?
[pb-app-box pname=’com.microsoft.androidapps.picturesque’ name=’Picturesque Lock Screen’ theme=’light’ lang=’en’]
