Samsung One UI is undoubtedly one of the best user interface designed by any smartphone manufacturer, which always keeps the Samsung flagship smartphones on top of the smartphones list by most of the reviewers. Samsung One UI always comes in direct comparison with the Apple iOS as both of these companies constantly remain in the top 2 positions for the market share globally every year and both of them try to achieve the top position.
Samsung offers the best Android experience by rolling out the latest Android updates on the its smartphones in form of the software called as Samsung One UI. The latest One UI rolled out to Samsung devices are One UI 3.1 and One UI 3.0 based on the Android 11 (R). While Samsung has visually enhanced various screen modules and the default apps and each one of them deserves a separate article, we will focus only on the latest Samsung Lock screen in this article which is one of the best features of the Samsung One UI.
What is Samsung Lock Screen?
The lock screen on Samsung smartphones is an installed feature which provides you different options to secure your phone and customize the look of your phone lock screen. In addition to the various security and display options, it also incorporates the Samsung One UI most used applications - Always On Display and Wallpaper services.
You will see all or some of the below Lock screen settings on your Samsung phones based on the model and the One UI update installed on your phone. We will go through each one of them in detail and give you the best options for these settings for better security and the visual experience of your phone.
Security Settings
Screen Lock type
Smart Lock
Secure lock settings
Display Settings
Always On Display
Wallpaper Services
Clock Style
Roaming Clock
Widgets
Contact information
Notifications
Shortcuts
About Lock Screen
Our Recommendations for Lock Screen Customization
We recommend at least the below settings enabled on your phone screen for the extra security and smart display of your phone. If you already know how to enable them, you can skip this article by looking at our below recommendations. All these recommended settings are explained in detail in this article with various customizations available.
Register the biometrics (fingerprint and Face) if available on your phone
You should enable the password if biometrics is not available.
Always on display for a scheduled time of the day.
Dynamic lock screen enabled for the lively pictures on your phone.
Roaming Clock enabled for your travel.
Today's schedule and weather information widget is useful.
Always show contact information containing emergency contact.
If you want to select notifications, select icons only.
Select only those shortcuts which your privacy is not compromised.
Difference between Lock Screen, Home Screen and Always On Display.
The sequence of the things that you see on your phone screen will easily explain the differences between these screens. Once you have put down your phone and its screen is locked and gone black after certain time, the screens would be displayed in below order:
The first screen would be Always On display (if enabled). It will show certain information (like time, date, battery, music etc) on the black screen without any wallpaper or theme.
Once you press the lock/unlock button on your phone, the display shown is the Lock screen on your phone.
Finally, once your phone is unlocked, you will be taken to the home screen on your phone.
In this article, we will discuss on the features of the Samsung Lock screen and how you can use them for extra security and beautiful display along with all the required information so that you do not have to always unlock your phone to check certain information.
Samsung Lock Screen Security Settings
Screen Lock Type
You can set the lock of your screen by using the below options:
Swipe: There is no security using this method, so not recommended
Pattern: This is using a drawing pattern on your phone like a shape L, it is also not recommended as hackers can easily guess commonly used patterns.
PIN: This is atleast 4 digits, is categorized as medium-high security. It can only contain numbers.
Password: It is categorized as highly secure, must contain at least 4 characters including at least one letter.
Biometrics: If your phone supports Face or Fingerprints or both recognition methods, this is highly recommended screen lock type on your phone.
Smart Lock
Samsung provides you smart lock options so that you don't have to unlock your device again and again when you are using it. It has implemented the below algorithms to recognize that you are using your phone.
On-body detection: If you switch on this setting then your Samsung phone will stay unlocked once you unlock this device and it stays in motion after that. It will lock once you put it down in static position.
Trusted Places: You can keep your device unlocked while at your phone location. You just need to add a trusted place on map and your phone remains unlocked there.
Trusted devices: Samsung also gives you an option to keep your device unlocked while paired with your Bluetooth devices. You can select a particular device like your car Bluetooth or your Bluetooth headphones to keep it unlocked.
These are small enhancements in screen lock but are user friendly to avoid unnecessary locking on your phone.
Secure Lock Settings:
These settings provide you the options to be enabled to highly secure your phone from data theft and misuse.
Auto lock when screen turns off: You can choose the time duration (for example: immediate, 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute etc) after which your phone gets locked.
Lock instantly with power key: If this is enabled, your phone gets locked if you press the phone power key.
Auto factory reset: This option is provided to you to enable if you want your phone to delete all your phone data once there have been 15 incorrect attempts to unlock your phone. It is designed to prevent any data privacy breach in case your phone is stolen. This is turned off by default.
Lock network and security: This option will ensure that wi-fi and mobile data remains on even when your phone is locked. This is used by "Find my mobile" feature of your phone to locate and control your phone when your phone is lost.
Samsung Lock Screen Display Settings
Always On Display
The Always on display (AOD) is a feature provided by Samsung which allows you to customize your phone lock screen to display the selected information on your phone. You can choose from the below settings:
Tap to show for 10 seconds - If you choose this, the phone will display the information once you tap on your screen.
Show always - It will always show the information on your phone screen
Show as scheduled- You can schedule a time to set the Always on display, for example 9 am to 9 pm as you might not want your phone to consume the battery to show the information at night while you are sleeping.
As this does consume some of the phone battery (not much as it does not use all the phone pixels to display), we would recommend setting it for scheduled time.
Clock style: You can choose one of the various pre-defined clock styles to be displayed on your phone screen. It also gives you an option to change the default colour of the clock.
Show music information: This is by default selected and will show any music playing on any of the apps including Samsung Music, spotify and youtube so that you can change the tracks or pause from your lock screen using Always on Display.
Screen Orientation: Select between Portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) mode for Always on display.
Auto brightness: Either enable this to let your phone choose the brightness based on the current light on your phone sensor or you can set the brightness yourself for Always on display.
Wallpaper Services
The wallpaper services on your phone provides the wallpapers to be set on your phone lock screen and the home screen. The lock screen provides you an option to choose from below wallpaper services
Dynamic Lock Screen:
This is one of the best wallpaper feature provided by Samsung which shows the different wallpaper each time you wake up your phone on the lock screen. The Samsung One UI 3.0 update on Android 11 has added new image categories for the dynamic lock screen and now you can choose up to 5 categories from which the images will be displayed on your phone. The image categories included in the dynamic lock screen are the below as of now:
Landscapes
Plants
Life
Dogs
Cats
Animals
Art
Food
Desserts
Special
You also get an option to switch off the download of dynamic wallpapers using mobile data.
If you select None for the dynamic wallpaper, you are presented with an option " Swipe left for Info page". Once you select this option, when you wake up your phone on lock screen (without any dynamic wallpaper) you can swipe left and are presented with the dynamic lock image categories and from there you can select the dynamic lock image category if you would like to set it.
Clock Style
The clock style feature gives you the options to select the clock style for the below
Always On Display: Clock styles for your Always on display option.
Lock Screen: Clock styles for your lock screen.
The difference between Always On Display and Lock Screen can be checked here
Roaming Clock
The roaming clock lets you save your home time zone (for example Chicago GMT-5) and when enabled will display the two time zones if you travel away from home location.
Let's say if you travel from Chicago to London, it will display both clocks on your lock screen.
You can also enable this for Always On Display.
Widgets
You can add Widgets on the lock screen to display the most important information relevant for you. Below widgets are available to be selected for your lock screen:
Music
Today's schedule
Next Alaem
Weather
Bixby Routines
Digital Wellbeing
You can enabled these to be displayed on Always On Display as well.
Contact Information
This is the most essential information which you can set now on your phone so that there is always a probability of getting your lost phone back or someone else can contact your emergency contact in case you met with an unfortunate accident.
Always set your emergency contact in the contact information and it will be displayed on your lock screen. Anyone can dial in that number or contact on email ID without the need to unlock your phone.
Notifications
You can switch on the notifications to be displayed on your lock screen. You can choose from either of the below options.
Icons Only: It will display just the icons without any further details. For example, missed calls, messages, mails etc.
Details: The details will show the content of the notifications as well. For example, who called you or the content of the message. You can further customize the details display on transparency and the text colour of the content.