HTC Lock Screen Now Available As Play Store App

In their ongoing effort to split software from hardware, HTC has now made their Android lock-screen available in the Play Store. The very same lock screen you find on various HTC devices, including the HTC One (M8), is now being supported separately from their Android skin, Sense.

In splitting the lock-screen from Sense, HTC is also changing a bit of how it works. According to them, users were upset with the device wipe protocol, wherein your device would be cleared of all data if the password was entered wrong 10 times in succession. HTC felt that was adequate to thwart thieves, but users were complaining of random password entry while in a pocket, wiping the device for no reason.

Now, if five wrong passwords are entered, a pattern will have to be drawn on-screen. It's not a stopgap, but it does help with those erroneous password entry situations. Once the pattern is drawn, you can resume with your password entry. HTC says it's meant to serve as a way to get you to actually interact with your phone before losing everything.

With this new separation of app and Sense, we are getting another step in HTC's quest to update their various offerings faster and more efficiently. We have already seen this happen with Zoe, and we would expect HTC to continue this with more of their core offerings at some point down the line as well.