iOS 7 Lockscreen Cards Idea Is Simply Brilliant

A neat iOS 7 concept is doing the rounds with creator “brentcas” putting a new spin on the iOS Home / Lockscreen. His idea is to make more use of the iPhone display in “locked” state, as well as to create shortcuts – similar to the Camera grabber – for apps like Twitter and Facebook.

brentcas posts his concept on The Verge where he makes a wonderful case for the new functionality.

The idea is so cool it might even get picked up by Apple. It wouldn’t be the first time this happened, and it surely wouldn’t mark the last either.

So here’s the deal. brentcas envisions a lockscreen card system which lets you slide away the time & date banner to show a new one that holds weather information, or anything you’d be interested in (like the above screenshot shows).

The author even made an animation to show how it might work on the phone. Brilliant, right? There’s more.

According to brentcas, “When you're on a card, double clicking the home button will bring up extra controls or information that is relevant to the card, if necessary.”

“So when you're on the weather card and you double click the home button, the card will expand to show the weekly forecast,” he explains.

He even envisions management functions with “wiggle” mode applying to the cards much in the same way it does to apps.

Moving on to the “grabber,” brentcas believes many users would prefer a lockscreen shortcut for social apps like Facebook and Twitter. He’s undoubtedly right.

“The grabber should be able to open any app action that you want,” he explains. “Update your status on Twitter, check-in on Foursquare, take a picture with Instagram, whatever. So you can customize your grabber to be one of those things.”

Also, the app “grabber” is card-sensitive: “When something has taken over the front card, though, it will also take over the app grabber.”

He also has a few thoughts on Notification Center and how Apple could make this existing iOS element better. Get the full scoop here.