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Nothing’s lockscreen ‘ads’ seem to wreck battery life if you try to fully remove the app

Nothing introduced “Lock Glimpse” earlier this year on its new budget-focused Phone (3a) Lite, and the sort of lockscreen “ads” appear to drain your battery from beyond the grave.

To quickly recap what we know about “Lock Glimpse,” the Nothing OS add-on replaces the standard lockscreen with one that has a rotating gallery of pictures with a link on top that leads to what is a nonsensical clickbait farm, as 9to5Google first reported in detail.

The “Lock Glimpse” experience is technically optional, though, as a setting exists to turn the feature off. But that doesn’t remove it, as the app powering it cannot be uninstalled.

As per usual, though, there is a more advanced way to fully remove the app using ADB commands, at which point you’re fully rid of the somewhat sketchy service. But, as it turns out, that seems to have an impact on battery life.

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Some have found that when the “Lock Glimpse” app is fully removed from the device, Nothing OS tries to restart it every 3 seconds, leading to unnecessary battery drain. The reason some users want to remove the app is, as a detailed Reddit post on the matter proves, it sends data requests to that sketchy clickbait farm within every 24 hours, even if the feature is fully turned off.

So, essentially, you’re choosing between full privacy or terrible battery life, which is a choice no one should be forced to make.

We’ll update this post if Nothing adds any context around this, but last time we asked about the sketchy partners being used for “Lock Glimpse,” no further information was provided.

Thanks Bab!

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Avatar for Ben Schoon Ben Schoon

Ben is a Senior Editor for 9to5Google.

Find him on Twitter @NexusBen. Send tips to schoon@9to5g.com or encrypted to benschoon@protonmail.com.