I
worry about losing my phone--there's nothing on the home screen that identifies
me, or it. Is there some way to add text to a phone's home screen so that even
while it's locked, someone who finds it would know who to contact, so I can get
it back?
Although this situation is
different for different phone types, we’ll focus on the iPhone here (because
it’s the phone both Doug and Ken use daily). It’s true: Although you can select
a photo to display on your phone’s lock screen, there’s no built-in mechanism
for adding any identification to the screen, so that if you were to lose your
locked phone (it IS locked, right? If not, shame on you!) no one would know to
whom the phone belongs. (This actually happened to Ken once—he left his iPad in
the seat pocket on a plane. Don’t do that! Luckily, his call to the airline
ended with a happy resolution, and he was soon reunited with his lonely,
otherwise unidentifiable iPad.) You really do need to identify your device on
its lock screen, so an honest person could contact you and return the device.
Luckily, there are applications
that can help you with this problem. Ken did some research on this problem
recently, and found two likely iOS candidates: Both the apps, Lock Screen and
Over, allow you to add text to an image, save it, and then select it to be your
lock screen image. Once you’ve added your text (usually including your name,
email address, and phone number) and set it up as your lock screen image,
anyone who finds your device would know how to return it.
And although you could use these
apps (or any of the others like them) to annotate and image and add it to your
lock screen, Ken’s friend Sue suggested an easier solution: write your
information on a piece of paper, take a picture of it, and use that as your
lock screen image. Simple, free, and done. Sometimes, the low-tech solution
really is easier.
Whether you use an application to
generate an image with text, or you take a photo of a hand-written note; make
sure you identify your device on its lock screen. If an honest person finds
your device, you’re far more likely to get it back if you do!
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