Nothing removes controversial lock screen ads, but there's a catch

Nothing is backing away from its Lock Glimpse feature, the lock-screen ad system it rolled out with Nothing OS 4.0 on Android 16. The feature has been live on the Nothing Phone (3a), Phone (3a) Pro, and Phone (3a) Lite since October and drew criticism not only for turning the lock screen into an ad surface, but also for reportedly draining battery even when users tried to disable it.

The company is now pulling Lock Glimpse from its phones, but not without conditions. While the lock-screen ads are going away, users will still have to live with the consequences of how the feature was built and rolled out. Details on what remains or how the change will work in practice are limited, but for now, the ad experiment is officially over.