There may be a lot of free lock screen apps in the market but most of them have modern themes. You cannot really expect these apps to make your lock screen look more cute, trendy and stylish. As for the Sparky Lock Screen Lite app, it appears to have a variety of eye-candy themes.

What Is It and What Does It Do

Main Functionality

Sparky Lock Screen Lite is a free lock screen application for Android that is created and developed by Sparky Mobile. What this app does is that it lets you customize your smartphone’s lock screen using its ready-to-install themes. You can also edit these themes by choosing your preferred background image or color.

Pros

• Nice and responsive user interface
• Easy to use
• You can preview the themes before you install
• Customizable and creative themes
• Doesn’t require you to download a separate application
• Some of the themes allow extra app shortcuts
• You can modify each theme by choosing your preferred lock screen background
• No annoying ads

Cons

• There are only three free themes – Donut, Sketchy and Concert. The rest of the themes are only available for paid users. The paid version of the app costs $1.99.
• The lock screens does not support extra security protection – there’s no option for enabling password, pattern or gesture lock
• You can easily remove the lock screen by pressing the home button, which means you may find yourself accidentally removing the lock screen in situations like when your device is in your pocket

Discussion

There’s no doubt that the Sparky Lock Screen Lite is super easy to use. It also features a neatly-designed user interface with properly labelled controls. Upon launching the app, just swipe its home screen to the right and you will immediately see its list of available lock screen themes. There’s Donut, Sketchy, Concert, Wise Girl, The Beach, Panel, Boarding Pass, Minimal Black, etc. All in all, the app has a total of ten creative and stylish themes. Each of which has a different art style. Unfortunately, only three of these themes are available to free users. So if you want to use the other themes, you have to purchase the app’s paid version for $1.99.

Nevertheless, the three available themes are customizable and very easy to install. Each theme also features a different screen unlock style and different app shortcuts. Of course, the date and time will always appear regardless of your theme’s design.

What I like most about Sparky Lock Screen Lite is that there’s no need for you download a separate application just to make it work. The problem with this app is that it lacks in many aspects. First, it doesn’t support security PINs and passwords. Second, there’s no way to disable the home button. So even if you have locked your screen, you can easily put it away by pressing the home button. If you do not want to accidentally launch the apps on your home screen, you can opt to activate your phone’s default lock screen. This allows you to have two lock screens. The first one is from Sparky Lock Screen Lite while the second one is from your default settings.

Anyways, I do not have any major issues regarding the app’s lock screen theme designs. It’s just that it could have been better if there were more themes available for free users. The big question here is whether you are willing to compromise your smartphone’s protection just for the sake of having a stylish yet vulnerable lock screen theme. After all, lock screens are meant to secure your phone.

Conclusion and Download Link

I really like this app’s theme designs but it fails as a lock screen replacement app. It lacks the ability to secure your device by requiring a password/gesture/pincode plus you can easily unlock the lock screen by simply pressing the home button, meaning you may find yourself often accidentally unlocking your Android. Aside from that, it only has three free themes, which is bound to turn off free-loving Android users. If you want to customize your lock screen, you are better off going with a more reliable app that has more features, like Go Locker or MiLocker.

Price: Free, $1.99

Version reviewed: 0.94

Requires: Android 2.1 and up

Download size: 6.8MB

Sparky Lock Screen Lite on Play Store