Good Lock. What comes to mind when you think of it? Well, some think “good luck,” and Samsung is hoping to achieve that with the UI experience that we’ll venture on a limb to say will dictate the Korean giant’s future experience in TouchWiz. We’ve had our say on the matter here at SamMobile; we’re also aware that you may agree or disagree with it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it’s been said, and that still rings true.
It is this polarizing effect of “you either love Good Lock or hate it” that is common throughout all discussions of the new UI setup. Some diehard Samsung fans find Google’s vanilla Android better and don’t like the deep, dark saturated colors that have been so embedded in TouchWiz over the years. Other Samsung fans download Good Lock because it’s from Samsung, only to find that it’s like entering a foreign land; they quickly uninstall Good Lock, hoping to be freed from what they view as a UI nightmare. “Never again,” they say to themselves.
Well, Samsung can’t help that some will find Good Lock useful and like it, while others will find it useful but hate its color scheme. The Korean giant is working on improving the color scheme, having added darker base colors to its color selection (and we’re thankful to Samsung for having done this), but some still find it distasteful and “meh.” Samsung can’t win everyone over, as I’ve said time and time again, so the company has to pick its battles and fight the most important ones. Winning the war is better than winning a few battles that could be quickly forgotten. At the same time, however, Samsung could do something to halt mass abandonment of Good Lock among Samsung faithful: the company could add a disable option.
Yes, I’m aware that some see a disable option as insignificant. “If you don’t like it, delete it” is what some say. What’s the point of keeping Good Lock close by if you don’t like the look of it, right? Well, for Samsung at least, the last thing you want to do at this point is alienate a portion of your fan base that has adopted TouchWiz as their UI of choice over the years. This loyal fan base loved Samsung before the Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy S7 edge, and they purchased Samsung products when some of the new converts who are “in love with the S7 edge” (yes, you’ll read reviews from these individuals all over the internet) were busy buying Motorola, HTC, or even LG.
A disable option is what I’d call both realistic and optimistic. A disable option for Good Lock would be realistic because, let’s face it, not everyone finds Good Lock preferable to the Android Marshmallow TouchWiz (I myself believe the current TouchWiz setup in Marshmallow is better than the pastel, Good Lock look with its more “pastel” white background). Some individuals think that Good Lock is a start to something different, though they don’t necessarily like the experiment and want to have something familiar until Good Lock becomes more polished and refined. Hey, you can’t tell someone to like vanilla ice cream if they prefer chocolate or strawberry; you can’t tell someone to like a more “vanilla” UI if they prefer a UI with “whipped cream and cherries on top,” as they say.
Finally, a Good Lock disable option would not only be realistic but optimistic. The optimism is found in that a Samsung fan would disable Good Lock – but disabling the feature is not the same as deleting it. Currently, if someone downloads Good Lock and finds it distasteful, he or she can only “uninstall” it. Then, when the individual decides a few months away to add it back, he or she must search for it at the Galaxy Apps store and download it again on the device. Chances are that if an individual has to search for the feature 5 months down the line, they may forget about Good Lock entirely. If you think this isn’t true, ask yourself how many people delete an app that they remember to add back in 5 or 6 months.
A Good Lock disable option would give Samsung the opportunity to see more of what users like and discover whether or not more work needs to be done in Good Lock. Keeping Samsung fans close by, the Korean giant could continue to tweak and revise the UI overhaul until it achieves something of a “Goldilocks” effect where it can appease both those who love it and those who (currently) hate it.
Finding a happy medium in differing positions in life, as in UIs, can be a bit of a headache, but a disable option can’t hurt. It will allow Samsung to gather more feedback as Good Lock grows on its users. It’s been said that you should always keep your friends close and your enemies closer; with Good Lock, Samsung can not only win over vanilla Android fans (its enemies) but keep its own fan base (friends) close by. And the more Good Lock users, the better.
Only time will tell if Good Lock is good at locking Samsung users into TouchWiz forever, but a Good Lock disable option would, at the very least, help a few dissenters flirt with the UI idea. And, fortunately, for Samsung, some faithful users will try anything the Korean giant does at least once or twice.
