Nobody likes ads, and that goes double for ads appearing in more personal, unexpected spaces. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson smartphone companies appear to need to relearn again and again, with Nothing finding itself the latest culprit.

A new update to Nothing’s Android 16 beta rolled out this week, but only one change seems to be making a splash with users. Nothing OS 4.0 now supports a new lock screen tool called “Lock Glimpse,” and if you have a bad feeling just from that name’s familiarity with the Glance ads found on ultra-cheap devices from brands like Motorola, well, trust your gut more often. Lock Glimpse appears to be a rotating collection of wallpapers that automatically cycle every time your display turns on, but each appear to include attached content available through an embedded link.

On Twitter, @AnshuTechblog shared photos and videos of Lock Glimpse in action, and it sure seems like an ad-riddled feature. Each wallpaper includes text along the bottom that points to, say, a homemade strawberry ice cream recipe. Selecting this opens up a new article that Lock Glimpse’s settings describes as “captivating content.” That means each rotating image is, in effect, an ad for some kind of written content, and not just a standard wallpaper slideshow designed to refresh your device.

As far as the provider behind Nothing’s linked ads, eagle-eyed Reddit users spotted Bouyan as the company within settings. It’s a Chinese digital ad platform that appears to operate in pretty similar fashion to Glance, with the biggest change here being its default state. Unlike Glance, Lock Glimpse is disabled by default in this initial patch.

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Assuming this doesn’t change between Nothing’s beta period and final builds, it’s almost enough to call this a non-issue. Unfortunately, it’s a decision that inevitably raises eyebrows; after all, why include a feature you know is just going to frustrate the most enthusiastic among your fan base just to leave it disabled and buried somewhere in settings? Frankly, it’s a bizarre inclusion from a company that typically prioritizes a clean build of Android among all else.

I’m also curious how many of these wallpaper images are AI-generated. At best, they appear to resemble vaguely-related stock images of landscapes, plants, and more, tying into whatever content is linked to the image. But some of them — like a science-fiction landscape — are obviously computer-generated in some way, and it’s unclear if AI’s been involved. Likewise, the strawberry ice cream example used above doesn’t really look like real ice cream, especially once you factor in the use of raspberries, not strawberries, in this imagery.

With any luck, today’s backlash won’t just keep it disabled by default — it could end up removing the feature from Nothing OS entirely in a future update. Keep your fingers crossed.


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