Pakistan at its current state lags quite behind other states when it comes to technological advancements in hardware. This difference arises due to bad economical conditions, lack of industry among other things and will take quite a long time to fix. However, when it comes to software development, the story becomes different altogether as at that stage, each country has an equal opportunity to succeed. This is exactly what young Pakistani software developers are realizing as they have slowly started to tap into the Android app market by releasing various top level apps into the Play Store. A recent example of this comes in the form of SLIDE, which is Pakistan’s first lock screen app.
SLIDE basically functions like all other unlock screen apps which you may find on the Play Store. The app does find somewhat of its uniqueness by allowing the user to pick their notifications which appear on the lock screen. These notifications can range from the usual Viber, Whatsapp notifications to RSS feeds of websites such as Buzzfeed, BBC etc.
The app also follows a unique marketing pattern in which they pay Rs. 10 each time a person introduces their friend to the app. This amount is paid to both the person as well his friend in the mean of a balance top up. To be honest, while this strategy might not hold any value on the global scale and might fail horribly, in our country, this might not really be a bad deal as the revenue generated by the ads can cover up the cost of each install.
Of course, since this is a new app, it is a work in progress and does have a lot of areas in which it can improve. The prime area being that the app fails to write itself over the stock lock screen and instead you find yourself sliding and then unlocking the phone via the stock lock screen mechanism, which to be honest is beyond annoying. We recommend this app only if you’re a bit low on balance or want to support the local developers, otherwise we will advise you to either stick to the stock mechanism or look for a better alternative.
