The good news: An innovative mobile app, Punch, has devised a way to let users send messages directly from the iOS lockscreen.
The bad news: It takes over the iOS’s lockscreen music controls which is a big no no for Apple to prevent developers from overtaking its interface. This version might never be released on the iTunes App Store as the Punch available on iTunes has this lockscreen feature stripped off.
Rio de Janeiro-based founder Alessandro Berio got the idea for Punch from his personal experience. His mother got into a car accident due to a teenager texting on her phone. Punch’s key feature is that it utilizes the lockscreen’s music controls to enable messaging.
“One day, as I was driving back from a road trip, I put a song on my iPhone that was hooked up to my car, and the album cover was displayed on my dashboard,” Berio recounted.
Punch takes over the lockscreen music player. You hit play to record an audio, and hit it again to send the clip. Messages appear where the album cover, photo and video usually appears. It also integrates a “drive mode” which allows the app to read messages to you, animates photos you send, and produce push notification sounds if you send emojis. Even when the app is not running, you can receive and hear the audio messages through Apple’s VoIP Push technology. However, these beta features are stripped off the Push being sold on the iTunes.
Berio also announced that an Android version is set to launch in a few months or earlier.
