Check out this cool Lockscreen concept

As successful as iOS has been, and continues to be, for Apple, there’s no question that it’s getting a bit long in the tooth. After all, a majority of the operating system looks just like it did when the iPhone first debuted back in 2007.

And that’s why we see so many concepts for iOS. Because there’s several ways Apple could improve its mobile platform, from smarter notifications, to broader widgets. And that’s proven once again with this new Lockscreen design…

An interesting piece was published in The Verge’s forums yesterday entitled “Rethinking the Lockscreen” which features a concept for the Lockscreen that would make it much more useful. It consists of 2 parts: cards, and a custom grabber.

First up, is what the author calls Lockscreen Cards. Essentially they’re little informative tiles, or widgets rather, that are connected to an app. They’re customizable, and you can slide between them the same way you slide between Homescreens.

And it gets better. Double-clicking the Home button when on a Card brings up extra controls or information that is relevant to the app. For instance, double-clicking the Home button when on the Weather card would bring up the weekly forecast.

Then there’s the customized app grabber. This takes the quick camera access idea Apple introduced in iOS 5.1 to the next level by giving users the ability to set it to any application they want. I honestly can’t believe this isn’t already a standard feature.

The trick here is that swiping up on the grabber doesn’t simply open up the application, but it opens the app up into an active status. So an app like Messages or Mail would automatically open up into their respective composition screens. Cool.

Now, I like both ideas. But the most intriguing part of this concept to me are the cards. I think the current Lockscreen wastes a ton of space, and cards or widgets would be the perfect way to fix that. Plus they’d give you information at a glance.

Apple will introduce new Lockscreen music controls in iOS 6.1, but unfortunately that seems to be the extent of their interest in the area for the moment. Here’s hoping that changes sometime between now, and the software’s next major iteration.

What do you think of the Lockscreen concept?