CallLock May Be a Workaround for Those With Proximity Sensor Issues

It’s no secret that even after a few firmware updates, the proximity sensor issues are still a problem for a lot of people. Although I’m not a big talker, I still occasionally experience frustrating proximity sensor issues.

The proximity sensor is what the iPhone uses to know whether or not you are on a call. Its purpose is to sense your face, and disable the touch screen so that you don’t inadvertently “face dial” or hang up on your caller.

CallLock aims to circumvent the issue by locking the iPhone altogether when on a call, but does it work?

That really depends on how you use your iPhone. The tweak works by locking your phone, which of course completely disables the touch screen until you unlock it. Normally when you press your sleep button during a call to lock your phone, it disconnects the call. What CallLock tries to do is prevent this from happening.

The reason Apple disabled locking your phone during a call is because you would no longer have access to any of the normal call functions, like, say, hanging up. That’s one of the caveats of CallLock, because it prevents you from doing anything else but talking while on a call. Sure, you can unlock the phone, but that can get pretty annoying after a while, and sort of defeats the purpose.

Since CallLock is a tweak, you won’t find any new apps on your Home screen, but you will find a new entry in your settings that lets you switch between manual and automatic mode. Manual mode means that you must press the sleep button to lock your phone during the call, while automatic tries to automatically lock your phone upon connecting a call.

Manual mode works pretty much as advertised, but Automatic mode definitely still needs some work. More often than not, the call would simply disconnect upon dialing when using automatic mode. Considering this is version 1.0 of the tweak, it’s likely that we’ll see refinements over time.

Though CallLock certainly isn’t a solution to a problem that has gone on for too long, it could be a viable workaround if you’re willing to put up with some of its shortcomings. It’s available for $.99 cents on the Cydia store for jailbroken iPhones.

Are you still having proximity sensor issues, and if so, how are you dealing with it?

UPDATE: CallLock was just updated with version 1.0.2, and it fixes my gripes about the automatic mode. I tried about 10 different calls, and it worked as advertised each time, with no dropped calls. With that in mind, I definitely recommend giving this tweak a shot if you suffer from consistant proximity sensor issues.