Gadgetory

when it comes to Samsung phones there's really only two camps those that love the TouchWiz interface and those that absolutely hate it but what if you could have the best of both worlds all the software features that you know and love but with plenty of customization potential as well I'm Chris Carlin with Android authority here to take a closer look at Samsung's new advanced UI called good luck at first glance good luck looks pretty standard with a clock up top and notifications in the middle but you'll notice that at the bottom we have a lot more than the usual two lockscreen app shortcuts right now I've got five shortcuts visible at the bottom but swiping up reveals even more good luck can actually store up to 20 app shortcuts right on your lockscreen this thing's called bad tray and it's completely customizable so you can keep all your favorite apps in the top row with the rest always just to swipe away you'll still need to unlock your phone to launch them fully but it's a pretty sweet time saver and a really nice feature for an official Samsung interface at the other end of the screen things look pretty normal too but again there's a lot more going on than meets the eye when we expand a notification you'll see a totally redesigned notifications panel we've got status bar icons pulled straight from stock Android and a really nice material design series of quick settings toggles the other big noticeable change here is the presence of two tabs all and keep swiping a notification in all to the left will dismiss it but swiping to the right will add it to the keep tab keep is an optional feature of good luck that provides a kind of holding area for notifications you may not have time for now but don't necessarily want to dismiss entirely or have clogging up your main notifications area it can be a really handy way of prioritizing notifications without ever having to unlock your phone so when you have the time the important stuff is waiting for you the good lock provides even more options for handling notifications so you can categorize a particular type of notification so it will appear in grouped folders in future kind of the way Gmail does it with social and promotions you can also snooze notifications for later now a nice visa is the review appearance of lock screen widgets neatly hidden behind the clock where you can add multiple widgets for quick access continuing the influence from stock Android the good lock quick settings panel looks like it comes straight from a nexus which begs the question what exactly is Samsung up to here while it's possible that Samsung is using good lock as a kind of testing ground for what may one day replace TouchWiz it's also just as likely that it is just an experimental UI being used to provide an alternative to what comes out of the box but with monthly updates and a lot of attention being paid to user feedback Samsung is absolutely going about it in the right way another big visual change appears in the recent apps menu where the marshmallow rolodex has been replaced by a list our app shortcuts appear at the bottom and you can still open up the full app tray and if you don't like happening it here you can easily remove it personally I find the new version to be much faster but the lack of a preview card won't appeal to everybody and of course if you prefer the old style of recent apps you can easily choose that from the settings because there's so many more options in regular touch wiz good lob gets its own dedicated menu this is because good lock installs as an update to the system UI but it's limited to only certain parts of the interface the good news about this is that it's also very easy to uninstall if you want to return everything to normal the Advanced Settings menu here provides access to various options for the multitasking menu blur effect and of course the app tray and if you're not a particular fan of having separated tabs in the notification shade you can disable key to remove the split view send other nice feature that Samsung has brought in based on user feedback the last major part of good lock is called routines and they're the reason why the interface accent color has been changing continually throughout this video so to give you an example let's dive in and create one routines are kind of like do not disturb mode but they're much more powerful than that they can be toggled on and off like alarms and you'll see the color scheme change depending on which routine is currently running now the first thing to do when creating a routine is to give it a name based on the situation that you want to create it for next you'll have to give it a location and then add a start and end time for it just like do-not-disturb unfortunately for now you can only set times but not days of the week but hopefully that will change in the near future next we choose a few basic settings for our routine like what audio settings we'll have while it's running and then we choose a clock style we like from the relatively short number of options hopefully that will increase in future as well color schemes come next which you can choose from huge color wheel and if you're not into the brighter colors which select the accents automatically you can go or monochrome on the far left last stage is layout you can add a widget that will hide behind the lockscreen clock and you can add more than one if you want to you can also decide whether the widget will be accessible from a secure lock screen or not which is pretty handy if it's something like email the checkboxes here let you decide what content will appear on your lock screen including the notifications and app tray and that's all there is to it your interface colors will now change automatically as each new routine is activated that's a quick look at Samsung's new advanced UI a pretty intriguing look at what TouchWiz may one day become but with its monthly updates community driven features and customization potential it feels more like a custom ROM than it does a manufacturer skin whatever is ultimately going on we're pretty excited to see where Samsung takes good luck in the future and we definitely recommend that you check it out if those comments below to let us know your thoughts on good luck and on TouchWiz of course hit that like button if you've enjoyed this video and don't forget to subscribe to android authority for more videos like this one because we are your source for all things Android