Back in April of this year we started hearing about a new Chrome OS feature that was in the pipeline dubbed Easy Unlock. This feature allowed those who owned both a Chromebook and a smartphone to use one to unlock the other. In short, if you had a Chromebook and your smartphone was near the Chromebook then it would remain unlocked for you allowing for effortless use of the device. If you walked away then it was presumed the Chromebook would return to a locked state. In principle (and we noted this back in April), this is very similar to the ‘Trusted Device’ feature offered by Motorola on its Moto X and now Moto 360 devices. Although the Chrome function is expected to work with most modern smartphones.
Well, today it seems we have the first concrete(ish) proof that the feature is still coming and has actually made it to some users. Dan Campbell noted on his Google+ account that he indeed has starting receiving the new feature and uploaded a few images to show how it works and what you get. Whether or not the timing of this initial user roll-out has anything to do with Android 5.0 (Lollipop) is less clear. Maybe Lollipop will come with some pre-installed feature to make this even easier. Either way it does seem that feature is still on its way. One additional observation of the feature made by Dan Campbell (which was not known back in April) is that it seems once the devices connect and the smartphone unlocks the Chromebook the smartphone is also unlocked. Whether this is due to both devices unlocking each other or simply the smartphone unlocking both is unclear.
It is also not known at the moment if the smartphone unlocking feature is controllable so that only the Chromebook only unlocks leaving the smartphone locked (for instance if it is in your picket). It may get slightly annoying if your device automatically unlocks all the time. So have any of you noticed the feature rolling your way? Remember for it to be used you do need to own a Chromebook and it is presumed a reasonably modern smartphone. If you have noticed the feature then get in touch and let us know what you think?
