Amazon Prime Exclusive Phones are dropping lockscreen ads through an incoming software update that Amazon plans to push to its phones at some point this week. In addition to the lockscreen ads, the software update, which Amazon is keen to point out is free for consumers who own any of these phones, will also get rid of the offers that pop up on the lockscreen whenever a user would wake the device. For consumers who have thought about picking up an Amazon Prime Exclusive device to save a little bit of money thanks to Amazon’s discounts on those devices, the value on them just increased.
The big selling point on Amazon’s Prime Exclusive devices was that if consumers were willing to deal with the offers and ads on the lockscreen, they’d be able to buy a phone at a discount, which usually ended up being around the $50 mark. Those discounts are still going to hold true but the offers and ads are disappearing, so consumers have even more of an incentive to consider getting one of these phones. The only caveat, if you can call it that, is that you still need to be a Prime member. So once again, Amazon is giving people more of a reason to consider subscribing to its Prime service, which still grants you two-day shipping for free, and access to tons of movies and TV shows for free all through Prime Video.
This new change doesn’t just apply to Amazon’s existing Prime Exclusive phones, either. Amazon states that all future Prime Exclusive phones will also be exempt from offers and ads on the lockscreen, though it doesn’t make any note of when new Prime Exclusive devices will be hitting the market. The most recent devices to have been included in the Prime Exclusive lineup were the Moto X4 which Amazon added back on October 18, then a week later it added four phones from LG to the lineup, which included the LG G6, the LG G6 Plus, the LG Q6, and the LG X Charge. Amazon doesn’t mention any reasoning for this change, but it wasn’t too long ago that it was discovered the Prime Exclusive Moto G5 Plus had a security flaw thanks to on-body detection which allowed users to bypass the lockscreen through the view ad button, so it’s possible that this could have prompted the removal of the offers and ads.