>>1742329I can't offer too much advice on your icons (I'm personally not a fan of rounded nor square icons), but I can tell you that you can unlock your phone without a slider widget.
I have Auto Hide Soft Keys and by playing with some widget locker settings, I only need to double-tap where my home button is. One to make my home button visible, and tap to actually use it.
The downside though, is that you sacrifice security and unless you play with the Auto Hide Key shortcuts, it'll take you directly to your homescreen. I normally drag up to go into my recent apps (the multi-task/task manager) to go back to an app from the lockscreen.
TL;DR yes you can with auto-hide keys and widget locker at the cost of security
