Geeky, Functional, and Fun Live Wallpapers
I got my Android 2.1 OTA upgrade yesterday, but it came at a busy time during a busy week for me, so I haven’t had a chance to really explore the changes enough to tell you anything you haven’t already read in our “What to Expect from Android 2.1 Update” post.
The one thing I did start exploring a bit is the Live Wallpapers. Live Wallpapers are backgrounds that interact with information on your phone or movement or touch to create a visually-pleasing display instead of having a static image on your phone’s desktop. I honestly found the built-in live wallpapers to be underwhelming, but decided to search in the Market to see if anyone had developed cooler ones yet. More have been published each time I’ve checked, so I’m sure by this time next week, there will be many more exciting options.
I wanted a Live Wallpaper that did something useful, not just pretty, so I went in search of a background that could give me information. There are some that show visualizations of music you’re playing, or that use your GPS location to change the display, but the two I like best so far are LogCat Live Wallpaper and Swarm Indicators.
LogCat Live Wallpaper is for true Geeks. It displays the log of activities your phone is doing in real-time. (You can also see the new 2.1 Weather & News widget in this screenshot.)
There is a Lite version to try out, but it cuts off the text and doesn’t allow you to scroll up and down to see past activity, and has limited display options – but it’s good that they offer a free trial. The full version is displayed in the image above and costs .50 euros (about 67 cents). It wraps the text so you can see the full log messages, and allows you to customize how it is displayed.
Most of the information scrolling by in LogCat is hard to decipher, especially if you’re not an Android developer, but it does give you hints at what your phone is doing “behind the scenes”. It is functional, but mostly just fun, and shows off your true geekiness!
Swarm Indicators is an artistic display of moving dots and lines which also gives you information about your GSM signal strength, battery life, and WiFi signal strength. Each “swarm” represents one of these pieces of data, and its color changes to indicate when the data changes (for instance, one of the swarms will turn red when the battery is low).
You can customize the colors, but you can’t adjust the speed of the swarm – which I think is the biggest downside. I can’t look at my phone for long when the swarm is zooming around behind my icons – it is little too fast & wild for me. If they offer a version that has a calm, slowly moving swarm, I’ll consider installing it again! Swarm Indicators costs .65 UK pounds (about 99 cents).
I haven’t tried these yet, but they’re highly rated and look promising:
- Wallpaper of Life – based on John Conway’s Game of Life
- Show Off (Your Live Wallpaper) – hides your icons and widgets so you can clearly view your live wallpaper
Do you have a favorite Live Wallpaper yet? Tell us about it in the comments!
Cell Phones & Accessories on Amazon
Hello Renee,
Thanks for the great review!
We’ve taken your comments into account, and have released a new update that allows the user to set the swarm size and speed!
The new update also includes other performance enhancements and bug fixes. This version should now use less battery power too.
We hope you enjoy the latest version, should you choose to give it a go!
Cheers!
Emergent Developers.
Great, thanks! I haven’t used a live wallpaper in a while now, but I’ll try it out again soon!