Live wallpapers have now become a defining feature of Android. They were added to the operating system in the 2.1 version of Android, which is also known as Éclair. Live wallpapers are home screens that can be customized and instead of being a simple background image, they can be customized to become interactive.

Bringing a very different user interface

Live wallpapers were brought to Android at a time when other operating systems, specifically the Apple iPhone were stuck with outdated user interfaces regarding background images. In iOS, Apple had not even added the ability to change the background images, let alone add interactive ones.

Live wallpapers also caused quite an interest from the developers’ community. Many websites have sprung up offering personally created live wallpapers which sometimes require a fee or are sometimes free. This feature has thus promoted further interest in Android and remains one of the most sought after customization features of Android.

What Live Wallpapers contain

Live wallpapers can be customized to take advantage of several inbuilt features of the device it runs on, such as the accelerometer, microphone and even the light sensor. This has brought several possibilities to the wallpapers that can be created. One example would be the Koi Fish Pond in which there is a pond in which there are several fish. If you touch the screen at one place, the fish feed will drop over there and all the fish will swarm around the feed.

Another example of live wallpaper would be a background that has falling snow flakes. If you tilt the phone, the falling snowflakes will respond accordingly and move towards the ground even if you tilt the phone. However, such a feature is only possible in phones which have a built-in accelerometer in them.

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