Fresh Leaves – visually stunning Live Wallpaper!
by Paul Wilks
May 21, 2012 8:15 AM –
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Fresh Leaves is a gorgeous and detailed live wallpaper for supporting Android devices. It’s not very often a live wallpaper captures our eyes long enough to make a full review, but this is an absolute exception. Fresh Leaves is beautiful and realistic, turning your homescreen into a crisp and vibrant window of light, rain, leaves and blossom effects. If you like live wallpapers, this is one you just have to check out.
Price: $0.99
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Incredibly detailed and original!
- Lots of customisations and tweaks to make!
- Rotates beautifully as you change screens!
Cons
- Doesn’t work on Sense 4.0, this might be more of a HTC issue however.
Features:
It’s rare we review a live wallpaper. Because such things are usually quite a personal affair, it’s tricky to declare one wallpaper better than an other. Some people like flickering lights, live weather animations, lava orbs and Matrix-style ‘rain’ while other people just like pictures of big guns. However, sometimes live wallpapers come along that just demand notice, and Fresh Leaves is one of them.
Fresh Leaves is essentially a live wallpaper of leaves moving gently in a breeze, with options to add rain and blossom (sakura). While this sounds relatively simple, the detail involved is amazing. The colours and details are rich and bright, when touching the screen light flickers and glows under your fingers, creating a unique and stunning effect that looks amazing. Check the video below for a great demo.
Watch on Mobile
There are several presets, but then you can customise your own if you wish. You can select different leaf types, different backgrounds, rain and blossom levels, as well as selecting options which portray either a daytime or night-time theme. The point at which my jaw dropped was when you swipe from side to side, changing your homescreen. When you do this, the wallpaper rotates slightly, giving a sublime 3D perspective which works incredibly well with a bright high-resolution screen.
There is a tiny flaw in that it doesn’t seem to work well with HTC Sense 4.0, which makes the wallpaper glitchy. I had to switch to a different launcher on my HTC One X (I used Apex Launcher) for it to work as it should, but it’s definitely worth it. While wallpapers are most certainly personal things, there is enough customisation here to change the look quite a bit. So, if you like live wallpapers (and don’t mind that they do suck you battery a little harder than static images) this is one you really have to try out.
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Fresh Leaves – Various settings and results
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Fresh Leaves – Select wallpaper
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Fresh Leaves – Live wallpaper view
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Fresh Leaves – View of leaves slightly rotates
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Fresh Leaves – Darker look, with rain
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Fresh Leaves – Pre-defined themes
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Fresh Leaves – Leaves type
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Fresh Leaves – Background type
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Fresh Leaves – Settings 1
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Fresh Leaves – Settings 2
Usefulness:
If you want to give your homescreen a real wow-factor, this is just the wallpaper to do it. There is a wide range of settings and customisations, you can alter and tweak it in lots of ways.
Ease of Use:
The menu system behind the wallpaper itself is relatively straightforward and you can try different combinations out before you confirm you want it for your wallpaper.
Frequently Used:
Every time you use your phone it runs in the background. I personally turn the LWP off if I’m out and about (and subsequently away from a charging point) but aside from this I have it running all the time.
Interface:
The screen displays flashes of light when you touch it, like the refection of a distant bolt of lightning flash. It’s really detailed and looks stunning.