Wave – a sweet Live Wallpaper app for Android, make your background like PlayStation 3
by Paul Wilks
Oct 9, 2012 11:31 AM –
Install
Wave is a highly configurable and elegant live wallpaper for your Android device. Featuring a great choice of presets plus a number of options to further personalize the wallpaper, it’s an app that looks great and is incredibly smooth. Not a million miles away from Playstation3′s ‘wave’ screen, it’s subtle enough not to look tacky, yet is still colourful and detailed.
Price: Free, $1.49 for the full version
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Looks subtle, but really good!
- Smooth and rich experience!
- Lots of presets to try out!
- Loads of additional settings and preferences!
- Doesn’t destroy battery as much as other LWP’s!
Features:
Wave is a great live wallpaper that displays a colourful and smooth wave right across your Android homescreen. The animation is incredibly fluid and rich with colour and movement. The app comes with a flurry of presets, including: Glow, Stripes, Surface, Blank, PS3, Feather, Electric Shock, Evolve VL and Zick. You can additionally choose between an assortment of differing colours including a Google theme and Ice Cream Sandwich palette. If none of these suit you however, just head to the bottom of the settings screen and enable customised colours.
Furthermore, colour and presets are only just the beginning. You can also adjust the frames per second, zoom the effects, configure image quality, adjust the vertical position of the wave itself, type of wave, number of graphs, speeds, amplitude, stretch, form factor and complexity! There’s plenty to choose from so it’s definitely a live wallpaper that’s worth experimenting with as there are some awesome combinations to try out.
It’s rare you identify a live wallpaper that not only looks great but offers quite this range of customization the list just seems to go on and on. While it is a live wallpaper and so will also suck a little more battery than static wallpapers, it’s not going to kill your battery dead in no time at all like some live wallpapers do. The main background colour is black which subsequently helps reduce battery usage. Ultimately, however, the more subtle the waves you create, the better your battery life will be using Wave.
I really like simple and understated wallpapers, and Wave more or less allows you to create a great-looking and relatively low-impact wallpaper which will pretty much compliment any homescreen. The full version reviewed here offers loads of options, but definitely check out the free version first to get an idea of the look and feel of the app.
Watch on Mobile
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Wave – Sample display (2)
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Wave – Sample display (3)
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Wave – Sample display (4)
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Wave – Sample display (5)
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Wave – Sample display (6)
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Wave – Sample display
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Wave – Select live wallpaper
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Wave – Presets
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Wave – Colour format
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Wave – Colour format
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Wave – Install settings
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Wave – Stretch settings
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Wave – Settings
Usefulness:
For brightening up your homescreen background, Wave is a great example of an understated yet highly customisable and great looking live wallpaper.
Ease of Use:
There are lots of options to pore over and experiment with, but if you’re familiar with Android menus you will not find this too difficult to use.
You get to and set any supported live wallpaper on Android by…
Android Advice™ & Help: Setting Live Wallpapers:
- Long-press (hold for 2 or more seconds) anywhere on an empty space on the homescreen.
- Choose “Live Wallpaper”.
- Choose the wallpaper of choice.
- (If applicable) configure the wallpaper settings and preview your results.
- Tap “Set Wallpaper”.
Frequently Used:
Wave will essentially run in the background whenever you are using your Android device, thus greet you every time you unlock your phone as it will be the background.
Interface:
The menu interface is simple and easy to understand. The wallpaper itself looks pretty sublime and is very configurable with hundreds of different combinations available.