Like many geeks, one of the first things I like to do after purchasing new technology is finding its settings and customizing it to make it my own. Such is the case after I purchased the Motorola Droid-X yesterday.
First off, the Droid-X is amazing — a huge change of pace from my previous phone, the Blackberry Tour. The default wallpaper sets are sharp, but that’s exactly what they are: defaults. The live wallpapers are slick also (Especially the Mario Live Wallpaper), but they consume more battery power.
The viewing resolution of a Droid-X is 480×854 pixels. However, if you want to make a wallpaper for the phone, you will need to create an image that is 960×854.
This is due to the seven different panels that a user can customize. From the home screen, a user simply needs to flick left or right to view the other panels. As they move around, however, the wallpaper shuffles along as well, creating an interesting effect of breadth.
This is how it breaks down. We’ll start with the overall wallpaper image:
Size: 960x854 pixels
As you move left or right, the screen moves over in increments of 80px.
The viewable panel areas are highlighted in red.
Home Panel
Panel 2
Panel 2
Panel 2
Panel 5
Panel 6
Panel 7
Knowing this information, you should be able to make some really creative designs for the Droid-X.
Thanks a lot, this helped. I was wondering why it didn’t work when I created 480 x 854 images
Glad to hear, Martin! It was tough to wrap our heads around the weird scrolling wallpaper as well…
Thank you Joey! The Technical experts at Verizon were no help with those specs! I am curious…do you know what file type is best to save your design as?
thank you, kevin! i’m glad to be of help (especially the fact that i knew something verizon didn’t).
as for the file type, i just used a jpg and it looks as clean as clean can be on my phone
Thanks for the info. I’m working on the icon placements as well to know what will be visible. I’d love it if you had that already but if not I can figure it or and let you know if you wasn’t that info.
Thanks, Kevin.
The thought of icon placement didn’t hit me, actually. Interesting — are you going to try to incorporate the placements with the wallpaper?
I think that would be a cool idea, but you have to remember that when you scroll through your different panels, the icons move faster than the wallpaper.
Thanks for the info. I made a solid black .jpg as a test and it works fine. One thing I did not see is where the “wallpaper” folder is on the Droid X. As a work around I copied the .jpg into my “DCIM\Camera” folder then from the settings menu I can select it as wallpaper from my camera roll. Downside to this is that a solid black image is now in my camera roll and would show up if I did a slideshow. Is there a better way to add a custom wallpaper?
What I did was email it to myself (gmail), then downloaded the image. It will now show up in “All Photos,” but not in the “Camera roll”
This helped a ton…also I incorporated my icon placements to accentuate my background and it looks killer!! Thanks for the help guys!
I’m curious to see what that looks like: wanna send me a pic to joey@mattersofgrey.com?
Thank you. This is the best description I’ve seen thus far.
This is perfect! Exactly what I needed…. now to see if I can come up with anything cool to take advantage of these specs?
Glad to hear! Hit us up if you come up with a cool design!
How do I go about making a wallpaper that is 960X854. What programs are good for editing them.
Thanks
for simple cropping/resizing, i like using imagesizer. it’s a free AIR application [http://www.psyked.co.uk/imagesizer-air-application]
otherwise, there’s always the standards: photoshop or gimp
i’ve found that interfacelift.com is a good resource for wallpapers as well — they just recently started making wallpapers sized for android phones!
How can I change the resolution for wallpaper to fit on wallpaper as saving the picture from online? I’m having difficult with this. Please reply asap, thanks.
@andrew what I’ve done is download images equal to or wider than 960 pixels and equal to or taller than 854 pixels. then when you are setting the wallpaper, you use two fingers to expand the “crop box”
let me know if that makes any sense — i might need to create a new tutorial on that…
Just got a Droid X and wanted to start learning how to make my own wallpapers as well as set up websites with smartphones in mind.
I’m wondering at what resolution should the wallpapers be made at? 72 dpi as in the case of web graphics or a higher res???
All the wallpapers I’ve made for my phone have been at 72dpi and they look just fine.
What a great post – thank you! Couldn’t figure out the width res. I do have one question… my designs are still getting blown up (cut off at the top and bottom). To double the previous question, should the res of the image be something other than the standard 72 dpi? That’s the only thing I can think of that would cause this issue. Any ideas are welcome. Thanks again!
Thanks Grant!
If you use the exact dimensions for the image: 960×854 at the standard 72dpi, you should be good.
What dpi are you using that causes the image to cut off on the top and bottom?
My image size details in PS:
W 960
H 854
——–
W 13.333 in
H 11.861 in
Res 72
resample image (bicubic) is checked.
interesting… i could test it out on my phone if you want — you can send it to joey@mattersofgrey.com
Joey, thanks so much for the response. I figured it out the other day, although my Droid X seems to be acting inconsistent. I found that on my 3rd attempt, it presented me with a resizing window with the buttons “Save” and “Discard” on it. It hadn’t done that previously, but was automatically cropping my image. In the resizing window, I expanded the crop box to include the whole image, and wa-lah, it’s perfect. Why the default is set to crop even a perfectly sized image is odd. Anyway, thanks so much for the help! I’ll might send you my crazy wallpaper anyway as a thank you.
Brilliant post! Short, simple, & illustrated with helpful & informative pics. Well done!
This is also known as parallax scrolling – a technique that was used all the time in 8-bit and 16-bit games =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling
Is there anyway to set your wallpaper as a single 480×854 picture that stays stagnant from window to window?
Hey John –
Have you created the 480×854 pixel image? I would assume that would prevent it from scrolling.