Your Guide To Make Your Android Phone Come Alive

Android-based mobiles phones and tablets have been flooding the market of late. The operating system is an open-source Linux-based program and is free for use. Not only can the operating system be tweaked for performance, but it can also be customized for eye candy. Several Android customization applications are available in the Android Market in both free and paid versions. One visual customization application that everybody loves to have on their Android devices is live animated wallpapers.

Although live wallpapers are known to consuming a significant amount of battery life, it depends purely on the widgets included within them. Live wallpaper applications are available on the Android Market and they are either free or fairly expensive. In this workshop, we’ll show you how to create your own custom animated live wallpapers and download them to your Android device for free.

Getting Started

Log on to the www.ownskin.com. The website is designed to help you create your own personalized live wallpapers online and share them or download them to your Android devices. You’ll first to register yourself on the site, which is free. Once registered, your dashboard will give you options to create live wallpapers and watch a few video tutorials on how you can create one yourself. There is also a section that highlights the live wallpapers you have created. To begin creating your own wallpaper, click on the ‘Create Livewallpaper’ icon. Note: you will require the latest Flash 10.1 update installed on your PC. If you don’t have it, you can freely download an update from www.adobe.com.

Once you have signed in, on the first screen, click on the screen resolution of your Android device. The options are ‘240x320’, ‘240x400’, ‘320x480’, ‘480x800’, ‘480x854’ and ‘600x1024’. If you don’t know your screen resolution, click on the link just below the list of the available handset models. Once you have clicked on the resolution type, you will be shown the previous wallpapers created by you, if any. Click on the ‘Create New’ button for a new one. A new window will pop up asking you to upload an image of your choice in JPG, JPEG, GIF or PNG format. Browse to the required image and click on ‘Open’. The next window will highlight the area you need to crop so that your picture can fit on your screen. Crop the picture accordingly and click on the ‘Save’ button.

Choosing and editing images

Give it a random name tag of your choice. Select the ‘Share’ checkbox if you wish to share your creations with others online. In the new window towards the extreme top-right corner, you can select the number of desktops you want your live wall paper to be spread out on. You can choose between one and seven pages. Each page can be customized for different widgets. The slider on the bottom can help you show the current desktop.

Next, you can select animated stickers of your choice by clicking on the ‘Stickers’ button below. You can only choose from a few characters, props, designs and graphics listed there. Select any number of stickers and place them on your screens as per your choice. You can also resize and edit the stickers to your liking. Next, you can select an analog clock of your choice. These are small clock widgets of different types, which will update in real time by synchronizing with your device’s clock. Two pages of cool animated clock widgets are available at your disposal. Select, resize and place them on your desktop as you like. You can also choose to edit the settings for each widget for wrap-around, sound and movement options. You can also add a digital clock if you wish. In a

similar manner the other widgets, such as calendar, battery icons, compass and photos can also be applied. Note: The more widgets with real-time updates you add, the more battery they will use up, so choose smartly. If you do end up selecting too many, you can always edit the wallpapers at a later time.

Adding widgets

A ‘Play’ button is available at the right of the window using which you can see the wallpaper work before creating the final APK file. If you are satisfied with your work, simply click on the ‘Save’ button. You will be asked for details, such as wallpaper name, description, tags, category and permission to share with other users on the Android Market. Fill in the details and click on ‘Submit’. Once you have created the live wallpaper, it is now time to download the APK file onto your Android device.

For this, you will need the Ownskin application installed on your Android device. All you have to do is download the free DIY Live Wallpaper app or simply search for ‘Ownskin’ on the Android Market and install it on your phone. Once installed, you will need to login using the same credentials you entered on the website. In the application on your phone, click on ‘Download’ and then ‘Sort’ and choose ‘My Creation’ from the list. This will take you to the ‘Login’ page. After logging in, you will see the list of wallpapers you had created on the website.

And that's it

Click on the wallpaper and it will download it to your device. Set it and enjoy your wallpaper. You can also edit the widgets on your device after downloading.