Wallpaper woes (Android)

Pawnless Endgame · 26 Aug 2012 at 17:10

I use a drawing package on the PC to size my image to the phone's resolution, keep it as a PNG, then copy it over to the phone. However, when set as the background, it shows very blocky. This is regardless of 480x800 images for portrait use or 1200x800 used across 5 desktops. This also happened on my old Android phone which had a 240x400 screen. Thought the problem would have been fixable in an Android update but it affects 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 and 4.0.

Never had this problem on Windows/Linux PCs or on Symbian phones.

Any ideas? Thanks.

Grrrrr · 26 Aug 2012 at 17:29

What phone? What colour depth do you save the pictures as? Have you tried something like quickpic to set the wallpaper instead of stock?

Pawnless Endgame · 26 Aug 2012 at 17:57

1st phone was Samsung Galaxy Apollo @ 240x400 (Android 2.1 & 2.2)
2nd phone was Samsung Galaxy SII @ 480x800 (Android 2.3 & 4.0)

I use normal 16.7M (24-bit) colour PNG, no alpha, and have always conformed to the screen res of the phone at that time. Same went with Symbian phones going as far back as 2004. Never been a problem until Android.

P.S. Didn't know there were 3rd-party wallpaper setting apps, so will have a nose for Quickpic.

reflux · 26 Aug 2012 at 18:15

Wallpaper Set and Save always did the trick for me in the old days. But I've had no trouble since 2.3 setting wallpapers (and I go through a LOT of wallpapers).

SpaghettiOs · 26 Aug 2012 at 19:18

When you say blocky, do you mean pixellated or gradient banding?

Pawnless Endgame · 26 Aug 2012 at 19:58

Blocky as in pixellated.

1st pic would the ideal pic:

However, it turns out like this:

So it would still be 800 in height but it goes blocky like that. Have tried Quickpic but to no avail. Does it to all pics including photographs.

chiggz · 27 Aug 2012 at 07:15

Not sure if you've covered this, but the ideal wallpaper size is not the same as the screen size due to the wallpaper transforming with the "desktops".

Edit: looks like you haven't covered this. Google should help - but the ideal wallpaper size may differ from Android 2.3 to 4.0/4.1. E.g. http://androidforums.com/android-themes/440435-what-size-suitable-galaxy-s2.html

Kenai · 27 Aug 2012 at 09:36

I thought on the S2 the 'correct' size for scrolling wallpapers was 960x800?

That's what all of mine are and they display perfectly. They're also all Jpeg rather than PNG.

Pawnless Endgame · 27 Aug 2012 at 22:46

Thanks guys. The 960x800 res did the trick. I just didn't know that the x axis had to be 960 when spanned across 5 desktops. Obviously the lark doesn't crop too well if you're using 800 x something else. This was using the standard Android gallery program although I gotta admit that I do like that Quickpic program too - very quick as the name implies.

My eyesight may be bad, but I still take PNG over JPG any day wherever it's possible.

Thanks again.

Kenai · 28 Aug 2012 at 13:25

Nowt wrong with Jpeg provided you're saving them at a decent quality!

Ksanti · 28 Aug 2012 at 14:49

Yeah it just comes down to file sizes really and that makes next to no difference with current storage capacities - Jpeg for high resolution photos/high detail work, png for graphics, basically.