5 Beautiful Android Live Wallpapers that Won’t Kill Your Battery

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 10 Mar 2014

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Google added live wallpapers to Android in version 2.1, which first appeared on the venerable Nexus One. At the time, it was little more than a curiosity, a gimmick. Most live wallpapers guzzled battery life, which was too flashy to move around behind your icons. Four years later, live wallpapers have evolved. Something that can make your phone feel alive and personal without apparent drawbacks. Let’s check out five live wallpapers that are as easy on the battery as on the eyes.

Muzei

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This live wallpaper is a newer arrival in the Play Store. It does operate a bit different from other apps in the category. Muzei is a transliteration of the Russian word музей, meaning museum. And pulls in beautiful high-resolution images and rotates them in your background. The live part of the wallpaper comes in the way it applies dim and blurs filters. Which keeps the home screen from being too busy. You can double-tap any time to see the unblurred image for a few seconds. Perhaps the best thing about Muzei is the excellent ecosystem of extensions that add new sources of ideas. There’s always something new with Muzei. It’s completely free in Play.

Muzei

Custom Beam

The Custom Beam live wallpaper has been included in most builds of Android. Since Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s easy on the battery and doesn’t get in the way of icons too much. It could be more exciting and have more options. A good alternative is Custom Beam, allows you to produce the same effect. And with all manner of variables to tweak. If you don’t like the blue/purple default look, you can change it to anything you want. Custom Beam includes settings for the speed of the animation. The shape of the lens flare effects, and even the angle of the color gradient. It can change based on your battery state as a subtle reminder it’s time to plug in. The basic color-changing features are free. It will cost $1.49 to unlock everything else.

Custom Beam

Mountains Now

Now is at the center of Google’s Android plans. The art style seems prevalent in everything it does. The Mountains Now live wallpaper images. What it would be like if that cute little Now header image came to life. And took over your home screen. The result, as you might imagine, is adorable. Little ships float past, mountains appear in the foreground, and the clouds drift onward as your perspective shifts. The real killer feature of Mountains Now is that it can use your device’s gyroscope. And produce a parallax effect as the phone is tilted. Even with the animation speed motion sensing turned up, I never see Mountains Now on my battery monitor. The clean lines and solid colors are separate from your icons, too. The full app costs $1.63, but there is a free version with a subset of the features.

Mountains Now

Wave

The Wave live wallpaper is a bit like Custom Beam in overflowing with settings. It produces a series of smooth waves and lines of glowing energy that undulate across the screen. It’s vaguely reminiscent of the background you see on a Playstation 3. The waves’ colors, speed, and magnitude can be altered to produce very different effects. Wave includes such extensive settings, you can easily tune it to your device. It’s smooth and power efficient. Wave can look impressive even at a modest frame rate with the detail level turned down. Higher settings have never caused me any unacceptable battery drain. Wave costs $1.49 in Play, but there’s a free trial too.

Wave

Space Colony

Space Colony from Maxelus is the most detailed live wallpaper on this list. It’s shockingly easy on the battery. This wallpaper depicts a futuristic skyline shrouded in glowing fog on your home screen. You can choose from various backdrops, color schemes, and lighting effects. The camera slowly pans across the sky and slides through the narrow gaps between the glowing towers. You can change the camera’s path at any time with a quick double-tap on the screen. Even with a reasonable frame rate, this live wallpaper seldom causes any detectable battery drain. You’ll need to drop $1.95 via an in-app purchase for the full raft of settings.