Review: Wallpaper

Wallpaper v2.3 | Published by Sean Heber | Via AppTap Source | Free

Overview

From the publisher's site: "[Wallpaper] shares your iPhone or iPod’s wallpaper image and lets you see what others are using for theirs. You can also tap on a wallpaper and claim it as your own."

Review

I very much like the idea of this program. Implemented properly, it could be a fun community for finding and sharing wallpaper that interest you. However, this was not implemented properly. Still not a bad program, but not what I had in mind. The program immediately takes you into full-screen viewing of someone's wallpaper when you open it, and asks if you'd like to share your own. Then, every five seconds, a new wallpaper appears. If you tap on a wallpaper, you have the option to add it to your wallpaper gallery, set it as your wallpaper, leave a comment, or report as inappropriate. This leads to a rather random viewing experience. I jotted down ten consecutive viewed wallpapers, and saw:

• A tribal dragon on a stylized Italian flag
• Sand
• The front end of a BMW
• Plush cows in a meadow
• Some guy playing tennis
• A muddy girl in her underwear chest-bumping a soccer ball (just a minute while I save that one... ok.)
• A techinicolor collage
• The CIA logo
• Tinkerbell
• The Portal logo

Some of the other random wallpapers I saw:

So, there you go. It's a fun program for killing some time and seeing what people have on their slider screens, but not much use as a practical utility for finding a new wallpaper. It does bear mention that the programmer did this as part of an attempt to make one iPhone app every DAY for a month, and in that regard it's pretty impressive.

Summary

This is the iPod Shuffle of wallpaper programs, and I'm waiting for the iPod. Usability: 4 / 5 Value: 3 / 5 Utility: 3 / 5 Aesthetics: 4 / 5

Overall Rating: 3.5 / 5

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