TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) put out 3 live wallpapers to the Android Market on November 11th. They are all very different and very unique. Lets take a look.
Artemia: a soothing, yet spectacular undersea wallpaper
Artemia is the beautiful home of glowing creatures. Poke them to make them swim a bit faster or tap on the water to see bubbles. Try catching a glimpse of the largest creature in the ocean! Artemia changes dynamically throughout the day, and it even responds when you charge your Android device.
Artemia QR code or download directly from your Android phone
Artemia needs access to the accelerometer.
The world in Artemia will rotate when the device is tilted. Bubbles will appear when the device is shaken.
Blue Range: a fun, isometric and living landscape
This fun loving live wallpaper is full of animals with great personalities. Poke them and see what happens! You can affect land elevation and tilt trees and flowers by moving the phone. Watch darkness fall during the nighttime and don’t miss the cool sunbeam effect while charging your device…
Blue Range QR code or download directly from your Android phone
Blue Range needs access to the accelerometer.
The trees in Blue Range will lean with the device when tilted.
Retro Pixels: a game-like wallpaper with old school aesthetics
Explore a retro-style pixelated world. Flowers bloom when you receive text messages and calls, leaves fall when you shake the phone, and at night the moon rises. This wallpaper also has four hidden secrets. Will you be able to find them all? And can you really trust the duck?
Retro Pixels QR code or download directly from your Android phone
Retro Pixels needs access to sms/contact data and accelerometer.
The flowers in Retro Pixels will bloom when texts and calls are received. Leaves will fall off the tree when the device is shaken.
All three of these live wallpapers offer a new twist on interaction. I Have only found 2 of the secrets in Retro Pixels. Good luck with that one. If you are looking for some fun and unique live wallpapers I would suggest picking all three of these up. It couldn’t hurt after all they are FREE.
Now what about this “market experiment” business. Well we should take a look at TAT Home before I get into explaining that.
I got into a small twitter conversation with them this morning asking a couple questions that I wanted answers to.
Q: Since you are licensing it to operators, do we know who might have been licensed? Who will actually put this on a real phone?
A: Can’t tell you yet. but soon
Q: Why on earth would you take such a beautiful thing and make people buy a certain phone to enjoy it?
A: Why: nasty world of economics… 🙁
Q: Why not do 2 different versions? Oem and a different end user one. Maybe a slimmed down version.
A: Let’s see how well the wallpapers go. That is our “market experiment”.
Not really the answers I was hoping for. Although the final answer does lead one to think that if things go well with the wall papers, they might just be considering a launch of TAT Home in some form to be available.
Heres what I see happening. We already have HTC Sense “Rosie”, Motoblur, Touch Wiz, Dell Ui, Rachel UI (Sony Ericsson), Vanilla Android and possibly more that I am missing. Do we as end users need more OEM/Carrier UI’s? We are finally starting to a get a slim grip on the fragmentation issues on Android. If more companies restrict their designs and amazing UI’s to OEM and carrier use we as consumers will enjoy the eye candy that they offer for a specific device but will be stranded waiting on updates to newer versions of Android. Very much like we are already struggling to get updates today.
Have we created a situation for these companies that the Android Market isn’t safe enough for them to launch something in? Do we have to many talented people working to help the masses that companies don’t think there is enough room for acceptable profit unless it is launched through an OEM/Carrier that pays them directly? I am almost at a loss for words when I see some of the amazing things that can be done, but won’t be released for the masses. If I have to buy a specific phone just to have something I like I’m sorry to say its not going to happen with me.
How do you guys feel about this?
Via tat.se
