Meter is a live Android wallpaper that visualizes battery life, signal strength and notifications

Shawn Knight

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Staff member

Google’s Creative Lab division has developed a new live wallpaper that’s just as functional as it is aesthetically-pleasing. Known as Meter, the app uses a series of geometric shapes to convey various information about your Android device in real-time.

Meter is technically three wallpapers in one. The battery wallpaper visualizes battery life in a circle which gets smaller as you deplete juice. It also shows the remaining percentage just under the circle if you’re after more precision. The green triangle represents signal strength while the blue gradient bars signify the number of unseen notifications waiting for you.

The trio of wallpapers seemingly cycle at random when you unlock your device so you don't see the same information every time. It also uses your device’s accelerometer to manipulate the visuals as you tilt and move your device. As with any live wallpaper, do note that you’ll sacrifice a small amount of battery life to power the experience.

The original design and concept was crafted by Mikkel Koser with coding help from Jonas Jongejan and Kyle Philips.

Meter is available for Android smartphones and tablets through the Google Play Store free of charge. The app is also open source meaning developers are free to play around with the code to create their own app. Those interested in doing so can snag the source code over on GitHub.

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So, how much faster does this bored time killer app drain the battery ? seems like something new that lowers the lifetime of daily battery even more.
 
Meh. It sounds gimmicky to me but some people might love it. As mentioned earlier in the comments, all that info is available at the top of the screen.
 
"just as functional as it is aesthetically-pleasing"

OMG - I can't remember a time when I wanted to play with circles, triangles, and squares. There is nothing "aesthetically-pleasing" about them. They can go in the trash bin with Microsoft's square tiles.
 
"just as functional as it is aesthetically-pleasing"

OMG - I can't remember a time when I wanted to play with circles, triangles, and squares. There is nothing "aesthetically-pleasing" about them. They can go in the trash bin with Microsoft's square tiles.
I dunno. I dissed it earlier but it's piqued my interest a bit. I might just take it for a spin later on just to give it a look-see, that's if I remember of course.
 
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