The Android wallpaper system is a bad design. Bad.

I'd love to toss out 10 or 20 wallpapers for Android devices, but there's a major challenge: size.

Of course there are different screen sizes. PC's have that issue too, it's nothing new. That's not the real problem.

The problem is that even if you know that your device (say a 1024x600 Android tablet) has a certain resolution screen, it doesn't use that size wallpaper.

That's right folks, the wallpaper does NOT match the screen size. It's assumed to be larger. Ok, that doesn't sound that bad. Oh, and it gets displayed and clipped differently depending on landscape or portrait mode, and even depending on the device.

For instance, typically you want something 1.5 times wider than your screen to handle the multiple home screens. If I use a tablet in landscape mode, that means I want an image that's 1536 x 600, right? No, you're going to need 1536 x 1024 because when you turn the device it's going to use the 1024 wallpaper height. That means for 90% of your viewing pleasure, the bottom 60% of the wallpaper will be cut off because you're in landscape. When you flip to portrait, you'll get to see that bit.

Now, add in the complication that different devices clip different ways. For instance I understand the Galaxy Tab cuts both the top and bottom of the image off, whereas my Viewsonic G clips it all from the bottom of the image.

This means that most nature landscape images just won't work. In landscape mode you'd only see the sky, and in portrait mode you miss the sides of the image. Look closely at the two Galaxy Tab images here, notice how both the top and bottom of the image is cut off in landscape, apparently losing more at the bottom than top. Notice in portrait how the island is on the right side of the screen. That's the same background image. As you can see, it works with that image because the focal point (the island) is so small, and the image was specifically designed for the way the Tab cuts off pieces of the image.

The best way to handle this is wallpapers that are simply abstract. So, no family photos, no beautiful landscapes, no little cottage you and your spouse visited on your honeymoon. Swirls and patterns are the images of choice. If there's going to be a focal point, you can't have it directly in the center of the image, and it can't be very large.

Then again, a "Live" wallpaper solves this by rendering on the fly with animation. With live wallpapers you get such things as grass that blows in the breeze or bubbles that float across the screen.