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Mock-up: iPhone's home screen with a background image

N

neven

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 10, 2006
815
0
Portland, OR
I was wondering why the Home view on the iPhone features a flat black background. It saves battery (it doesn't, it turns out), I suppose, but it's also a little boring. Here's my mock-up of what it would look like with images as the background. Keep in mind, this probably won't be available on the actual iPhone.

Apple's "blue swoosh" image. Nice, but feels like bastardized Mac OS X.
415093857_2cd2112be4_o.png


Apple's "Nemo" picture. Colorful, but too busy?
415093853_bb42b69106_o.png


This is a photo I took - it's a typical photo someone might use if you could make your own home screen background. Way too busy!
415093852_fa17271f7f_o.png


Maybe it's just my failure to find better images, but the black looks better than any of these to me.

P.S. It's been pointed out to me, and I now agree, that an all-black LCD screen uses MORE power than an all-white one.
 
The background on the iPhone is customizable.

When the Cingular Exec showed off his iPhone at the wireless show, he had a different background.
 
you should post the comments and names of the photo and then the photo, otherwise people get muddled.

I think it would be a good idea to have a wallpaper with no icons... but then nothing to touch. We'll see I guess. I like my full screen wallpapers at the moment.
 
This is the only CTIA pic I was able to find, and it really seems to show the home screen with the clownfish background (somewhat darkened?). Odd, I hadn't seen this anywhere else.

436408761_9659e03925.jpg



And here's a mock-up with a white background:

480416447_0e6cf58f67_o.png
 
Yeah the white background is pretty borring. I think for the image behind the buttons that something simple would work better than a photograph, whats the point of having an image when theres buttons all over it.
 
If you have a PSD with transparency so you can make a quick mockup, can you show us one with a black and white photo in the background?
 
Black actually doesn't save battery, as the screen has to physically 'close' all of its pixels (hence black), which uses power.

AppleMatt
 
Here's one with a grayscale background:

481679925_d21e17d144_o.jpg


And here's the Photoshop file if you want to play with it yourself (CS2 required)

iPhone.psd (1.8 MB)


P.S. If I may be permitted a very subjective digression, DP's images are just cheesy as hell.
 
I might just be being boring, but I think the black background looks better than every alternative posted so far in the thread.
 
Project, I agree and I said so in the top post. It's a more monolithic look, which comes in handy since the device itself is a little lacking in that department (the black "butt", the border around the front, the home button.. I'm not saying it's ugly, but it's not as unified as it could be)
 
neven said:
Here's one with a grayscale background:

And here's the Photoshop file if you want to play with it yourself (CS2 required)

iPhone.psd (1.8 MB)
Click to expand...

i didnt know safari had .psd viewing support! i was expecting it to auto download, not to show in a browser window!!

i do agree that the black looks a tad boring. Maybe you can have a standard image for the background, and then when you bring up the menu the images darkens. That would be an elegant way to solve it. Suppose a more elegant way is just to leave it black though...
 
donniedarko said:
However, which screen would be most efficient on battery life AM, perchance you know?
Click to expand...

It turns out that, contrary to intuition, an all-white screen uses the least power with a backlit display like the one on iPhone/iPod/Mac notebooks. The backlight has to be on ("all of it") regardless of what's shown on the screen, and blocking out a pixel by making it opaque actually uses a tiny bit of energy.

So, it almost doesn't matter what's on the screen, but black uses a little bit more power than white.

donniedarko said:
I'm not touching one till rev.b
Click to expand...

I will be multi-touching mine for 6 months before I get a 2g :)
 
To quote myself..
notsofatjames said:
i do agree that the black looks a tad boring. Maybe you can have a standard image for the background, and then when you bring up the menu the images darkens. That would be an elegant way to solve it. Suppose a more elegant way is just to leave it black though...
Click to expand...

So heres a mock up with tinted images (same as posted above)..
 

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i hope that tinted just makes it to the final product. I bet we'll get all excitied, then its not in the realease. It does seem to be the obvious thing to do. And as neven said, its dashboard-y, so its something Apple might do. Theres not a lot else you can do apart from darken them, unless its left black. Just have to wait and see...
 
sorry to bring up such an old thread, but thought it would be better than starting a new one. Just wanted to see if anyone else had any new good ideas for backgrounds. I doubt I am gonna change the home screen, I will leave it black, so I decided to do a quick crude template for the "slide to unlock" screen since this is the screen all the videos have shown a picture.

I rendered up a simple image in a 3d program while I think up something perfect, but this is what I have...

iphonemockupzf6.jpg



I have all my contacts, music w/ album art, and some pictures ready for the move, just need to finish finding pictures and a few videos, I think I am going to make a video with clips from a bunch of pixar movies and a few action movies with good 3d in them in after effects with some animation thrown in, I will post it tomorrow when i do it.
 
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