How to Add Live Animation on Android Homescreen without affecting battery life and phone performance

[Raj]

Android offer us various options to customize our home screen and make it more amazing. Today I am going to give you a few shorts tips through which you can have a animated desktop screen. And this will not put any impact on the battery life or on the ram usage. But it is necessary that if you must have a device that has a 512MB ram or higher. I do not guarantee a smooth output on lower than that. I had tested this on Lenovo A369i which is an entry level device. It is powered by 1.3 GHz MT6572AW Dual Core Processor and 512MB RAM. It runs on Android v4.2 (Jelly Bean)OS. And has a 1500mAh battery. We will be adding a new launcher on the device that will add benefits of Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. There will be a live wallpaper that will simply make the screen look amazing and a few widgets. All these things will turn your regular phone in to an amazing one. And this is not going to put much impact on the battery also. The most common cause of battery drain is 2G/3G network, updates, regular downloads, games, too many apps, etc. So here in my case I am using apps like Facebook, WhatsApp, mobile recharge app, Evernote, etc. There might be around 10 to 15 apps in the phone. So let's begin.

Downloads:

Blur Launcher - Lightweight launcher with Android 5.0 Lollipop features. After adding this apps will open up by sliding up from down. It is also fully customization. There is a page option available where you can add Evolve SMS app. But I prefer to keep this empty.

Earth & Moon in HD Gyro 3D Live Wallpaper - Ideal for big screen size and those which support parallax effect. Your device must have Accelerometer, Gryroscope, etc to get Parallax effect on the screen. This live wallpaper is just amazing. It provide you nice HD effect of Earth and Moon rotation on screen. And this changes on the basis of time.

Galactic Core Live Wallpaper - This wallpaper comes in two version. One is free and other one is paid. The free one is enough. It gives you a animated galaxy effect on the homescreen.

Shadow Galaxy Live Wallpaper - Another amazing free live wallpaper with scrolling galaxy effect. Looks amazing on hd screen.

[Raj]

Minimalistic Text - A tiny widget that add clock and weather info on the screen. This is optional. But it makes the screen look more great by adding a text based clock. It comes various customization.

Tips:

We will start first by replacing the default launcher of the device. Download Blur Launcher form Google Play. The total download size of this launcher is 4.79MB. Go on the homescreen by pressing the home button. Your device will ask you to choose the default launcher. Select Blur and set it as Always. That means it is now your default launcher. If you want to restore the old launcher back, then go in Settings > Apps and tap on Blur Launcher. Choose Clear data. The launcher will run some tutorials.

Swipe from left to access the launcher settings. This is the page section of Blur Launcher. Tap on settings and a short tutorial runs to give you glimpse of settings. We will have to do some changes in the launcher.

Tap on Visuals. A small window will open. Scroll down. Remove tick from Icon name, Wallpaper scrolling, Show Search Bar and Show Page Indicator. This will put less impact on the ram. If you want you can keep the search bar on homescreen. You can then arrange icons as per your need. Just tap, hold and drag them. Blur Launcher is now configured.

[Raj]

The next part is to add a clock widget. For that download Minimalistic Text. The download size is around 5.40MB.To add a widget tap on the screen and hold for some time. Tap on widget from bottom. Scroll to the right and choose Minimalistic Text 1x2(vert) if you want a vertical placement of clock. And Minimalisitc 3x1(hor) for horizontal placement. I am selecting the Minimalistic Text 1x2(vert). Tap and hold the widget to put it on the homescreen. Tap allow to create widget.

One the widget is applied you will have to choose the clock format. I am selecting the second one Time and Date. Minimalistic App opens up. This give more options to customize the clock. Like you can tap on Background to put a shadow or you can tap on orientation to modify the placement. For increasing and decreasing the front size tap on Text Style > Accented. And then tap on tiny save button on the top right. The widget is placed now.

The last step is to apply a nice live wallpaper. For that go on Google Play and download Earth & Moon in HD(14.5MB), Galactic Core (853KB)& Shadow Galaxy(626KB). I am going to choose Galactic Core here. To apply wallpaper go on the Homecreen. Tap and hold for few seconds and tap on Wallpapers. Scroll and choose Galactic Core. Your screen is now ready.