Hello World mixes wallpapers with information
Wallpaper applications are a dime a dozen on Android, and most offer similar functionality: browse wallpapers using filters, set wallpapers, and that is about it. While they may differ in terms of sources for the wallpapers, you should not expect major differences between apps.
Hello World changes that. The Android application provides you with a selection of "real-world" wallpaper images. So far so normal. What sets it apart from other wallpaper apps for Android -- such as Google Wallpapers, Muzei or MySplash is that it provides you with information on the locations the photos were taken at.
Additionally, it also provides you with information on country and climate which can be quite useful for traveling to those locations
Hello World Travel discovery & Travel Wallpapers
Hello World requires no extra permissions during installation -- refreshing. The app loads the list of supported places by default which you may browse right away.
Each place is listed with a thumbnail image of one of the wallpapers, its name, country, and continent. An informational page is loaded when you tap on any of the places here.
The page offers facts and information about the place, its history or use for instance, shows all wallpaper images, the location of the place in the world, and climate information.
You can tap on the "see all images" link to browse all wallpapers of the place, and set or share them.
The second option that you have when it comes to browsing the wallpapers, is to use the menu to switch to the images listing.
This listing concentrates fully on the wallpapers, and sorts them into groups such as featured, sea, towns, or ancient.
It takes one tap to add a wallpaper to the favorites, and two more to set it as the wallpaper of the device. Why two? The first tap on "set wallpaper" opens an edit interface that enables you to customize how the wallpaper is displayed on the device.
Options include changing the visible part of the wallpaper, and changing the ratio to adjust for different screen sizes.
Hello World ships with few options only. One that deserves mentioning is the application's auto wallpaper feature. This rotates wallpapers automatically periodically.
Verdict
The idea to mix wallpapers with information sets the application apart from other wallpaper applications. While it may not appeal to all Android users who use wallpaper applications, it will to those who want to know more about the wallpaper images they like. One interesting option that comes from this is the possibility to travel to the location in the future.
There is little to criticize about the application. I'd like to see an option to change the default temperature format from Fahrenheit to Celsius for instance. It would be great as well if more locations and wallpapers would be available. While you get more than 100 locations so far, it pales somewhat when compared to wallpaper applications that offer tens of thousands of wallpaper images.
Reminds me of an app called Microsoft Scenes that the evil empire had back in the Windows 3.1/95 days. It showed information about the photo at the top like a caption. Later, Webshots Desktop adopted that idea, sadly they went out of business.