If you like to keep your device as stock as possible, the only choice you have for customizing it is by changing its wallpaper. You can do a Google search to find wallpapers, but this is tedious and you have to keep an eye on the image’s resolution in order to avoid having a pixelated mess ruining your home screen. There’s also apps like Backdrops and Muzei, which do a splendid job in keeping things fresh. Simply Wallpaper, from Tribute Tech, offers a different approach by doing all the hard work: it looks for an image, downloads it to your device and sets it as your wallpaper without you having to lift a finger.

Developer: Tribute Tech

Price: Free, with a $0.99 in-app purchase.

Highlights:

• Setup asks for your email address, even though you don’t have an account to manage.
• Wallpapers are change automatically every few hours.
• Eight different categories.
• No ads.

Setup

The setup has the only negative aspect I could find in this app. After showing a nice tutorial, you have to input your email at the end. Why? It’s not needed at all, since you don’t have an account to manage, and in-app purchases are linked to your Google account, so forcing you to give your email in order to continue is completely unnecessary.

If you are looking for an app like Backdrops, then you’re in the wrong place. Simply Wallpaper doesn’t show you a long list of available wallpapers, but instead, chooses wallpapers for you. When finishing the tutorial, you must activate the option “Enable Wallpapers” and choose among eight categories: Nature, City, Abstract, Black and White, Closeup, Material Design, Textures, and Architecture. And that’s it! Your wallpaper will immediately change, and then it will be switched automatically every four hours (this interval is customizable, by the way).

Features

In the time I’ve spent with the app, it has worked flawlessly. Wallpapers that have been downloaded to my device are crisp, beautiful, and they don’t look pixelated on my Nexus 6’s QHD screen. According to its website, wallpapers are curated by real people, and, if you are a photographer, you can sign up and upload your own work. I’m really impressed with the quality of the wallpapers being used for the app.

Inside the app itself, there’s a floating action button in the main screen to show information about your current wallpaper. This will take you to a screen where you can see the photographer’s information, such as his/her website and Twitter account. From here, you can upvote and downvote your current wallpaper. The app also shows you when is your next wallpaper scheduled to download, and lets you skip your current wallpaper in case you don’t like it, although this option is locked behind a $0.99 in-app purchase. Finally, you can see some statistics, such as the number of wallpapers you have seen, and your number of upvotes/downvotes.

You can access the app’s preferences from the top of the main screen. You can turn on an option to download new wallpapers only when you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. It’s worth pointing out that if the schedule for a new wallpaper arrives and you are not connected to a network, the update will not be queued until you connect to Wi-Fi. The app just schedules a new update in four hours.

The app also provides an option to enable notifications when the wallpaper changes. These notifications have upvote and downvote buttons too to make voting easier. Finally, you can also change the refresh interval from as little as two hours to as much as five days.

Conclusion

Simply Wallpaper is an app that you configure once, and just forget about it until you see its magic at work later. It’s very convenient, the wallpapers are good, and it doesn’t drain your battery in a noticeable way. With only a $0.99 in-app purchase and absolutely no ads, Simply Wallpaper is worth checking out if you find yourself constantly changing your wallpaper, and if you can get past giving your email address to a third-party.

Download from the Play Store.

Overview

Picture a zombie game. Simple, right? I bet you’re thinking of being armed with several weapons, trying to make your way through a devastated landscape, hacking and blasting your way through a seemingly never-ending horde of un-dead. I also bet your thinking of a very tense game, fraught with edge-of-your-seat suspense and surprise action.

With some (maybe most) zombie games, that’s exactly what you get. With Operation Zombie D Unlimited, by the developer Race and Shoot, you only get part of this package….mostly the shooting untold numbers of zombies.

Setup

Easy enough: Download from the Play Store. There is no connection to Google Play Games, no other manual set up.  In fact, you don’t even have to hit ‘start’ or any other button. Tapping the app icon automatically launches you into the game, with a big ‘Select Weapon to Start’ message across the center of your display. This is not obvious at first; it looks like an animated start screen, with zombies moving from right to left. But in fact these are the first zombies you will encounter, and the longer you wait to select your weapon (which are always displayed across the top of the screen), the closer these zombies will be to you when you actually get going.

Gameplay

Once you select  your weapon (likely after dying a couple of times first before even starting, by allowing the zombies to cross the screen), you are launched into actual gameplay.You play the lone survivor, and your mission is to side-scroll across the display from left to right.  Points are scored by distance covered; shooting the zombies grants you nothing but living long enough to shoot more.

On the screen you have a ‘move’ button on the left, and a couple of shooting buttons on the right. As mentioned before, across the top are your weapons to select from and an ammo level indicator. There are 5 ‘basic’ weapons, ranging from pistols to machine guns. Each of these comes with unlimited/infinity ammo. The one “premium” weapon is the shotgun.  ou start with 16 shots, but can collect more as you make your way through the game. One ‘shoot’ button is for any of the basic weapons, and the other is strictly for the shotgun. Apparently there are more “special” weapons throughout the game, but I went quite a ways and never did find any.

Here’s where the trouble with the game starts. I quickly found that by choosing the machine gun (the one with the fastest fire rate and unlimited ammo), I can simply hold down the fire button and mow down the oncoming zombies until the screen is cleared. The zombies slowly make their way from right to left, towards your avatar. But by pressing the ‘move’ button, your avatar moves to the right and the zombies slow their progress, until you release the button; they then continue their advance.

So getting through this game is simply a matter of:

1. Select machine gun; hold down ‘shoot’ until screen is cleared.
2. Press ‘move’ until the next wave of zombies gets relatively close.
3. Repeat step 1.

At no point did I need the “special” weapon of the shotgun or any other one that is supposedly available. At multiple points along my trek there are spinning ammo symbols that, when collected, give you 10 more shotgun shells. By the time I quit the game I had almost 200 shells and never did use them. Even when harder-to-kill zombies (I’m calling them “fat alberts”) announced their advance with an off-screen growl, I didn’t need to alter my shoot-then-move-then-shoot again strategy.

After 20 minutes, I honestly grew bored. The gameplay never changed. Re-read the last couple of paragraphs and you’ve played this game.  While I do believe that is the intent of this game: something very easy to pick up and blast zombies with, the result is simply monotonous.

Summary

One more time: re-read the last couple of paragraphs, and you’ve played this game. While it does have kind of a cool silhouette-only graphic set, there really is no challenge once you ascertain this pattern.