Google’s exclusive wallpapers designed for the Pixel 2 smartphone series are no longer exclusive, at least not in part, as the tech giant recently shared five of these images in a gallery called “Come and play” which is now available for download via Google Drive. More specifically, these are static images depicting various colorful shapes inspired by the Material Design language, and the gallery doesn’t contain any wallpapers from the Live Earth series which currently remains exclusive to Google’s flagships, at least officially.
Although they are static, these colorful wallpapers do have a bit of history behind them, as they were created using real assets as opposed to being rendered in imaging software such as Photoshop. The wallpapers at hand are actual photos captured by designers Leta Sobierajski and Wade Jeffree, and part of the creation process has been shared by Google late last year in a short YouTube video which can be viewed below. It involves hand-crafted and painted shapes placed against colorful backgrounds, though the photos themselves were captured with professional equipment and not the Pixel 2’s camera itself. The images come in a resolution of 2880 by 2560 and are different in both size and design from the wallpapers that were initially shared back in October 2017 before the Pixel 2 series was officially introduced. Together with the latest gallery, non-Pixel users should now be able to choose between nine different wallpapers, but only the most recent five images were created in a studio by the aforementioned two designers. Technically speaking they should be compatible with virtually any Android smartphone, though some cropping may occur depending on the aspect ratio. And interestingly enough, the same five wallpapers are also now being distributed in a desktop-grade resolution of 2880 by 1600 which can be acquired through the source below, offering a taste of Material Design to computer users relying on 16:9 monitors.
The impressive Live Earth wallpapers are not yet available for non-Pixel 2 users and it’s unclear whether this will ever change, though there have been some third-party solutions circulating on the web which require users to install APKs from unverified sources. Otherwise, readers who want to add a dash of Pixel 2 to their mobile devices can hit the download button and acquire these latest “Come and play” static wallpapers from Google.