Hi, Zac here, writing about two outdated things – GIFs, because they’re cringe now, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5, because we’re less than a week away from Samsung’s January Galaxy Unpacked mobile event. Somehow, these two things come together to give me something I never knew I wanted in a phone – GIFs as a background.
Now, look, this isn’t anything new and I’m fully appreciative of that. For a while, iPhones had the ability to set ‘Live Wallpapers’, essentially Apple’s own spin on GIFs, but in iOS 16, the feature was removed. Meanwhile, on Android devices, you can go ahead and install a third-party app that allows you to set GIFs as wallpapers, while the ability to set GIFs as your home or lock screen wallpaper is rare on a stock device.
On a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 though, GIFs as a wallpaper background are a celebrated feature – or, at least, for the extra screen. I’ve been fooling around with the Z Flip 5 for just over a month now, and I’m really enjoying it – the flipping feature gives me a really nice stim, and I enjoy the narrow profile of the phone when it’s flipped out. I especially love the exterior ‘cover’ display, and the fact that, functionally, I can use this phone without ever needing to flip it open. It’s like it was made for me, although I wish the camera was more powerful.
Noticing that some of the pre-installed backgrounds for the cover display were moving, I went ahead and downloaded a GIF. I went into my settings, into the cover screen settings, and was able to set it as a wallpaper I could even zoom in or out of it like it were an image.
Neat! Also, turns out, there’s a subreddit dedicated to posting GIFs that are perfect for the Z Flip. Keeping in mind that the Z Flip 5’s cover screen is dramatically bigger than that of its predecessors, so some GIFs are smaller than others. I quite like this one.
And very much love this one.
Although, there is ample room for shitposting. This was my cover background for a while in the lead-up to Christmas.
And this was it over Christmas. My niece couldn’t stop laughing at it.
I got bored of memes and instead chose something a bit cuter – a fan-made GIF of Twitch streamer Hackerling, as seen in this article’s first image. It’s a PNG to lead the article, but the GIF is below.
For now though, without the creativity-draining need to write out “these are the five best GIFs for your phone background”, I’m left stunned by why phones simply don’t appreciate these looped videos. Hazarding a guess, I think it’s so that tech companies can draw attention to display-fitted devices where customisation options are already quite limited. For example, Samsung lets you set GIFs on the current Galaxy Watch range of devices.
Anyway, just a harmless little tangent. I’m enjoying the Galaxy Z Flip 5 so far and will be sure to check back in when I start to notice screen warping from the folding dint.
Image: Zachariah Kelly/Gizmodo Australia, GIF: @NotAHazard
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