iPhone 5 presents a problem for wallpaper creators too

[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]esterday, I discussed how Apple's iPhone 5 complicates things for developers with its taller display at a new ratio. Today, another problem has been discovered by photographer and wallpaper creator John Carey of fiftyfootshadows. Most people don't think of how an iPhone 4/4S wallpaper will look on their iPhone 5 because most people don't care about the little things. Those users aren't going to notice the stretched widescreen version of iPhone wallpapers, especially since the bottom of the screen is occupied by the dock. I, however, among many others, always noticed pixelation on old iPhone wallpapers when using them on a Retina display, so I doubt this'll be much different.

John Carey said on Wednesday that he's going to be taking a lot more portrait photos since there's not much room to move around in with a landscape photo. Now would actually be the perfect time for Apple to adopt an Android-like panorama wallpaper -- they just gave the camera that feature, after all. "From this point on any desktops posted will be with the new longer iPhone 5 resolution," Carey told his loyal readers and downloaders. "This of course presents the problem of having even less image to work with as I normally shoot desktop images horizontally and with such a thin sliver or an image to work with it will be even trickier to make pleasing or functional compositions with many of my older images."

Every new devices makes way for a new wallpaper source, but there are constants like fiftyfootshadows, InterfaceLIFT, and Louie Mantia, my three favorite makers of multi-device wallpapers. John Carey doesn't take too long to upload a collection of older photos cropped for a new device; he did this with the new iPad three days after it was released. Likewise InterfaceLIFT has already added a category for the iPhone 5. If the creator has the full resolution image, optimization can sometimes be hard because cropping must be done. With this new widescreen device, cropping is going to be stricter on one axis, and it'll pose a problem if the source image isn't large enough to move around a little in. Then, of course, there are those like Louie Mantia, who create wallpapers in Photoshop and therefore have the PSD file, which can typically be raised in size quickly.

It's going to be a puzzle going forward, for more than developers and designers. First impressions have said that the iPhone 5 now fits in the hand better, but not all users will agree. Joshua Topolsky of The Verge even noted that the device "feels almost too light in the hand", as if Apple has somehow created a new smartphone weight standard above the Droid RAZR, which is the most weightless device I've used. The device will need some getting used to -- some break-in time -- but that happens every time. So long as developers don't go off charging for a whole new app that includes support for this display, things will be okay.

Sources: fiftyfootshadows | The Verge