We look at a lot of wallpapers here at Android Authority. Ever wondered which are our favorite ones? We list the best phone wallpapers here!
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Being one of the “wallpaper guys,” my eyes have marveled over some of the best phone wallpapers in existence, and also some of the worst. The thing about finding great wallpapers is that it’s like finding a needle in a haystack, or a hay mountain. The internet is flooded with so many options. I’ve worked here at Android Authority for over nine years, so I’ve seen thousands of wallpapers. Today, I’m taking on the challenge of finding the very best ones I’ve ever seen.
Of course, we can’t cover all user-created, custom, AI, or third-party wallpapers out there. For the sake of simplicity, and to accomplish a better curated collection, we’ll stick to wallpapers that came with smartphones. We’ll include images from companies like Google, Samsung, Motorola, etc.First, let’s show you how to set the best phone wallpapers
You should keep a few things in mind before digging into this list of my favorite wallpapers. For starters, the images you see below have been compressed and optimized for improved website performance. This means they won’t look as good as the full-resolution image. If you want the highest quality possible, click on the download button right below each wallpaper preview to download the uncompressed picture.
You can either download the wallpaper straight to the device you’ll use it on. Otherwise, you can download the files using any device and then transfer the wallpapers to your device using a USB cable, Bluetooth, a cloud storage service like Google Drive, or send them to yourself via email. Whatever you do, avoid using a service that will compress images, as that would defeat the purpose of this whole process. We know common platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp compress images, too.
When you’re ready to set your wallpaper as your phone’s background, you can follow the step-by-step instructions below. The great thing about wallpapers is that they are simply images, so they will work on any device that allows you to change the background. These are all smartphone wallpapers, so we’ve created instructions for Android and iOS, the leading mobile platforms.
Editor’s note: These instructions were assembled using a Google Pixel 8a running Android 14 and an Apple iPhone 12 Mini running iOS 17.5.1. Some menus and steps may differ depending on your device and software version.These are the best phone wallpapers I’ve seen
With all that out of the way, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty and show you my very favorite wallpapers from all the phones I’ve ever seen. By the way, this list is in no particular order.
The Pixel 5 came with some of the most unique wallpapers we’ve seen. It offered a collection of very colorful backgrounds, which looked very nice and vibrant on that OLED display. One thing about these is that they were also very… odd.
