I recently joined the ranks of tablet-owners with the purchase of a Google Nexus 7 device. It was a couple of years ago that I got my smartphone, which could be viewed as a kind of mini-tablet (which just happens to have the useful property of also being able to make phone calls!) and it has been a good introduction to the Android operating system and the value of ultra mobile computing power. However, there were a couple of points of friction: the small screen makes all but the simplest input tricky and the low internal memory means I have had to be very selective about trying new applications.

One of the first things I like to do on a new computing device is the simple customisation of “changing the wallpaper”. This is a much easier task than wallpapering a room but it took me a while to find the instructions I needed. I found an online guide that also provided a downloadable template and this helped me find the way in. I took one of my fiery series of wallpaper images and resized it to the suggested 1600×1280 dimensions. I then transferred it to my tablet via Dropbox (one of the tools that I wasn’t able to fit on my phone) and dropped it into the DCIM folder (where, on my phone, the camera stores the images it takes). I am not sure if that location is essential but the Gallery app located the picture instantly which meant it could be used as wallpaper.

It turns out that part of the process is using a resizable window to determine what shows on the screen, so perhaps the template and resizing is not essential but it did mean I had an image which easily fitted the requirements and now, when I open the case, the Nexus appears in colours that are uniquely mine.