[MOD] Android Wear Boot Animation For Other Devices [ROOT] [Android 4.1+]

What would you like next?

  • Versions for older versions of Android (pre 4.1)

    Votes: 3 16.7%
  • Versions with lossy compression for slower devices

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • Versions with Android logo displayed for longer

    Votes: 14 77.8%

  • Total voters
    18
Search This thread

wollac11

Senior Member
Aug 25, 2010
264
213
Cambridge
www.littlegreendude.com
Right, I know a lot of you are waiting for me to post this after seeing my videos, social media posts and preview gifs!

Many of you will likely have seen the awesome new Android Wear boot animation as leaked in the LG G Watch system dump. Well now I have successfully made versions for other devices as well! :D

Initially I made one for the MotoACTV smartwatch (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=53150797) because it also has a small display and the frames in the system dump are obviously very low resolution for the small screen of the LG G Watch and so are not suitable for phones and tablets. The MotoACTV has an even smaller display and downsizing is not an issue for quality.

However, I have managed to get around this problem. I traced and vectorised each frame to produce a set of scalable SVGs from which I was able to create the high-res png frames needed to make boot animations to suit different devices. There is no limit to the resolution now obviously because I have vector copies of each frame so support for any device is possible. I have also thoroughly optimised the final frames to bring down their file size as much as possible (losslessly) which ensures they run really smoothly (this makes a big difference on high res devices!).

For the MotoACTV I had to change the loop format too because Android pre 4.1 doesn't support the new "c loops" which are required to get the same behaviour as on the LG G Watch (MotoACTV is Gingerbread). On these new ones I had to use a different desc.txt structure to Android Wear for compatibility purposes but have used the c loops and so this actually loops exactly as it would on Android Wear.

It is possible to make animations for devices with earlier than 4.1 too but I will have to change the way it loops slightly. There are also a few devices (like the MotoACTV) which prefer jpgs rather than pngs. I can quickly produce jpg versions if required too. I am willing to take requests for devices people would like an animation for and will try and do them in order of demand but I make no promises on how long the turn around will be.

Below if a video of it running on my Nexus 4 (note: animations are quite a bit smoother than this now and the small amounts of weird jitter were caused by YouTube's video editor) you can also see a preview in post #4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jior6pwamg

Update (9/6/14): New v2 versions are up! These are even smaller in file size (read: better performance) and contain some fixes plus two new resolutions!. See post #45 for more details on the update. We now have Android 4.1+ bootanimations which support most common device resolutions: 800x480, 960x640 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 2560x1440 and 2560x1600.

Note: as @vedantgp thankfully reminded me you cannot use these standard type Android boot animations on Touchwiz ROMs because Samsung uses their own proprietary format. There are mods to remedy this though, although I have not tested them. See here: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/add-custom-boot-animation-to-any-samsung-rom/

Instructions

Firstly this will almost always need root. Secondly, these are not flashable zips and you cannot flash these in recovery! This is what you do:

Picking The Correct Animation For Your Device
If you know your device resolution and you see it there then great - grab it move onto adding it to your device. If you don't know the resolution a quick Google of should let you know. You should bare in mind that the actual frames are square so the boot animations are supported based on their smallest dimension (lowest pixel count). This means that whether you have a landscape device (10" tablet) or portrait (most 7" and below) it does not make a difference, the one for your resolution will be fine.

If you find there is no zip matching your device resolution then fear not - you are not out of luck! If you have a different resolution than any listed you can pick the one with largest width (the smallest dimension) that is less than yours (or the same if it exists) and it will work just fine. The only difference is that it will not fill the complete width of your screen. For example: if you somehow had a 1340x950 device then you'd use 1280x800 one as 800px is the closest available smaller resolution of the shortest dimension (width) to your device. You would then just have a 150px gap (75 each side) between the furthest reach of the animation and the edge of your display which would not look too bad as the background is black and most of the screen width is still used. Hope that makes sense. You cannot use one with a resolution greater than your device or it will be cut off.

Manual Method
Download the attachment with the boot animation suited to your device. Rename the zip to bootanimation.zip and push to either /data/local or /system/media making sure the file permissions are set to 644. This process can be done with a file manager or using ADB. If opting for a file manager I do not suggest you use ES File Explorer has it lacks the required permissions options. CM File manager, Root Explorer or Solid Explorer (my favourite) all will work well. If pushing to /data/local the animation will not be wiped when updating your ROM but will be lost with a data wipe / factory reset. For system/media the apposite is true. /system/media is the default location for the boot animation so if using that I suggest you backup your existing one first. My recommendation though is that you use /data/local.

Below is an example of what the permissions should look like for those having difficulty. This is an example from Solid Explorer but others should be similar!

_20140609_191209_zps62408dfc.jpg

New: for those who find written instructions hard to follow Alexander Ruiz has made a great video of these manual instructions on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ-XyZLGCBc

Simple Method
As helpfully pointed out by @bradhoschar you can actually preview and install boot animations with ROM Toolbox! You can grab the free version here and the pro version here. This might be easier for some users!

Future Plans
I intend to create a flashable zip with Aroma installer at some point in the future so you can flash easily to many different devices with options for different Android versions, device resolution and preferred installation. I will need to make it for a few different device specifications first before this becomes worthwhile.

Disclaimer
As per usual, while this almost certainly not going to cause any damage to your device, if it makes it your phone explode, causes hair loss, summons the dead or tears the universe apart, I am not responsible!

Enjoy! :D

(and please consider checking out my new Android blog: www.littlegreendude.com - thanks!)
 

Attachments

  • v2-800x480-bootanimation.zip
    936.1 KB · Views: 11,140
  • v2-960x540-bootanimation.zip
    1 MB · Views: 3,728
  • v2-1280x720-bootanimation.zip
    1.3 MB · Views: 7,385
  • v2-1280x768-bootanimation.zip
    1.4 MB · Views: 1,445
  • v2-1280x800-bootanimation.zip
    1.5 MB · Views: 2,022
  • v2-1920x1080-bootanimation.zip
    2 MB · Views: 4,222
  • v2-2560x1440-bootanimation.zip
    2.8 MB · Views: 1,597
  • v2-2560x1600-bootanimation.zip
    3.1 MB · Views: 878
  • v2-1920x1200-bootanimation.zip
    2.3 MB · Views: 1,121
  • v2-480x320-bootanimation.zip
    687.4 KB · Views: 2,202
  • v2-1024x600-bootanimation.zip
    1.1 MB · Views: 1,902
  • long-v2-480x320-bootanimation.zip
    832.1 KB · Views: 2,023
  • long-v2-800x480-bootanimation.zip
    1.1 MB · Views: 3,720
  • long-v2-960x540-bootanimation.zip
    1.2 MB · Views: 1,564
  • long-v2-1280x720-bootanimation.zip
    1.6 MB · Views: 3,459
  • long-v2-1280x768-bootanimation.zip
    1.7 MB · Views: 780
  • long-v2-1280x800-bootanimation.zip
    1.7 MB · Views: 1,203
  • long-v2-1920x1080-bootanimation.zip
    2.4 MB · Views: 3,506
  • long-v2-1920x1200-bootanimation.zip
    2.7 MB · Views: 1,258
  • long-v2-2560x1600-bootanimation.zip
    3.7 MB · Views: 2,525
Last edited:

wollac11

Senior Member
Aug 25, 2010
264
213
Cambridge
www.littlegreendude.com
Very soon I shall be renaming all the zips by resolution instead of some by device (it is clearer and neater as several devices are suited to each zip) and adding support the following resolutions: 1080p (1920x1080), 1280x800, 800x480 and 2560x1600 in addition to the current 1920x1200, 1280*768 and 720p (1280x768). I feel this should cover most devices for now. All of these will be for Android 4.1+. I shall later add some zips for lower Android versions for older devices and once I have done that I shall then also combine them into a single AROMA Installer for ease. :D

Also here is a preview gif so you can see clearly what it looks like (updated preview - no longer huge, fixed colour issues and increased gif speed/framerate):

preview_zpse96cfa1c.gif
 
Last edited:

johnnyfr03

Senior Member
Sep 3, 2012
298
177
Las Piedras
Right, I know a lot of you are waiting for me to post this after seeing my videos, social media posts and preview gifs!

Many of you will likely have seen the awesome new Android Wear boot animation as leaked in the LG G Watch system dump. Well now I have successfully made versions for other devices as well! :D

Initially I made one for the MotoACTV smartwatch (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=53150797) because it also has a small display and the frames in the system dump are obviously very low resolution for the small screen of the LG G Watch and so are not suitable for phones and tablets. The MotoACTV has an even smaller display and downsizing is not an issue for quality.

However, I have managed to get around this problem. I traced and vectorised each frame to produce a set of scalable SVGs from which I was able to create the high res png frames needed to make boot animations to suit different devices. There is no limit to the resolution now obviously because I have vector copies of each frame so support for any device is possible. I have also thoroughly optimised the final frames to bring down their file size as much as possible (losslessly) which ensures they run really smoothly (this makes a big difference on high res devices!).

For the MotoACTV I had to change the loop format too because Android pre 4.1 doesn't support the new "c loops" which are required to get the same behaviour as on the LG G Watch (MotoACTV is Gingerbread). On these new ones I had to use a different desc.txt structure to Android Wear for compatibility purposes but have used the c loops and so this actually loops exactly as it would on Android Wear.

I have attached zips designed for the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 (2013). The Nexus 4 one should work on any Android 4.1 (or higher) device with a resolution of 1280x768 and the Nexus 7 one on any 4.1+ device with a resolution of 1920x1200. I have 1080p and 720p versions in the works too so I'll add those shortly (to support devices such a the Nexus 5, recent Samsung Galaxy phones, Moto G etc). (now done!)

It is possible to make animations for devices with earlier than 4.1 too but I will have to change the way it loops slightly. There are also a few devices (like the MotoACTV) which prefer jpgs rather than pngs. I can quickly produce jpg versions if required too. I am willing to take requests for devices people would like an animation for and will try and do them in order of demand but I make no promises on how long the turn around will be.

Below if a video of it running on my Nexus 4 (note: animations are quite a bit smoother than this now and the small amounts of weird jitter were caused by YouTube's video editor) you can also see a preview in post #4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jior6pwamg

Edit: added multiple new resolutions, renamed Nexus 4 and 7 to their resolution for consistency. We now have Android 4.1+ bootanimations which support most common devices: 800x480, 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1920x1080, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600. The actual frames are square so are supported based on their smallest dimension meaning whether you have a landscape device (10" tablet) or portrait (most 7" and below) it does not make a difference, the one for your resolution will be fine. Also if you have a different resolution then pick the one with largest width less than yours (or the same if it exists) and it will work just not 100% fill the width. E.g. is you somehow had a 1340x950 device you'd use 1280x800. Hope that makes sense. You cannot use one larger than your device or it will be cut off.

Smaller devices tend to be older so unless I get a request otherwise I will not do lower than 800x480 in the 4.1 format.

Instructions

Download the attachment with the boot animation suited to your device. Rename the zip to bootanimation.zip and push to either /data/local or /system/media making sure the file permissions are set to 644. This process can be done with a file manager (needs root) or using adb (will work without root if pushing to /data/local). If pushing to data/local the animation will not be wiped when updating your rom but will be lost with a data wipe / factory reset. For system/media the apposite is true. /system/media is the default location for the boot animation so if using that I suggest you backup your existing one first.

I intend to create a flashable zip with Aroma installer at some point in the future so you can flash easily to many different devices with options for different Android versions, device resolution and preferred installation. I will need to make it for a few different device specifications first before this becomes worthwhile.

As per usual, while this almost certainly not going to cause any damage to your device, if it makes it your phone explode, causes hair loss, summons the dead or tears the universe apart, I am not responsible!

Enjoy! :D

Bit of a noob here. Which one would I use on my N5??? Gonna try to do it! Looks so good!!

Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app
 

leoashley

Member
Feb 8, 2011
7
1
right bootanimation?

On my nexus 5 I'm getting a gray "android" bootanimation instead the one is shown in the post below... I downloaded and installed the 1080p.bootanimation.zip, copyed to system/media/ renamed to boot animation.zip and restated the device ... What did I wrong?
 

wollac11

Senior Member
Aug 25, 2010
264
213
Cambridge
www.littlegreendude.com
On my nexus 5 I'm getting a gray "android" bootanimation instead the one is shown in the post below... I downloaded and installed the 1080p.bootanimation.zip, copyed to system/media/ renamed to boot animation.zip and restated the device ... What did I wrong?

Probably a permissions error. Did you do it with a file explorer? If so you'll need to make sure you set the permissions to 644 or it won't be able to read it. Also make sure the name is "bootanimation.zip" with no spaces.
 
Last edited:

wollac11

Senior Member
Aug 25, 2010
264
213
Cambridge
www.littlegreendude.com
Not even GPE. GPE is Touchwiz based, and uses TW files

Anyway to get these to work on Samsung Devices?

Samsung uses proprietary bootanimations but there are mods out there to make TouchWiz ROMs use the standard Android bootanimation format. These should (I haven't tested) allow you to use this animation. See here where they link to two of such mods and explain with more detail: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/add-custom-boot-animation-to-any-samsung-rom/
 

lewy95

Member
Jan 8, 2014
16
0
Samsung uses proprietary bootanimations but there are mods out there to make TouchWiz ROMs use the standard Android bootanimation format. These should (I haven't tested) allow you to use this animation. See here where they link to two of such mods and explain with more detail: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/add-custom-boot-animation-to-any-samsung-rom/

Cheers. I'll try that out now

It flashed the enabler with no worries. Though trying to install the boot animation failed.
 

wollac11

Senior Member
Aug 25, 2010
264
213
Cambridge
www.littlegreendude.com
It flashed the enabler with no worries. Though trying to install the boot animation failed.

Did you place the bootanimation.zip in the correct place (unless the mod says otherwise /data/local or /system/media with the correct name ("bootanimation.zip") and permissions set to 644? Note also that you cannot flash the bootanimation from recovery - not sure if that's what you tried to do? You just push it in place without extracting it or flashing (after renaming).
 

lewy95

Member
Jan 8, 2014
16
0
Did you place the bootanimation.zip in the correct place (unless the mod says otherwise /data/local or /system/media with the correct name ("bootanimation.zip") and permissions set to 644? Note also that you cannot flash the bootanimation from recovery - not sure if that's what you tried to do? You just push it in place without extracting it or flashing (after renaming).

Tried both, none work :/
 
Last edited:

Top Liked Posts

  • There are no posts matching your filters.
  • 61
    Right, I know a lot of you are waiting for me to post this after seeing my videos, social media posts and preview gifs!

    Many of you will likely have seen the awesome new Android Wear boot animation as leaked in the LG G Watch system dump. Well now I have successfully made versions for other devices as well! :D

    Initially I made one for the MotoACTV smartwatch (http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=53150797) because it also has a small display and the frames in the system dump are obviously very low resolution for the small screen of the LG G Watch and so are not suitable for phones and tablets. The MotoACTV has an even smaller display and downsizing is not an issue for quality.

    However, I have managed to get around this problem. I traced and vectorised each frame to produce a set of scalable SVGs from which I was able to create the high-res png frames needed to make boot animations to suit different devices. There is no limit to the resolution now obviously because I have vector copies of each frame so support for any device is possible. I have also thoroughly optimised the final frames to bring down their file size as much as possible (losslessly) which ensures they run really smoothly (this makes a big difference on high res devices!).

    For the MotoACTV I had to change the loop format too because Android pre 4.1 doesn't support the new "c loops" which are required to get the same behaviour as on the LG G Watch (MotoACTV is Gingerbread). On these new ones I had to use a different desc.txt structure to Android Wear for compatibility purposes but have used the c loops and so this actually loops exactly as it would on Android Wear.

    It is possible to make animations for devices with earlier than 4.1 too but I will have to change the way it loops slightly. There are also a few devices (like the MotoACTV) which prefer jpgs rather than pngs. I can quickly produce jpg versions if required too. I am willing to take requests for devices people would like an animation for and will try and do them in order of demand but I make no promises on how long the turn around will be.

    Below if a video of it running on my Nexus 4 (note: animations are quite a bit smoother than this now and the small amounts of weird jitter were caused by YouTube's video editor) you can also see a preview in post #4:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jior6pwamg

    Update (9/6/14): New v2 versions are up! These are even smaller in file size (read: better performance) and contain some fixes plus two new resolutions!. See post #45 for more details on the update. We now have Android 4.1+ bootanimations which support most common device resolutions: 800x480, 960x640 1280x720, 1280x768, 1280x800, 1920x1080, 1920x1200, 2560x1440 and 2560x1600.

    Note: as @vedantgp thankfully reminded me you cannot use these standard type Android boot animations on Touchwiz ROMs because Samsung uses their own proprietary format. There are mods to remedy this though, although I have not tested them. See here: http://www.xda-developers.com/android/add-custom-boot-animation-to-any-samsung-rom/

    Instructions

    Firstly this will almost always need root. Secondly, these are not flashable zips and you cannot flash these in recovery! This is what you do:

    Picking The Correct Animation For Your Device
    If you know your device resolution and you see it there then great - grab it move onto adding it to your device. If you don't know the resolution a quick Google of should let you know. You should bare in mind that the actual frames are square so the boot animations are supported based on their smallest dimension (lowest pixel count). This means that whether you have a landscape device (10" tablet) or portrait (most 7" and below) it does not make a difference, the one for your resolution will be fine.

    If you find there is no zip matching your device resolution then fear not - you are not out of luck! If you have a different resolution than any listed you can pick the one with largest width (the smallest dimension) that is less than yours (or the same if it exists) and it will work just fine. The only difference is that it will not fill the complete width of your screen. For example: if you somehow had a 1340x950 device then you'd use 1280x800 one as 800px is the closest available smaller resolution of the shortest dimension (width) to your device. You would then just have a 150px gap (75 each side) between the furthest reach of the animation and the edge of your display which would not look too bad as the background is black and most of the screen width is still used. Hope that makes sense. You cannot use one with a resolution greater than your device or it will be cut off.

    Manual Method
    Download the attachment with the boot animation suited to your device. Rename the zip to bootanimation.zip and push to either /data/local or /system/media making sure the file permissions are set to 644. This process can be done with a file manager or using ADB. If opting for a file manager I do not suggest you use ES File Explorer has it lacks the required permissions options. CM File manager, Root Explorer or Solid Explorer (my favourite) all will work well. If pushing to /data/local the animation will not be wiped when updating your ROM but will be lost with a data wipe / factory reset. For system/media the apposite is true. /system/media is the default location for the boot animation so if using that I suggest you backup your existing one first. My recommendation though is that you use /data/local.

    Below is an example of what the permissions should look like for those having difficulty. This is an example from Solid Explorer but others should be similar!

    _20140609_191209_zps62408dfc.jpg

    New: for those who find written instructions hard to follow Alexander Ruiz has made a great video of these manual instructions on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ-XyZLGCBc

    Simple Method
    As helpfully pointed out by @bradhoschar you can actually preview and install boot animations with ROM Toolbox! You can grab the free version here and the pro version here. This might be easier for some users!

    Future Plans
    I intend to create a flashable zip with Aroma installer at some point in the future so you can flash easily to many different devices with options for different Android versions, device resolution and preferred installation. I will need to make it for a few different device specifications first before this becomes worthwhile.

    Disclaimer
    As per usual, while this almost certainly not going to cause any damage to your device, if it makes it your phone explode, causes hair loss, summons the dead or tears the universe apart, I am not responsible!

    Enjoy! :D

    (and please consider checking out my new Android blog: www.littlegreendude.com - thanks!)
    7
    Very soon I shall be renaming all the zips by resolution instead of some by device (it is clearer and neater as several devices are suited to each zip) and adding support the following resolutions: 1080p (1920x1080), 1280x800, 800x480 and 2560x1600 in addition to the current 1920x1200, 1280*768 and 720p (1280x768). I feel this should cover most devices for now. All of these will be for Android 4.1+. I shall later add some zips for lower Android versions for older devices and once I have done that I shall then also combine them into a single AROMA Installer for ease. :D

    Also here is a preview gif so you can see clearly what it looks like (updated preview - no longer huge, fixed colour issues and increased gif speed/framerate):

    preview_zpse96cfa1c.gif
    6
    New V2 Animations Are Up!

    Hi all, I have just added the new version 2 boot animations! These not only contain the previously mentioned colour fix (where certain dots were the wrong colour in a few frames) but are also even smaller in file size (and therefore smoother / faster!) Oh and as a bonus I have added a couple of new resolutions to the mix: qHD (960x440) for devices such as the Moto E, S4 Mini and S4 Zoom (plus loads of Chinese devices) and also QHD (2560x1440) for devices such as the Oppo Find 7, OnePlus One and LG G3!

    For these new versions I remade all the SVGs for all the frames again, making sure the tracing process was even more accurate and the colour pallet was opened wider to avoid incorrect colours. The initial downside of this was that the first boot-animation I made from the new SVGs was larger in file size that the previous ones due to the extra colour and detail in the frames. So I decided I would try and push the limits further in terms of reducing the file size of the frames through optimisation without any difference in image quality.

    Well guess what!? I now have added a whole new optimisation stage to my boot animation creation process which let's me reduce the PNG colour pallet back down on a frame by frame basis so that only the used colours on a given frame are included. This dynamic colour pallet size along with some other additional tweaks in this stage has taken down the size my loads yet again! Not just counteracting the increase in size from the extra detail provided by the new SVGs they were made from but also going way beyond so they are actually much smaller than before!

    As an example, the 2560x1600 animation is now smaller than the old 1080p one and less than 50% what it was before. Of course, the difference between one of my latest optimised copies and a standard boot animation with none of this optimisation work on the frames would be even bigger as even before I was optimising quite a lot! Had I just packaged the pngs as exported from the SVGs without any of of the optimisation then the 2560x1600 bootanimation.zip would be 10.1MB - that's more than 320% of the current size (or 225% larger if you prefer!). This difference is massive and it would be no where near as smooth as they are as a result! This is true for all the resolutions not just this one (although the exact savings vary a little).

    If you compare the new versions to the official G Watch one you'll see that the original was 1.1MB for 280x280. I have achieved smaller files sizes than that for the latest versions of both 800x480 and 960x540 boot animations with the identical number of frames and in spite of having a much greater resolution. It is obviously more time and effort to produce these optimised frames but I think you can see from the file size difference it really is worth it. I have found for even the slightest reduction in file size you can gain a lot in smoothness.

    For now I left the old versions up too in case there is any issues with the new ones (I really don't think there would be though) but also so you can see the size differences for each. Eventually I will pull the old downloads to make things cleaner. I could probably also do with a tidy of the OP as well! One final thing to note is these are still 4.1+.

    Anyway that's enough rambling from me. Enjoy! :D
    4
    Extended versions now up!

    Versions with an extra second added to the end where the Android logo shows have been added as per request and the results of the poll. These start with "long-". All resolutions other than 1440p and 1024x600 have these longer versions added. Those were omitted as they are the two least popular of the normal versions and I had to fit under the 20 maximum attachment limit. I can add those two at some point if required by uploading them all to a separate file host but hopefully this will do for now. I have also now removed the v1 versions.

    Enjoy! :D
    3
    will the nexus 4 be the 720p one or the 1280x768 one...

    and the nexus 7 (2013) will be the 1920x1200 right?

    thanks in advance

    Hi ... N4 - 768p and N7 - 1200p ;)