Beautiful Chameleon Clock App Blends Your iPhone Or iPad Into Its Natural Environment

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Early last year, Apple applied for a patent which described how they could add a “wild new dynamic screen saver system that could sense the environment it is in and in a chameleon-like fashion automatically change the screen saver.”

Clumsy wording aside, I loved the idea from the get go. Imagine, docking your iPhone at night, only for the screen to perfectly match the decor of your bedroom. Unfortunately, like most of Apple’s patents, there’s no telling when or even if Apple will ever actually roll out such functionality.

Luckily, we don’t need to wait for Cupertino to get off their duffs, because Chameleon Clock is here to turn our iPhones and iPads into chameleons for us.

Chameleon Clock is a slick app by Netwalk that takes Apple’s patent idea for a dynamic screen saver system and uses it as the basis for an attractive clock app.

The idea is simple. Using your iPhone or iPad’s backfacing camera, Chameleon Clock will overlay the current time on a live-updated chameleon skin background of whatever is currently behind your device. So, for example, if you dock your iPhone or iPad on a night table overlooking your window, you’d be able to “see through” your iPhone to the scene outside.

That’s not the only mode, though. Knowing that sometimes the scene behind your iPhone isn’t necessarily all that interesting, Chameleon Clock also has an option where it will simply match the color of whatever is behind your device.

In practice, it’s a very attractive app that somehow makes waking up in the morning clean and futuristic. It’s not a terribly complicated app, but it doesn’t have to be: if the idea was good enough for Apple to try to patent, there must be something to it.

Chameleon Clock is a universal app available on the iTunes App Store for just $0.99. If you’d like something a little more striking in a clock app, this is a good one to try.

Source: iTunes

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