Daydream was pretty quickly glanced over by most people when it was announced as part of the Android 4.2 release, but luckily some developers have started to make apps using the new feature. The latest revision of Jelly Bean just isn't available to that many people and the number and quality of daydream apps reflects that, but luckily there are some gems to be found if you go searching for them.
Read on past the break and see the top apps available right now to take advantage of the daydream functionality in Android 4.2.
Clock Plus DayDream
The stock Android 4.2 clock daydream looks nice, but doesn't offer a whole lot of functionality. Clock Plus DayDream takes the stock version and adds a bit of its own flare. Along with the current time, you will get the current date and upcoming alarms, as well as icons indicating missed calls, unread email and unread SMS/MMS messages. You can choose between an analog or digital clock face, and dim the screen for a "night mode" if you prefer. It's a nice improvement over the stock app, and is free to boot.
Download: Clock Plus DayDream (Free)
Flipboard was one of the first apps to integrate with the new daydream functionality, and as you would expect it does a pretty good job at it. Daydreams kind of lends itself to a slow scrolling through lots of information, something that matches up nicely with news aggregators. Flipboard will run through a random assortment of your synced articles, displaying full-screen images along with their titles and category. Tapping on the image takes you to the Flipboard app, as you would expect. This daydream chooses to leave the status bar visible but dimmed, meaning you can still see the clock and notifications.
Download: Flipboard (Free)
Clock Tower 3D
This developer (Kittehface Software) makes some of the smoothest and most creative live wallpapers out there, so it's not surprising that they started to integrate with the new daydream functionality as well. Clock Tower 3D is indeed both a live wallpaper as well as a daydream, giving you a little more bang for your buck. You basically get a view on the screen as if you were looking out from the inside of a large clock tower, with the spinning gears, beams of light and dust you would expect. There's a basic free version, but for $0.99 you can change the look of things with different clock faces, hands and several other nice visual tweaks. This isn't informational like some of the other daydreams, but it's darn nice to look at.
Download: Clock Tower 3D ($0.99)
Daydream Quotes
The app name says it all -- this app puts a random assortment of famous quotes on your screen when it is in daydream mode. You get two settings, one to choose how quickly the quotes cycle and another to choose the text size. You get a nice assortment of famous quotes and the fade animation is smooth. The app is free as you'd expect because of its simplicity, but it's definitely worth a look.
Download: Daydream Quotes (Free)
Weather DayDream Screensaver
Weather DayDream Screensaver takes a simplistic approach to displaying the weather on your phone while it's sleeping. You get a very simple display of the time and charging status, with set of weather data underneath it. Like many weather apps, you get a current weather data (and the location it's pegged to) along with a three day forecast below it. This isn't the flashiest daydream out there -- there's not even an animation (so beware of screen burn-in on some devices) -- but it's probably the cleanest weather daydream app available right now. The settings are sparse -- as in, there's only one option -- but hopefully the developer can add more options in with future updates. We're thinking this app should probably at least have a free option available until the options are improved, but it's always nice to support devs that are working with the latest features in Android.
Download: Weather DayDream Screensaver ($2.99)
