If you have quite a lot of contacts with no photos or images assigned to them, you are stuck with Android’s stock and quite boring contact avatar. Oh well, some people just don’t want to be photographed; others don’t have any social network accounts to sync their images to your address book. You could make Androidify avatars for some of your favorites if you’re that much of an Android fan, but would you go to those lengths for all of your contacts?
If you would like to give those blank contact avatars an overhaul in a Material style, check out Micopi.
Micopi
Developer: Easy Target
Price: Free
It’s a free indie app that lets you assign colorful and jolly letter and geometry based avatars to your contacts. The avatars are generated randomly and you can scroll through, saving the ones you like for later use or re-assigning them as you go. The avatar in Micopi is the initial letter of your contact’s name, a geometric shape around the capital letter and a background of geometric shapes of different colors, or pixels. The result is vibrant and colorful. Of course, beauty is in the eyes of beholder, and it might look too orange, or too blue for you, but the app has tons of patterns to choose from and a random number generator to make them unique each time.
According to the app’s description, the random numbers generator relies on your contact’s name, number and email to generate unique designs – that’s why each avatar will look unique. If you are like me, and rely on color to identify a contact quickly, you will love this app.
Micopi lets you assign avatars to each contact individually, taking your time to choose the image, or automatically, when the app assigns an avatar to all of your contacts without avatars.
The app does not save or transmit your contacts’ data. What is worth noting is that after you have assigned the Micopi avatars, you can not bulk-undo the action. This means if you want to revert to the old Android blue contact icon, there does not seem to be a way. So, test the app thoroughly before you commit to it entirely. You might want to do a backup of that image, if you’re so used to it.
Now, I have read some reviewers on the Play Store complain the images are low-res. It is not the case for me – the images are hi-res and intense. What might be happening to some users who complain of low-res is when the image gets synced with Google contacts it gains some jpeg artifacts, which is no fault of Micopi. It does not happen to my contacts because I don’t sync them. Irrespective of whether this happens to yours, or not, Micopi looks a lot better than the stock avatar if you like the Material flavor. I agree this statement is debatable. The image might be low-res in contacts, yet when you dial the contact it will be sharp and hi-res once again. We should probably ask Google why that happens.
Perhaps, my only gripe is that there is no way to “favorite” a particular pattern to use it for some other contact. Because it may never pop up for that other contact, or you just get tired of scrolling through the designs before it appears. All in all, it’s a fun and colorful avatar generator we recommend to those who like bold colors and Material feel.
