Background images, used as handset wallpaper and screensavers, are some of the most popular means of customizing i-mode screens and showing off your individuality. This is much like the choice of a background image or screensaver for your personal computer. You may still have the one that was installed when you bought it, or perhaps you're one of those people who change the background and screensaver to suit your mood on a daily basis.

When discussing wallpaper and screensavers in i-mode, we need to first define what they are. Different handsets have functions for displaying images in various modes, and they all seem to have different terms for the images. For the sake of simplicity, I will define these images in the following way:

• Wallpaper: When the handset is in standby mode, you can choose an image to be the background of your display screen. This is usually a static image that is akin to the background image on a desktop computer. This is also known as a "standby display image."

• Screensaver: When the handset wakes up after being shut off, an image can be displayed. The image can be static, but often is an animated image. This is also referred to as a "wakeup display image".
Handsets usually come with a few sample wallpapers and screensavers preinstalled that you can choose for a wallpaper or screensaver.

In addition, there are numerous i-mode sites that specialize in images that you can preview and download to your i-mode phone. Some of these are free sites, but many are micropayment sites. For instance, one of i-mode's premiere official sites is Disney, which charges a monthly fee for downloading images of Disney characters for use as wallpaper.
However, if you are like me, you have grown tired of the default wallpaper and screensavers that came with your handset. Content services for downloading are nice, but I find that creating original images for use on my handset is more interesting -- and less expensive!