Transparent wallpapers broken in Mango?

The single coolest hidden feature of Windows Phone is undoubtedly the transparent wallpaper trick. The result is a unique effect when used well and a totally gimmicky feature to show off to your friends. We recently took our own custom-made transparent wallpaper for the site and put it on Mango to get that slick look again. Unfortunately though, it appears the transparent wallpapers have run into some major conflicts with Mango's new lock screen.

As you can see in the photo above, when the picture idles on the lock screen (left) the image is garbled with repeating segments and an already active transparent layer. But if you hold the screen with your finger (right) the image clears up, continues to use the transparency and works as it should. Just to prove that it's not just our wallpaper, we also tested out one of 1800PocketPC's awesome Transformers wallpapers and received the same result. You can see that photo past the break.

What is causing this change in behavior? Our best guess is that it's related to the context-sensitive Zune player controls that pop up on the lock screen whenever you've played a song or podcast. It looks like Microsoft did some background work on the lock screen and when combined with the transparent wallpaper, the result is what you see above. This is extremely disappointing to see, and we sincerely hope Microsoft is working on a method to fix this. However minor of a feature it may be, it's still one of the few cool customization options users have with Windows Phone--a little goes a long way!