Matching theme to body - That Silvery Feeling

[slitchfield]

Now this is pretty trivial, but bear with me. Am I so unusual in matching a phone's theme to its body colour and styling? Below the break I've illustrated the idea with the silver Nokia N82, but I'd welcome your comments and feedback. What other device/theme pairs work very well?

Read on in the full article.

[slitchfield]

....Yes... I'm sure you can...... [FX: looks puzzled]

[Ratkat]

On my N82 I use, Nokia's E series themes, Dots Blue, Dots Grey and Dots Red.

The grey one is a nice match, but the blue one really looks great with Titanium coloured N82.

I go the other way, I prefer a black theme to go with my N95 classic - I have Pizero's "black and amber" and "black and aqua" using standard icons on my phone, it's also easier to read quickly.

[moonshot]

I tend to match as well. My 6220 is black. But it not easy to find a good black theme.

Pizero's "black theme has errors when used with the 6220.......the text in calender does not show when trying to edit.

I find the Light theme from the E66/E71 looks great on the N82.

[talhamid]

@Steve: Sorry to rain on your parade, but that silver theme on that dim screen is barely visible. I was about to abandon my N82 due to screen dimness (after all, it is a premium phone and I shouldn't feel ashamed to bring in out in presence of other phones, should I?), when a blessed soul came up with the hack to brighten the screen.

So use that hack, and you will find that even brightly colored themes look great against the silver of N82. I am using a rainbow one right now

[neilhoskins]

You're dead right. I think "Gold" was the best theme he did: it looked fantastic, but just didn't look right somehow on my silver N95-1.

I am quite finicky when it comes to themes - I end up not using a theme even if I find a readability issue even in any one third party app. Also Resco News happens to be one of my most frequently used applications - and it is not kind to themes (the text of url links do not display correctly with many of them).

So, although I have been an s60 user for a few years now, there are only two themes that I really use - White Revisited 1.4 (which I hold on to for dear life since it is not easily available on the web) and Turquoise. When I get bored of one, I switch to the other.
Recently I have seen two E71 themes that I liked - Symbian OS 9x by k1slenko and Absolute Pure_giambi(this was featured on Volker Weber's website last week).
I have noticed that e71 themes display the calendar icon for emails when used on an e90, but readability is excellent for both the ones mentioned above.

Oh, and meow!!!

[shadamehr]

@ Steve...

I just want to know how your N82 is not full of dust inside the screen. I've had any and every phone going, and only an old Orange SPV C500 WinMo phone came as close to my N82 for dust under the screen. Mine is HORRID.

On a more relevant note however, I am just like you - I like, where possible, my themes to favour the phone colour itself too.



@ talhamid...

What hack for proper brightness... please share, if it is legal and thus within the remit of the board rules.



EDIT for all:

By the way, a quick way to test various themes out and see if there are any "colour on colour" errors, as one user mentions, it to apply the theme you want to test, go into GPS Data, do a satellite search, check the satellite status, and see if the Bar Graphs are readable, or if they are the same colour filled bar, as the background around it, and thus impossible, or extremely difficult to read. If so, then that theme will cause you issues elsewhere across the phone too. Alas even our great PiZero's best themes often suffer from this issue. HTH.

[talhamid]

Well are hacks legal? I don't know. All I know is it uses hellocarbide to open up the file system and replaces some system files. It is completely safe and reversible, but as you might imagine, it does reduce battery life.

What the hell, I'd rather have a visible screen that a few extra hours of squinty misery ;-).

You can find the hack at then82blog.com.

i believe the motorola z8 and its gloss theme work really well.

[malerocks]

I do this too. I always use (and have used) a black bodied and I find that either dark coloured themes or very bright ones (Orange, Red) look very good with the phone.

@Unregistered
yes, the gloss theme fits so well with the z8 that it almost seems to be part of the phone itself. Unfortunately this is the only theme that I have seen to work well with the z8.
The problem is that the text in the standby screen always remains white, irrespective of which theme is being used. This rules out most light coloured themes. The other built-in theme (Pure) is light coloured and still makes the cut, but only barely.
Strangely enough, the text in the internal screens seem to adapt to the theme being used.

Here are three themes that I loved on the E71.

http://thesymbianblog.com/2008/07/27...s-for-the-e71/