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Some time ago I’ve begun a kind of series of theme reviews for N900. You may have already noticed some articles related with this subject, showing author’s favourite Maemo 5 themes in general.
In previous posts you can find mostly free N900 themes available in application catalogues. Sam posted his own Top Nokia N900 themes while I was writing about Matrix theme with my own wallpaper to make UI in general more personal. Recently I’ve decided to use a little more effort to give you more complete view on what you can get from one exact theme before downloading and installing.
If you’re still not satisfied with what you can get and you’ve searched all the web, you can always try to make your own theme. There is already tool for this, Theme Maker written in Java so it runs on various operating systems, including Linux, Windows and MacOS. Still I find this software a bit unstable so I’ll rely on themes ready to download from catalogues and Ovi store.
Summarizing, I will continue describing themes in more detail, just as I’ve done with Contour Nerv and Buff, all of this reviews you can find here, in Nokia N900 themes category. If you’re looking for something specific let me know what color palette, what kind of styling you’re interested in, I’ll try to find such theme and write in-depth review.
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For more info on devel and testing catalogues visit Application catalogues tutorial

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I have noticed an active increment of themes for the Maemo (especially for the N900) platform. The author Ricky Tournee for example released six themes at once, called the livilSteel theme series. They are all consistent in design and layout, which makes them distinctively belonging together and reflecting the designers “handwriting”.
The first one is the basic theme, livilSteel:

As second livilSteel Army Theme:

The third one is livilSteel Black Winter Day Theme:

Forth theme is livilSteel OSX Theme which is my favorite one:

As fifth theme livilSteel Grunge Theme:

And the last one livilSteel High Contrast Theme:

All of them are downloadable in the Maemo Download section for free! Thank you Ricky Tournee!
Another nice theme, which I place as my second favorite is the Array Theme for Fremantle by Johannes Siipola. Kiitos!

And my last one, on my personal third place I rank the Reflect Theme also by Johannes Siipola.

With time to time it will be more and more interesting to personalize the own device. We did not have a wide range of themes yet, but with this speed of theme releases, I think we will be able to choose soon our individual one.
Thank you Theme-Developers, I really appreciate your work, and I think the most of us do, am I right, or am I right?
So long,
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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Themes, what about themes on the N900. As there are not so many themes available, my top 3 are relatively easy to list. For the N900 being such a short time on the market and no easy theme creator tool available yet (please read my post about the thememaker), it will take a while before there will be a considerable quantity of themes to choose.
A theme not only contains wallpapers as background, but also all the buttons, icons, layouts, etc. can be modified to a new theme. It needs really creatives to do some work, time, and enthusiasm, because the fewest will share their creations for free. That’s okay for me, my opinion about is anyway that such work should be paid. Maybe someone is going to create a own N900 theme website, where you can purchase themes in the future, and designers can sell them on this platform. Maybe I should start this one . I know that Ovi Store is naturally one sharing place, and the Maemo platform too, but concentrated to one site, it could be much more efficient.

For myself and my number one, I am using the original Nokia theme from the phone, with an own background, I created. The second one I like very much is the marina theme, which you can find in the Maemo download section. It is kind of sophisticated, stylish and smooth.

At last on my list is the green melody theme. This is also a nice one mainly the green color I like a lot.

What are your favorites?
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -

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I was very curious about the Theme Maker. The new version 1.2.9, which supports also the N900 has been out for a while and I wanted to try making a theme of my own to use it on my phone. After downloading Theme Maker from the Maemo Garage section, there was no installing necessary, just unzipping the folder to the desktop. First I didn’t know how it could work, and the instructions are a little bit exhausting to read. I am also more the learning by doing type.
After getting more and more into the material I asserted that this one isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. First of all you really need an image editing software. The package includes templates with all the buttons, backgrounds, icons, etc. which can be edited, but it’s kind of complicated, because all the drafts are in just one layer. So in principle you have to make new ones because just changing or replacing colors would not lead to satisfying results. Once you have done all the creative work, the compilation process is the easy part. This is actually the program. Starting Theme Maker and pointing to the paths of the created image files, clicking the “Build” button will do the rest.
A new theme is created which can be installed on the phone. I didn’t managed it yet. It is really a lot of work to make a fine theme to personalize your device.
Fact is, with Theme Maker you are of course able to build a theme, but you have to be a graphic designer with good tools to construct a real shiny one. It is really not comparable with carbide.ui.
- sam | visit our Nokia N900 forum -