Every week seems to bring new themes for our smartphones, many of which introduce us to ever wackier and more artistic sets of icons for the applications we're familiar with. In this rantfeature, I argue that there's efficiency and elegance in keeping icons close to the originals, keeping the workload for our poor beleaguered eyes and brain down....
Read on in the full article.
It is just you, Steve. I think it has to do something with age, memory and failing eyesight, hmmm? 😉
I personally believe the theme makers are one of the most dynamic and talented communities out there. They keep the freshness and graphical innovation going, making our phones funkier and 'newer' everytime they release any theme. That is why I am disappointed at the current trend of using the Touch icon pack or Flahorn icon pack by most of the theme makers. It makes everything the same! What is then the point of a 'theme'? It is then as good as changing wallpapers.
I understand that the 'serious' users don't really bother with dressing up their phones, but that can be no argument against making new custom set of icons. I think new icon sets infuse a sense of freshness and newness.
I really dont mind new icons as long as the new icons are such that they are pretty obvious in what they are representing. E.g. A new camera icon should still be a camera, although it can be of a different design. Its nice to have a different look and feel on your phone. Look at it as dressing up your phone a bit.
Themes which use completely different pictures and in no way represent the app / folder that they have been allocated - I stay away from.
you have made a good point that needs deeper discussion to find a better way for themes. i was a theme chaser but did not know why i decided to unistall all to use only the default nokia theme the reason may be the theme useability and recognitions or some i don`t know why. i still like the freshness but with simplicity, theme developers have been doing a good job but i think that is they will make their work outstanding they need UI and Simplicity so they should continue enhancing thier work.
when apple made thier first iphone the one thing that attracted people was the UI then the simplicity even though the S60 devices could do much better in many ways, since then all the phone manufacturers started to change seriously thier UIs in other to compete with them, the Palm Pre they knew to compete they needed a nice UI and Simplicity, LG HTC, Windows 6.5 they are all looking for a better way to SIMPLIFY thier UI.
now let`s look at our beloved Eseries and Nseries they are from generation to generation the same that is where theme developers come to fill the gab. i am in search for a replacement for my N95 but i am having difficult to decide the successor and need help badly.
Dad
i downloaded a nice simple white theme for my e71 last week. i tried the designers icons and what a bloody mess. i like black on white especially during entering data but these were just hideous. so on went the default icons. when i came to entering data or texting had a very pale grey font on the said white background which is next to useless when you want black on white. 5seconds in the app manager and that was gone . im afraid steve is right.
Cjp wrote:i downloaded a nice simple white theme for my e71 last week. i tried the designers icons and what a bloody mess. i like black on white especially during entering data but these were just hideous. so on went the default icons. when i came to entering data or texting had a very pale grey font on the said white background which is next to useless when you want black on white. 5seconds in the app manager and that was gone . im afraid steve is right.
One bad theme and that's the conclusion? You really need to see some wonderful themes out there. For starters, try any theme from babi (all clean and nice, no bloody mess), Blue_Ray, PiZero or dhanusaud. All of them are very creative and yes, very, very useful. I mainly use dark themes with little or no background as I use transparent customized wallpapers alongwith them. Try it out, it's a whole treasury out there.
Funny you should mention babi as thats where i use the most for my themes and thats where the rubbish white 1 came from.
Personally I always stick with the default themes when picking themes. So, as long as there's option to download themes sans custom icons I'm happy. Makes me wonder whether S60 should have a setting to switch between icon sets independently of the theme (or at least to toggle between the current theme's icons and the default ones) - that way theme designers just distribute one SIS file with however many custom icons they want (or not) and users can pick what they want to do on the phone.
One thing I particularly like about the default icons is that they a visually distinct by the colours as well as their shapes. A lot of custom icon sets I've seen are all in the same colour (so as to match the rest of the theme). While this looks cool at first glance I find them very hard to navigate - because I have to concentrate to figure what the shape is trying to represent or, failing that, need to read the text. I can't just glance at the screen and instantly find what I'm after.
What's ugly for you is probably elegant for someone else. De gustibus non est disputandum. Besides, keeping your icons close to the originals is a foolproof way to get a C&D notice from Nokia, like tehkseven did a short while ago.
IMHO it's a mistake to use folders as icons, even when they technically lead to folders, because most people don't think in those terms when using a phone.
Most people (myself included) just want access to a particular kind of service, they aren't thinking about sorting things as they might do on a desktop computer.
Thankfully Nokia seem to have taken this on board with the S60 5th Edition icon set, which is also being used on some 3rd Edition models too.
I like the icons on the my 5800. Downloaded a few themes but decided to just keep default theme for 5800 and just change out the wallpaper. Lots of cool wallpaper out there for the 5800 and u can use them at full screen when you input hm screen as just basic. The res on the 5800 is fantastic! Stay Hard folks!!
Steve - you have admitted in the past that you also don't like applications if they have their own gui (I think it was in regard to Profimail) instead of the standard Nokia "DOS" look
I think there is a pattern there, I just need to find it 😉
You are so right Steve! I themes with all icons in only two colours are the worst.
I completely agree with you Mr. Litchfield on this one.
Personally I do like themes, but some of the themes the icons are just too unrecognizable or too bright. I especially like dark themes with some contrast mainly because it makes my phone viewable in bright sunlight.
Even if I like a theme very much I tend to go for the standard icons.
Why?, someone may ask. My answer to this is mainly for practical reasons.
1. It makes my phone more usable without having those not consistent icons.
2. It makes it cleaner by having a more streamlined look on my phone.
I do like fancy icons but as long as there are applications and games I have
on my phone in which these icons are not available, the standard ones at
least makes things look good and uniform.
3. Applies to some (many) themes. Readability. No matter how good a theme it it leaves areas where text is not displayable, I uninstall it right away and rather use the standard ones. Most notable is trying to get up the about screen in an application. If the text are not displayable there then the theme are useless for me. (The best one to try this trick on is to use Taskspy, which unfortunately haven't been updated for all phones)
I may be a bit too practical but that is also mainly why I choose a Symbian phone because of all the things I can do on such a device.
Well. I understand the meaning of this post; and I can say I agree with most of it.
I also prefer standard default icons among the generality of custom icons that we see around, but we also need to say some things:
1 - that older nseries icon set was nice, but nothing special. People got bored of it because it has been featured for years on nokia devices. THis bring to the creation of customized icons.
2 - After years of usage of the nseries icons, Nokia got mad by coming out with an "Horrible" icon pack for the E-series E71 and E66. How could they release an entirely grey icon set?
SO, i understand the quest for customized icons from e-series users. They just can't stand those horrible icons.
3 - Extended "marketing" research shows clearly that the majority of people prefer customized icons among default ones. Often, majority does not mean "best". But when the great majority of people asks you something, you can't do in a different way, if you care of hits and visits.
4 - Now, people are still asking for custom icons. But, in my opinion, Nokia new Ovi icon set is just fantastic; there is no icon pack out there better than this one. The probem is now for older devices; how can we put the new Ovi icon pack in older nseries phones? The answer could be: with next firmware updates. But unfortunately, this will not happen. So, here we go with emulation of Nokia Ovi icons.
(this opens a new problem: Nokia Ovi icons have been in partially leaked, extracted from a theme and widely used by thememakers; but Nokia noticed that, and one thememaker got a communication by Nokia asking to stop using their icons, as they are copyrighted)
5 - There is one very important thing to say, also. All custom icons made by thememakers are made of vector files; there are absolutely not as common as png or ico icons; making vector icons takes a very very large amount of time. To make a new icon pack takes weeks of work.
I also know that many thememakers that purchased stock vectors as a source for their icons. So, making a customized icon pack takes much time and in some cases, much money.
I also think that a custom icon pack is an added value in a theme only if:
- the icons are of very high quality
- the thememakers use this icon pack for a long time, allowing users to memorize icons; changing often will result in more confision.
- They do not provide 3rd party icons. I never understood thememakers that add 20.000 3rd party icons in a theme; the theme becomes heavy, slow, and 3rd party apps icons changes so that it's difficult to recognize them. I prefer icons with changed special folders, and with original 3rd party icons.
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, many people still think that icons are the most important part of a theme; i don't think so. I've seen beautiful icons on low quality themes; that a nonsense.
I think that a theme ith 30.000 chenged icons is maybe for kids who like "modding" and extreme customization; people who enjoy killer design will rather prefer a good theme with nokia default icons, or a quality icon pack without 3rd party icons.
Thank you for reading this long post
a "famous" Thememaker
Well might as well add my two cents:
Dont agree with you at all Steve. I think having new icons makes the phone feel 'fresh'. As long as the icons arent irrelevant to what they present, I find there are no confusions.
In fact, Im using a theme that you posted a link to a couple of weeks ago (The S60 v5 theme for S60 v3). I love that theme, but its good to know that when I get bored of it all I have to do is download a new one!
Unregistered wrote:
I also think that a custom icon pack is an added value in a theme only if:
- the icons are of very high quality- the thememakers use this icon pack for a long time, allowing users to memorize icons; changing often will result in more confision.
- They do not provide 3rd party icons. I never understood thememakers that add 20.000 3rd party icons in a theme; the theme becomes heavy, slow, and 3rd party apps icons changes so that it's difficult to recognize them. I prefer icons with changed special folders, and with original 3rd party icons.
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, many people still think that icons are the most important part of a theme; i don't think so. I've seen beautiful icons on low quality themes; that a nonsense.
I think that a theme with 30.000 changed icons is maybe for kids who like "modding" and extreme customization; people who enjoy killer design will rather prefer a good theme with nokia default icons, or a quality icon pack without 3rd party icons.
Thank you for reading this long post
a "famous" Thememaker
I agree on most of your other points about N-series icons being boring and the icons for E-series being horrible.
However I do like that themes comes with customized 3rd party icons mainly because it will offer a streamlined and clean look on my phone. (Isn't that also part of a good design?)
I do know that those themes tend to be bigger in size and also somewhat slower to load, but that is a price at least I'm willing to pay for my phone to look good.
Currently I'm using the Psiloc Reflect theme and besides the heavy DRM in it (All of Psiloc products) and if it wasn't that I already payed for it I would throw it far far away. I do use it by when launching GPS data on my N82 and then going to Navigation the compass don't show the directions, meaning it won't show the letter N,E,S,W. That really annoys me.
That is also one of the reasons why I mainly don't buy commercial themes for my phones (I've actually only bought this one) but rather go for those that are free. And I'm planning to start offering donations for themes I find that are very good.
As I said earlier in my previous post I do tend to be more practical and therefore I like things to work in a certain way and having such small glitches here and there really annoys me, especially if it is a company that have released a product.
I do respect the many thememakers out there that makes our phones looking more fresh and putting much time and effort in doing so. So you are all doing a great job. And I would actually recommend you to stay non-commercial (I won't diss you just because you go commercial with some of your themes)
but being a company and offer themes of low quality, that is "no thanks" from me.
So keep up the good work and you deserve all the appreciation and respect from us.