Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:38 UTC, January 3rd 2012
Summary:
It's not often I highlight a theme here on AAS, but this one's worthy of the spotlight. A lot of our Symbian^3/Anna phones have AMOLED screens, which means that the blacker a theme is, the more power you'll save. Yet a totally black theme (as per the Nokia-supplied 'Midnight' defaults) is pretty boring - surely there's a compromise between boring and really colourful? Something power efficient yet with good colours and a consistent 'message'? Rush Hour, by Arjun Arora, caught my eye as having all these attributes, here are screens of it in action. Along with a few more general musings on themes in general...
The idea behind the Rush Hour theme was blacks and reds/purples (from the sunset), with a splash of light here and there - it's worth noting that the screenshots here are a whole lot less impressive than the real theme on an OLED display - Arjun's colour palette was born for AMOLED - the reds are very, very 'rich'.
As an experienced theme maker, Arjun cleverly blurs the main backdrop for use behind the main Symbian menu, for clarity. It could be argued that the main homescreen should also be blurred, but then you wouldn't see the original photo - and, besides, many people may run their homescreens quite lean in terms of installed widgets.
Up until this point, 'Rush Hour' was just another theme to me, but it was the attention to detail in all the other parts of a really good theme that started catching my eye. Example one is the change in the appearance of the built-in Symbian keyboard - with rich graduations on each key and with hints of the main image in the text field, the keyboard looks stunning - again, on an AMOLED screen (as on the N8 or C7) for best effect.
Yes, other themes also sometimes change the keyboard colour, but I think one reason why I've fallen for Rush Hour is that the rich, deep reds work so well in dim conditions, in the dark UK winter evenings. Red has long been used for preserving 'night sight' by astronomers and this theme works along the same lines (depending on which apps you then run, of course!)
Not many people appreciate the sheer number of elements that need customising in a really thorough theme, but Rush Hour certainly goes into some depth. The animated 'progress' indicator, for example, mimics the old Knight Rider car bonnet side-to-side lights, which is simply rather cool....
Elsewhere, Rush Hour is unobtrusive as a theme - it does use a number of custom 'squircle' (Anna-style) app icons, but they're mainly close to the Nokia originals and, where different, are usually clearer and cleaner.
At over 4MB, a 1.8MB zipped download, Rush Hour is one of the largest themes I've ever installed, but the Symbian^3 generation of hardware, with graphics acceleration and plenty of RAM, seems to cope with it fine. Recommended.
Oh, and if you like the sound of Rush Hour but fancy something with a different feel by the same theme author, see also Arjun's blog, where he lists all the themes he's designed, plus his developer page on the Nokia Store.
In fact, there are many talented theme makers for Symbian, you only have to browse the relevant section of the Nokia Store to get an idea of the variety. In the Symbian world, we've had full themes for so long that we take them for granted - yet another example of an area in which Symbian has led the way for years (think also full multitasking, full connectivity, camera support - all dating back to the early 2000s...)
Having experimented with every other mobile platform, the only one which compares to Symbian in terms of theming is RIM's Blackberry. For all their eye candy attributes in general, iOS, Android and Windows Phone are actually very limiting for anyone who wants to change the way every part of the UI looks.
So here's to Arjun, to Pizero, and to all the others beavering away producing themes for our Symbian smartphones - there are now getting on for 10,000 available, from various sources. Try out a different theme every day on your N8 and you'd still be looking at a fresh feel for your smartphone in 2026....
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 3 Jan 2012
PS. Don't worry that AAS is going to start reviewing 'themes' because of lack of apps - we've got plenty of the latter still to look at - I just thought this theme and subsequent musings were worth a few minutes of your time!
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