THEMES??? Any way to turn off?

[Tom_Boy]

Hi folks,

I trust this is the correct place to post this. If not, feel free to kick me to the curb. I just bought a new 2160 device. To net it out, I am somewhat visually challanged. I am a sales rep for IBM in the US and I am always on business travel. Not sure who came up with the idea of themes, may be a good one, but causes me pain. The last two (2) Nokia phones I have bought both have themes that cannot be 'turned off'. I am out on the road and in the sun alot. It is almost impossible to read the screen with a theme. So, I called Nokia customer support, and got "gee, great idea, but we are sorry, we can't help you". So I replied back that I cannot be the only one who is visually challanged and said, since you do not want to offer me a software option to turn off themes, how about building a high resolution black & white 'blank' theme with no picures or graphic's. Guess what the answer was this time? "gee, great idea, but we are sorry, we can't help you".

So, I think there are a lot of people in the world who could benefit from such a theme or phone for visually impared people. Just not getting any traction with the customer support folks. I downloaded the s40 SDK for themes, but not sure I am smart enough to use it. For true Nokia development staff, this has got to be like a 5 minute entry level project. Can anyone help a bifocal-ready guy? What I am looking for is a sharp display sort of like the new small Blackberry's have.

Also seems like the light goes off very quickly, any way to keep the back light on longer?

I'm even willing to pay for it...

Thanks,
Tom
twhughes@verizon.net

[symbianyucca]

Basically you could contact a theme supplier (anybody making themes really) and ask them to make a theme with white backgrounds & black text, thus when you would turn this on, it would work excatly same as your theme would have actually been turned off.

I usually only use S60 devices, thus don't know if this particular phone has the settings available, but at least with S60 devices you cana djust the lights-out time, thus try checking the phone settings to see if you can do something with them.

yucca

[Flying Fox]

Hi Tom_Boy,

Is the phone you have, indeed the Nokia 2160 or is it the 2610? The reason I ask is that the 2160 is a much older phone and I thought given your phone is new that it could be a typo.

Assuming your phone is indeed a Nokia 2610. Then it is based on the Series 40 2nd Edition platform. What you downloaded is the Series 40 Software Development Kit (SDK) which is designed for software developers, so understandably it looks quite confusing. You should try instead the Series 40 Theme Studio.

http://forum.nokia.com/info/sw.nokia...me_Studio.html

You should download version 2.2 as it supports the Nokia 2610.

I started creating a white on black theme for my phone which is a Nokia 6131 (Series 40 3rd Edition) and also a white on black theme a few weeks ago but stopped when I realised that the theme studio gives you no control of the external display's font colours.

But what you could do is create a white image with the same resolution as your screen (128 x 128 pixels) and use that as your wallpaper. You should save it as a .jpg or .gif.

As for the backlight option on your phone, there is no configurable option available. This surprised me too at the time. However the only option that could leave the backlight on longer is: Power Save. Try turning it off and it might work for you.

Hope this helps

[Tom_Boy]

Hi folks...

Thanks for the replies... Flying_Fox, good catch, it is a 2610! Digital dyslexia there I guess. I looked at the link you sent, and I did download the Theme Studio and installed it on my PC. I will try to create the white .gif or .jpg. What's the trick to get it from the P/C to the phone? May be simple, just having a mental block. E-mail it to the phone?

Yucca, in case I can't do this myself, would appreciate a link or contact info for theme suppliers you feel are first rate.

Anyone else???

[Tom_Boy]

Ok, just built one, but after looking at the doc, I cannot test it unless I deploy to the phone... but that requires the SDK, and/or a USB cable or post on a website. No real access to either. Thoughts?

[Flying Fox]

Hello again

Your spot on about how to upload the image or theme to your phone. Based on your phones capability, you have two options:

MMS
If you just need an image you could e-mail it to a friend who you know is able to upload the image to their phone, then get them to MMS it to you. Your sevice provider needs to support MMS and your phone may need the configuration settings from your provider first so that you can receive MMS's.

Internet
You could sign up for one of those free web/image hosting services or again ask a friend to host it for you on a temporary basis and ftp/upload it then simply link to it in the phones internal web browser. Again this option is dependent on your service provider providing you either WAP or GPRS access. Also configuration settings are required in order for your phone to use the service.

This service might help you accomplish this:
http://www.wap-upload.net/

Let me know if this helps.

[OldRanger]

The Nokia 2610 is a nice phone; I own it. However, it has three drawbacks: 1) the low ring-tone volume; 2) the low visibility outdoors in bright sunlight; 3) the short duration of the backlight time--only 15 seconds. These drawbacks are, in my opinion, compensated by its other great features and its price. Anyway, there is little that one can do about these problems.

The volume can be adjusted to the maximum in Settings > Profiles. There you can choose a profile and adjust the ringing volume. While listening to a call, you can adjust the volume by using the left and right direction keys. This last adjustment can also be made by adding "Volume" to the Go-to list.

The backlight time is not adjustable, so you have to learn to live with it. When the light goes off, usually pressing one of the direction keys cause the light to turn on without causing any undesirable secondary effect.

This is not the ideal phone to be used by a person in a crowded street with bright sunlight, because he may miss the ring or be unable to read who is calling. These are not my usual conditions, so for me it is fine. Nevertheless, something can be done to enhance the display visibility for visually impaired people. For example, display contrast can be tuned in Settings > Display.

There are Web sites that allow themes to be downloaded, where a high contrast theme can be chosen. Two of them are mobile9.com and zedge.net. A point to consider is the menu background. For all that I was able to found (I am only a user, not a theme developer), a theme has two backgrounds: one for the stand-by screen (the wallpaper), and another for all the other screens. The first can be changed in Settings > Display > Standby mode settings. There one can also change the font color.

In my knowledge, the second background (the menu background) cannot be changed by the user, and the themes that come with the phone have not a suitable background. So, a work-around is to download any theme that has a suitable menu background, and later change the stand-by background.

If there is no image in the phone that pleases you to use as a wallpaper, you can make some simple ones by using the Windows Paint program. Just create a 128 x 128 pixel image, and save it as GIF file. Then you must use one of the Web sites that allow to upload image and sound files, for example: www.davidpye.com.

I would be very pleased to hear of other user experiences regarding the Nokia 2610 phone.