If you own a Symbian cellphone and you like to customize your cellphone with themes, this is the post for you.
As I mentioned in the previous post, there is a slightly problem with the App. Manager in the Symbian OS.
If you try to install excessive amount of applications (include Java Midlets) and themes, the App. Manager could be exploded and cause many trouble in installing and removing applications and themes (One may not have entries more than 80 or 120, depends on the cellphone that you use). If you want to persevere a lot of theme on your device, this could be a problem, as for every theme that you installed, it creates an entry in the App. Manager.
In this post, you will learn how to install themes manually by copying theme files directly on to your memory card.
1. You need a tool called SisContents. Just google it, you will find it. [Can be used for extracting and signing]
2. Load the theme sis/sisx installation file into this program and click on the package icon. This will unpack/extract the contents from the installation file. See the screen shot below:
3. After you extract the contents from the installation file, you will see the following folders:
> private (contains *.skn)
> resource (contains *.mbm and *.mif files)
The private folder contains the information about your theme and the resource folder contains the actual theme data. If you browse into these two folders, you will find a sub-folder in each of these folders that have the identical name. We need to merge these two folder into 1 folder. After we merged it, we will find 3 files with the file extensions as follows:
- *.skn (the skin information file)
- *.mbm (theme data)
- *.mif (theme element data)
Now we need to copy them into the follow location on your memory card: (Assume that E:\ is your memory card drive)
E:\private\10207114\import\
The folder (private\10207114\import\) contains all the themes that you have installed on your memory card, you can delete anyone of them, only if they do not own an entry in the App. Manager. If this is not the case, rather remove them from the App. Manger on your cellphone.
That's it, after you have done all this, you can check inside of your Theme manager. You will find the theme that you have just installed.
With this method, we can install as much themes as we want to and does not create new entries in the App. Manager.