Friday, January 12, 2007

Tips & Tricks: Removing Themes

Please note that this blog is no longer active because it has moved! Please be sure to visit the new blog at:

http://news.mobile9.com/s60apps

 

 

Before I get started on this entry, I'd like to give a big thanks to Tommi at Nokia for mentioning me on his blog. Tommi works in the s60 application development unit at Nokia and pens what is surely the most widely read s60 blog on the net: Tommi's S60 Applications Blog. I'm sure that you already subscribe and read it religiously but if you don't, you should! S60.blogs.com gives us all a great insight into the minds of various Nokia team members and provides constant information on the many events and developments that surround the s60 ecosystem. So thanks Tommi! :)

With that, I'll move on to the first "Tips & Tricks" installment of my blog. Every so often I will provide what I hope to be some useful information that will help you get the most out of your s60 3rd device. I'll also try to cover some of the topics that I see constantly questioned on the forum over at mobile9.com and elsewhere. One such topic is a problem that appears to be common to all s60 3rd devices.

Many people have experienced a bug where they will install a theme on their device but when they try to remove it using the Application Manager there is no entry for it. I still see this problem on the latest N80IE firmware and on newer firmware for other devices as well. Don't despair though, as long as you install your themes to your memory card there is an easy way to remove those unwanted themes.

1. Connect your device to your PC in 'Mass storage' mode - or insert your Mini SD card into a card reader and connect it to your PC.

2. Once your PC recognizes your card a new drive will appear under 'My Computer'. Open it, and browse to private10207114import.

3. Browse through each of the folders in this directory to find the theme you would like to remove. The MBM, MIF, and SKN files in each folder should each be named after the theme - so if you want to remove a theme called "MyTheme", look for "MyTheme.mbm" etc.

*Note that you may see some MBM/MIF/SKN files named simply "themepackage.mbm" etc. In this case, simply open the SKN file in Notepad and you will see the actual theme name in the first few lines of text. Here is an example:

In the example you can see that the actual name of the theme is N80 Simplified v2 (created by teddymustupo).

4. Once you've found the folder containing the theme files you'd like to remove, simply delete the contents of the folder (don't delete the folder itself).

Now put your card back in your phone you'll notice that the theme is no longer listed under themes and you've freed up some space on your memory card.

Posted by EchoZulu at 14:46:00 | Permanent Link | Comments (23) |
Comments
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1 - Great help!

Great blog, welcome. Im following you from spain! ;)

Best Regards. (Comment this)

Written by: ObeliscO at 2007/01/12 - 16:10:46
2 - Zach,

Great blog, welcome to the blogging community and congrats on already being mentioned by Tommi. This is a great entry, but a few words of advice to your readers. I personally always install themes on the phone memory and have yet to have this happen except for once, and that one time I tried to uninstall a theme while still having it applied. other than that, installing themes on the phone's memory, in my experience, doesn't cause this problem. Anyone else with similar experience? (Comment this)

Written by: Rcadden at 2007/01/12 - 16:31:16
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3 - This is a good point Rcadden, thanks. I have seen this problem occur very few times when installing themes to the phone's memory. The only catch there is that many themes (especially those including icon sets) are quite large. For someone like me with 20-30 apps installed to the phone memory alone at any given time, space is quite valuable (I install most apps to my phone memory because I switch between several memory cards). My 2GB Mini SD just chuckles when I install eight or nine 1-2MB+ themes. My phone memory on the other hand would be crippled by them.

Thanks everyone for visiting and for your comments :) (Comment this)

Written by: Zach at 2007/01/12 - 17:01:54
4 - Zach, Thanks for the post. I have the issues with themes installed on the phone memory, rather than the sd card. Any way to remove them? (Comment this)

Written by: Fred at 2007/01/13 - 05:36:29 in reply to: 3
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5 - Fred, unfortunately until we get a functional version of FExplorer (or similar) for s60 3rd there is no good way to solve this problem for themes installed on the phone memory. The only way to get rid of them is to back up your phone with PC Suite and then format your phone memory (one way is to hold the [*] [3] and [green] keys while powering the phone on - until you see the welcome animation). This will restore your phone to its 'out-of-the-box' state.

A few words of advice though. Any apps/games/themes on the memory card will likely not function properly once the phone is formatted so you may also consider formatting your memory card. I also like to remove all apps/games/themes from the phone memory before I back it up. I've found that upon restoration, many backed up apps will not function properly so I prefer a fresh installation. Just make sure you have your registration codes! (Comment this)

Written by: Zach at 2007/01/13 - 08:37:13 in reply to: 4
6 - Zach, thanks for the note. I have noticed as well that the backup function does not really work as intended and causes issues upon reinstallation. I will just go as is for now till Fexplorer is out. It simply takes too long to reinstall everything from scratch. Best regards, Fred. (Comment this)

Written by: Fred at 2007/01/13 - 10:24:18 in reply to: 5
7 - Thanks Zach for your overly kind words - and good luck with everything!! (Comment this)

Written by: Tommi Vilkamo at 2007/01/15 - 11:02:33
8 - Good job putting up this blog. I think it will really help people.

I got the whole removal of themes thing, but I'm having a different kind of problem.

Some themes just disappear after I install new ones, and when I try and reinstall the ones I've lost, I get an installation error message. I think it has something to do with the installation registry on the phone memory because the only work around I have found is formatting the phone memory.

I have an E61, and I hope there is a way to remove the installation registry entries when Fexplorer finally sees the light of day.

Good job and good luck with the blog. (Comment this)

Written by: Salaah at 2007/01/18 - 06:46:20
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9 - Salaah, thanks for your compliments! Check out the Nokia forum on mobile9. I've described how you can reinstall those themes without having to format your phone memory in this topic: http://www.mobile9.com/invboard/index.php?showtopic=30787&st=0&p=247176&#entry247176 (Comment this)

Written by: Zach at 2007/01/18 - 09:33:16 in reply to: 8
10 - Brilliant, thanks for the link and the tip. I haven't had the chance to try it out, but its only a matter of time. I had a that the installer for the themes was creating all those problems.

BTW, if it works, you rock. Hell, you rock anyway. Keep up the good work. (Comment this)

Written by: Salaah at 2007/01/19 - 09:20:16
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