Series 60 Theme Studio is Nokia's own free tool to help you make themes for Symbian phones.

One of the much vaunted features of Nokia's Series 60 range of phones is the capability of personalising your handset with custom themes. Just as we're now encouraged to 'skin' desktop applications such as WinAmp media player, so Nokia wants us to develop a more personal attachment to our phones by choosing or even creating our own themes.

Series 60 Theme Studio's installation includes some atypical steps, so it's important that you don’t rush through the installation. The most problematic step is selecting default editors for bitmaps, vectors and sound files. No guidance is given for this step, and no default editing programs were found on my test system. Without any assistance from the Series 60 Theme Studio manual, this proved to be a major stumbling block in getting the program to function at all. I'd therefore recommend installing Adobe PhotoShop for Windows prior to attempting to install Series 60 Theme Studio, as the install program should detect PhotoShop as a default bitmap and vector editor.

More annoying problems

At the end of the Series 60 Theme Studio installation, I was prompted to restart the computer now, or wait and do it myself later. I chose to wait, but the installer immediately started trying to close my computer down. I managed to stop it, but this was an annoying reminder of why you’re always warned to close all other applications before an installation: things can go wrong.

Once up and running, Series 60 Theme Studio doesn’t really improve much. After a few minutes tinkering with the program's interface, it becomes clear that this is not an application aimed at users with a basic to intermediate skill level. Creating themes is a time consuming, fiddly and perplexing chore – as is trying to find help in the program's manual. This is a shame, because Series 60 Theme Studio is graphically well designed and looks like it could be used to produce some stunning results, if only it weren't aimed at developers only.

In all, Series 60 Theme Studio is a disappointingly complex tool really aimed only at developers.

Download Series 60 Theme Studio Carbide.ui 3.4 in Softonic

I'm a big fan of Nokia Series 40 phones, but the one problem I have with them is that they all look very similar.

If you fancy customizing your phone to stand out from the crowd a bit, you could install a theme for your device. However, those who really dare to be different choose to create their own themes and the Series 40 Theme Studio allows you to do just that.

The Windows-based application - an official Nokia software package - lets you change virtually every part of your display, from the folder icons to the battery indicator. You can tweak colors, change fonts and add custom pictures to set your phone apart from the rest.

The user interface is split into two halves - the left containing a menu of all the things you can change, and the right a live preview window displaying the current state of the theme. The degree you can customize your device really is limited only by your imagination. Actually, it's also limited by your patience because the user interface in the Series 40 Theme Studio isn't very user friendly. The menus are cluttered and poorly-labeled and this program is crying out for drag-and-drop functionality.

If you have the persistence to master the cumbersome interface, you should be able to pull off some cool designs though.

Download Series 40 Theme Studio 1.2 in Softonic