Until today I have been creating my own themes using my favorite image editor - The GIMP. While this is fun in my opinion, it is also a time consuming process and requires a lot of knowledge about how the Android system works. Decompiling files, editing images, working with the draw9patch tool, recompiling files, signing files.. it's fun but can get tedious real fast.
I used the UOT Kitchen today to create a few themes and at no time was I required to know more than how to point & click and basic file management! The site does most of the work for the user and even has previews of what the theme will look like before submitting work on the summary page. I was quite skeptical at first, but the skepticism quickly faded after flashing my first UOT theme, I was 100% satisfied and had no problems.
Usually a full battery icon mod takes me around 30 minutes to complete, but the UOT Kitchen was able to do the same job in just a few minutes.
Kitchen features:
- Overscroll glowing (NEW!)
- Font packs
- Supporting Theme Chooser for CM7 roms
- Enable transparency in status bar for GB roms
- Supporting Gingerbread roms
- Edify and Amend installation script
- Supporting hdpi/mdpi/ldpi roms
- Patch9 images auto-fix
- Numerous battery icon mods
- Themed icons for status bar, emoticons, notification power buttons
- Uni-color icons
- Customizable notification drop-down window
- Bootanimation mods
- Corrected files for popular roms/themes
- Custom battery for MIUI rom
- Showing battery % while charging
- Custom charging animations
- Windows animations
- Overscroll mods
- Icons for Notification Power Buttons
- Themes are stored for 12 hours providing plenty of time to download themes
How it works:
Visit the Kitchen page. This page may be closed when the user arrives but it's only temporary. Upon closing, the page explains that the kitchen closes itself when its queue reaches 30 theme requests. After completing all theme requests, the kitchen opens again. This "closed" page also displays the number of themes being completed along with the approximate time it will take for the kitchen to reopen.
Once the kitchen is open the user will find numerous items that can be themed. For a battery icon mod, for example, the user clicks the Battery tab, checks the "Use this mod" checkbox and all available options will appear for the user to complete. After setting up all desired theme elements, the user will need to upload some files from the ROM that is running on their phone (framework-res.apk, etc.). The site opens the files the user uploads, creates the theme and compiles everything into a signed .zip file.
Once the zip file is completed, the user visits the pickup page, downloads the flashable .zip file and flashes it via recovery (ClockworkMod or Amon Ra) on the phone.
Screenshots:
My phone is an htc Evo 4G. I have created the perfect theme to fit my needs, here are some screenshots (notice the notification bars and the drop-down notifications list):
I added color to the notification bar icons and percent remaining to the battery icons:
(I use LauncherPro and Beautiful Widgets because these apps are far more customizable than htc's default equivalents, and I can get a similar look with custom themes).
I chose the black power buttons and added "htc Evo 4G", thought that would be a nice touch:
I think the colored notification icons and battery percent level looks great on my phone:
Conclusion:
I'm still amazed at how fast and easy it was to create a full theme for my phone, this site saved me a lot of work. Everyone likes to personalize their phone and the UOT Kitchen makes this process fun and easy. Visit the How-To page to get started. And, most of all, have fun with it. The only limit is your imagination!
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