Who among us take the time to customize their devices?


I'm not just talking about slapping on a case or a decal on it. What about the internal? Sure, you can theme to your heart's content. Let's go a bit further, how about finding different apps that will match the theme you have in mind? Most of people understand that theming a device is simply making the outside pretty and fun. Some of us have gone a bit further, with changing the launcher we use, the style and the look and feel of the home screen, the lock screen.

Have you thought of going further? Finding apps that will replace the standard texting app, email, file browser etc? There's plenty of app for your device that offers customization to the extent you could make the app looks as if it's part of the current theme you have.

Among the Android Coliseum folks, I think I'm pretty much the only one that makes a lot of visual changes. I'm using an alternate launcher that permits me to change the icons, the folder look, the grid size and positioning of the different elements.

With Sony devices we have a theme engine that allows for the nav bar to be customized as well as how the look and feel of the different menus will look like. I'm hoping that in the near future, Sony will allow even more customization of the device.

I've been making use of Sony's theme engine to make the subtle changes in the way the overall look & feel of my device.


You can see that I have a different nav bar the bottom and this should be reflected overall on the device. This includes subtle changes in colors all over.

Once the base theme was applied, it was time to set my eyes on the background of the home screen. It's an inspired wallpaper for which I can't remember where I grabbed it from, but if you do know the origin of the wallpaper, please let me know and I'll add it here.


The next step was to make changes to the icons set so that I could get something that matches the color scheme. I went with Noctum, which I featured here. This resulted in a very pleasing sight on my home screen and app drawer.


Now that I had a home screen, some decent icons and a nice transition look and feel for my Xperia Z2, it was time to tackle some more interesting aspect. My first thought was about changing the look of my texting service. 

I'm not a fan of overly complicated texting app, which leads me to use Textra. It's feature pack, lots of options and still retains the lightweight look and feel of the basic text messaging app.


I kept wanting even more seamless integration when it came to the colors with all my other apps. This is when I started to think I should maybe see what I could do about my email. I played and toyed with a few apps, but ultimately settled for WeMail. It offered me a dark mode for my emails that didn't skew the view.


This is as far as I've gone at this time in my transformation. I wanted to outline that you can make the look of your device be anything you want, provided you look and take your time to make them happen.

If you have any question, please feel free to drop them down below and comment. 

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