Most mobile phone users are familiar with changing the ringtone on their phone, or swapping the wallpaper image on their standby screen.

But on may phones, including the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, you can also change the whole look and feel of the phone quickly and easily by changing the phone's "theme". A theme is a self-contained package of elements to customise your phone that can include wallpapers, screen savers, backgrounds and colour schemes for menus, and even the alert tones used by the phone. A theme may not change all elements, or it could change them all, depending on how it's been created and the phone it's designed for.

By changing themes, you can alter the whole personality of the phone in one go. You can download themes for you phones over the air and from numerous online sites. These can range from abstract designs to themes based on favourite movies, TV shows, stars, football teams, places - and practically anything else you would want to adorn with. There's a huge range of content out there to explore.

However, as well as customising your phone with downloadable themes, you can also change the theme to one already loaded on to your 5310 XpressMusic. It's quick and easy to do.

Press the central navigation key to select the Menu (Figure 1).

In the main Menu, use the navigation control pad to highlight the Settings icon (Figure 2). Press Select.

In the Settings sub-menu, scroll down to Themes (Figure 3). Press Select.

Highlight Select theme (Figure 4). Press Select.

Highlight Themes (Figure 5). Press Open by clicking the navigation pad.

You are presented with a list of themes that are loaded onto the phone, with thumbnail images of what the themes look like (Figure 6). Scroll down to the theme that you want to install.

You can see a preview of the available themes as you scroll through by stopping on them for a second or two. The background changes to illustrate how the theme will look (Figure 7).

Once you've selected the required theme, press Apply. A message will appear for a few seconds confirming that the new theme is being applied (Figure 8). The background will automatically change as the new theme is set, and you will be returned to the Settings menu (Figure 9).

Press Back to return to the main menu and then press Exit to return to the standby screen; both will have the new theme applied (Figure 10).

You can change themes back following the same procedure outlined above.You can easily download new themes from numerous websites to add to the ones pre-loaded on your Nokia 5310 XpressMusic.