Unlike Sony Ericsson and Nokia, Samsung's haven't encouraged a spin-off cottage industry in theme downloads, and until the G600 arrived, you were pretty much stuck with the pre-installed colour schemes.

But hidden away in the G600's arsenal is the new My Theme builder, an easy-to-use tool for creating themes from pre-set patterns or your own photos. You simply choose the background and select colour schemes for the icon and text elements around the page.

To start the My Theme builder, from the standby screen click Menu, highlight Settings and click Select. Now highlight Display settings and click Select, then highlight My theme and click Select.

You'll see the set of four themes that Samsung has included on the phone. To preview a theme, use the navigation wheel to highlight its icon and the theme will be displayed. Click Select to activate a theme.

Once you're tired of the four supplied themes, create your own by highlighting the Create box and clicking Select to launch the Theme Wizard.

Click Next to start building your theme. First you'll be prompted to select a background:

• None selects a plain background (you can choose the colour on the next screen)
• Pattern offers a choice of 10 patterns, to which you can add colour on the next screen
• Default lets you edit one of the three preset themes.
• My photos opens your camera gallery to use a photo you've taken as a background. Naturally portrait photos work better as theme backgrounds.
• Downloaded images gives access to photos received by SMS or Bluetooth. Note - images should be 240x320 pixels in size to fit the screen correctly.
• Favourite images opens your Favourite images folder. You can move any photos or images to the Favourite images folder via the My files section.

If you select one of the first three options, you'll be prompted to adjust the colour of the background using two colour bars, the first for the background colour, the second to select the brightness. Simply click left or right on the navigation button to adjust the colour or brightness, and click up or down to scroll between the two options.

If you're using an image for your background, you'll be taken to the relevant directory. Highlight the image you want to use, click Options, highlight View and click Select to see the image, and click Save to add it to your theme.

Once your photo background is in place, you need to set the background tint. Use the left and right navigation key for this. A photo with lots of different colours may be better off having a coloured tint so that all the words and icons are visible. Adjust the background tint and click Next.

Now select the Highlight shades. Use the nav key to set the colours and switch between the colour bars. You'll see the page elements change as you make adjustments. Click Next when you're happy with the colours.

The process continues through all the page elements - Highlight text, Title text, List text and Softkey text (at the bottom of the screen). You can see where you are in the process by a yellow progress bar just above the colour selection bars.

Press Next to proceed through the screens until you get to the page titled Completed. Now enter a name for your new theme and click Options and Save.

You'll then be asked if you want to apply the new theme now. Click Yes to apply, and No to keep the existing theme. You new theme will be saved in the My theme section for future use or more editing.

To edit a theme in future, go to Settings, Display settings, My theme, highlight the thumbnail of the theme to edit, click Options and Edit to open the Theme wizard.