With software onboard to create your own themes, you can customise the look and feel of your Samsung Soul U900 quickly and easily without having to download new ones. With just a bit of creativity and some simple button tapping, you can style your phone's menus to look exactly how you want them to.

You can base your themes on favourite photos you've taken with your phone, celebrity shots you've downloaded, or images copied over to the Soul. Whether you want to create a theme based on your favourite football club, movie or person, it's easy. The Samsung Soul's preloaded software provides straightforward ways to make and apply a new theme.

The Samsung Soul provides both an 'easy' option for creating themes - where you simply choose an image, colour, or combination of both and the phone automatically generates a selection of suggested themes - and an 'expert' option, where you can select from a more advanced range of settings options.

You can view a step-by-step guide to creating themes using the 'easy' option in our guide How to create new themes for the Samsung Soul U900 (Part 1). Here we take you through the more advanced 'expert' way to create themes.

Create theme (Expert)

When you open up the Create theme (Expert) application, you're presented with an extensive menu of options, with three tabbed sections - headed Background, Icon and font, and Type - offering no less than sixteen elements you can change.

If this initially appears daunting, don't worry - you don't have to use all of these options to create your theme.

You may want to use only two or three to start with, or you may want to explore every option available - it's up to you.

You can save a new theme whenever you like by pressing the OK option in the centre of the touchpad, whether you've just tweaked one theme element or played extensively with all of them.

You can then check out your new theme, and if it's not quite right, you can easily edit them or start again. It's quick to create themes, and once you've tried it a couple of times, you'll have no problem fine-tuning your efforts.

To get to the Create theme (Expert) option:

• Press the Menu button in the centre of the touchpad, or alternatively press the Menu softkey (Figure 1).
• In the main menu, highlight the Settings icon (it looks like a cog and spanner). Press the OK button on the touchpad or Select softkey (Figure 2).
• Scroll down to highlight Display & light settings. Press Select or OK, or alternatively press number 3 on the numberpad (Figure 3).
• Highlight Display. Press Select or OK, or press number 1 on the numberpad (Figure 4).
• Highlight My theme. Press Select or OK, or press number 1 (Figure 5).
• Highlight Create theme (Expert). Press Select or OK, or press number 3 (Figure 6).

Basics
The initial theme creation menu lists (Figure 7) offer a fast way to get to the options you want to use. You can choose any one of these as a starting point for creating a theme, scrolling down or across to select the one you want.

Once you've selected an option as a starting point you can skip quickly forward or backwards through the whole list of settings options - making any adjustments you want as you go - simply by pressing either the Next or Previous softkey options (Figure 11).

Most users are likely to want to start by selecting an image as the basis of a new theme. You can use any image you have on the phone, including cameraphone photos, downloaded shots and copied pics.

• Highlight Background image. Press Select or OK, or press number 1 (Figure 7).
• You have three options to choose from: My files image - using any image file in your phone, Pattern - opting for one of a selection of pre-loaded patterns - or No background. The procedure for selecting an image or pattern is broadly similar but fewer clicks are needed to select a pattern.
• If you want to select an image from your photos, or another of your folders, highlight My files image. Press Select or OK, or press number 1 (Figure 8).
• Scroll down to the My files folder from which you wish to select an image (in this example, Camera album). Press Select or OK (Figure 9).
• Scroll down to the image you wish to use. Press Select or OK (Figure 10).
• After a few seconds. the phone will take you into further themes settings. First will be Background overlay - which enables you to choose a colour tint to add to your background image (Figure 11). You can choose whether you want a colour or leave it looking natural.
• Remember, at any point in the themes creation menus you can save your newly-created theme by pressing OK on the touchpad.

For each settings option, you can make selections using the touchpad controls. Scrolling up or down will select which of the elements for that particular option you want to change - for example, colour, tone or font style.

Once you've used the up/down buttons to highlight the element you want to change, you can use the left and right touchpad buttons to adjust settings - for example, to move along a colour chart line, or switch between bold or regular font types.

• The colours will be superimposed over your image onscreen. Once you're happy with your colour selection, press the Next softkey to move on. If not, press Previous to go back.
• Pressing Next will take you to the next option on the Background settings list - Title background. Again, you can use the touchpad controls to select your exact colour preference. When you're happy with your selection, press Next to go to the next option.
• Pressing Next will take you to Softkey background. Follow the same procedure as above to select the Softkey background colour you require; as before, you can see the changes onscreen as you're making them (Figure 13). Press Next to move on.
• Follow the same colour choice procedure for the other colour options: Pop-up background; List focus (the highlighted options on menu lists); Main menu icons; and Focused main menu icon (the highlighted menu icon) (Figure 14).
• If you want to change Indicator icon (the small status icons lined up on the top of the display), the procedure is similar though you only have a choice of black, white or grey tones (Figure 15).
• Press Next from the Indicator icon setting, and you get to Title font. Again, you can change font colour as above. You also have the option to switch between regular and bold fonts (Figure 16). Once you've chosen your font colour and style, press Next to move on.
• Follow the same colour and font appearance procedure above for the other font options: List font (lettering used in lists); Focused list font (the lettering of the highlighted list option); Soft key font; and Pop-up focus (the highlighted pop-up item).
• Keep pressing Next as you go through these options and you come to the Main menu icon type. This option enables you to choose the appearance of the main menu icons, and the highlighted menu icon (there are three styles to choose from for each) (Figure 17).
• Using the touchpad control, scroll through the three on the left for the main icons. Press Next, then scroll through the three on the right to select the highlighted menu icon style (Figure 18). Press Next to move on
• In the List menu icon type option scroll to select the style you want (Figure 19). This is the final theme menu list option; pressing Next or OK will take you to the Save screen.
• In the Save screen you can type a name for your newly created theme, or simply go with the default name (Figure 20). Press Save.
• You will be asked if you want to 'Apply this theme for your phone now?' (Figure 21). You can press Yes to change to your new theme, or No to go back to the My theme menu without changing the current theme. In either case, the new theme will be stored in your theme gallery for use whenever you want it.
• Press the Call end button to get back to your standby page and view the new theme in place (Figure 22) or Back softkey to go through the newly themed menus (Figure 23).

NOTE:
Groups of settings
Going through the theme creation menu options, you'll notice three tabs marked where there are mini headings scrolling across the display. Samsung has grouped related settings together in this way, so you don't have to press the Next and Previous buttons to go through every settings option to get to the one you want.

To scroll through these tabbed options, use the touchpad to scroll up to the mini-headings, and then scroll to the right or left. Here, you can use the Previous softkey to return quickly to the initial menu lists (Figure 24).