Some thoghts about themes - Android Themes

Hello,
first of all, many thanks to those who develop themes and makes our phones, tablets more prettier. They really do a nice and useful job.
Studying and using several themes, I noticed that a few of them are developed without taking a look on a major thing, namely readability.
In my opinion, a theme should not only look good, but it should be visible (aka readable) in all lighting conditions, especially the main applications, like the Dialer or the Settings etc. and so on.
The bigger, darker and bold fonts on a light backround will always be more readable in direct sunlight, on a weaker phone screen.
What do you think?
Regards...
(PS. Correctly: thoughts...)

Related

[Q] any help in changing graphics for maximum legibility?

I just switched from Sergio's Sense 2.1 ROMS to the 2.5s as the older ones haven't been updated in almost a year. I basically can't read it due to the complicated backgrounds, low-contrast colors and grays, and so on. It's not only the cookie home tabs and the striped background on the clock, it's the blueish fill in the dialer keys, the rainbow stripes in the dialer images and so on. Can anyone point me towards clocks, backgrounds and dialers and so on for this Sense 2.5 to make it more visible for someone with poor close vision? I just want the largest letters on a solid background, no patterns, images or "themes."
Thanks in advance for any help.

[Theme] Blue WIP

Ok so been hard at work making a nice blue theme. 90% done and looking real nice. Dug alot of xml files and change alot of major system text colors, still got few more to find. Some screen shots are located here:
http://www.tigerznet.com/xoom
Things to notice
Icons are standard blue
The shadows and outlines are blue
Big clocks are standard blue/dark blue
Major system texts light blue
Descriptions a turquoise color
Running on hammerhead but suggested to use morays battery icons.
This is based on wifi model, still gotta dig up the 3g models.
Disabled text/buttons/icons still gray, left these as is for sakes of easily seeing they disabled.
Thing up coming:
Removal of Redundant battery level in quick panel.
Notification text still gray/white
Apps word still white (did change xml didnt work some reason)
Adjust icons for 3g models.
Any other suggestions from you.
Let me know what you think and any suggestions welcomed.
looks good so far

System wide Style Sheets

This is an idea I have from my experience using themes on my Samsung Captivate. My experiences i describe apply particularly to the AOKP builds for that device and a few others. However the concepts are something which would be implemented at a system level and I think it would be applicable for any Android device, so I wanted to share it here in the general forum as well.
I like the color picker in Rom Control for ICS AOKP, but I was surprised that you pick and choose each color separately for clock, signal, etc. There is the hard-coded button to recall the ICS holo blue. I would love to see another button that stores a user selected color instead of copying and pasting the hex codes, although that works. And then the wireless signal is a graphic image that you cant change without flashing a .zip to modify system png and the like. I wondered if it could be coded to use a triangle with a fill color based on something from the color picker, and then lay over top of that grey or black bars for the part that should be 'off'. maybe layers arent possible? tho it appears that they are being used, and i have seen overlap of the data signal on top of the wireless bars. right? I know there is a LOT of stuff these amazing developers are working on which keeps them very busy already. These are just some ideas
I noticed looking through some of the code in AOKP gerrit for the theme chooser updates, that they started using variables instead of a hard coded ICS holo blue color. but it seems as if there is no user interaction for that color, its still a hard coded value set in a single location instead of being hard coded in multiple locations. So it is a huge improvement Im sure for themers who have to try to search out and modify every instance of those values. I would just like to see it progress to something where the end user can modify that variable from Rom Control.
It would be even more awesome if Android used a system wide style sheet setup. background, checkbox style, text color, font, font size, perhaps it could even include specs for headers, paragraphs, tables, titles, etc. but that would be WAY more than I am thinking. It certainly works nicely for web design tho.
This would then be something that other apps could also read and implement into their design as well. Then we wouldn't have to create hacked SMS and google play, and tapatalk, etc, etc, etc. to make them inverted or red, green, orange, blue, yellow, etc.
Of course having an option to over-ride those settings is cool too, maybe you want an all orange theme, but you want white on your keyboard keys. a keyboard app could have a selector built into its settings which allows you to follow the system setting or pick your own base color, or go with the developers default choice. There are a lot of great developers out there who make gorgeous apps that deserve to keep their defaults, ie. 1weather. So I am sure apps would ship with their own defaults turned on, so the user is guaranteed the experience they intended.
I do think these ideas seem inline with what google is trying to accomplish with their unified design standards.
I am imagining a day where I can change my wallpaper and then open settings, use a color picker (maybe even one that can pick a color from the wallpaper ... Then maybe choose black or white, or gradient or transparent background. Two steps, and just that simply and quickly my whole system is color themed to compliment. Then using Tasker this could even be automated for work, home, weekends, etc. LOL.
Ok iphone, take that!
OK so I guess 187 people looked and decided that was way toooo much to read.
LOL
Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

Uneven Screen Brightness?

I thought my screen was great, even after seeing this thread on Android Central. Received a new one today and the banding is highly visible and shocking.
http://forums.androidcentral.com/sa...953-screen-brightness-uneven-anyone-else.html
If you put up a solid white wallpaper it's very visible and remains visible on virtually all plain colors applied. The text of my last post follows:
["You are all 100% right about the dark bands. After a bit of testing, I realized which launcher you use will also affect the depth of the color of the top and bottom banding. With TouchWiz the top is dark, though not as dark as Apex, and the bottom is somewhat lighter. The same applies to Nova for the top and bottom banding. On Apex the banding is very dark and really bad.
The Kindles suffer from a similar issue and it has to do with the leds. Amazon got a lot of grief over their Voyage because the color differences and banding are so bad. Not everyone could see it though, which leads me to believe it also might have to do with vision differences. I always use very dark walls and so didn't notice it on my 8.0 until my 9.7 comparison tab arrived today. The banding was so bad it shocked me. I LOVE my 8.0, but I may return both and wait for a later iteration, and / or see if anything is fixed with an update. I intend to root ultimately, so I'm not liking the idea of taking any updates.
Has anyone tried using their tabs in natural light to see if the issue persists? I can't today or tomorrow. Will try it on Friday.
FWIW - this issue is visible on any plain color screen with vary degrees of visibility."]
---------------------------------------------->>>>>>Check your devices and report back here, please.<<<<<<<------------------------------------------
Have you noticed that the lock screen wallpaper - default from Samsung - doesn't have the issue?

Question Black background in app drawers & settings

Just a pet peeve of mine; the UI on Pixel 7 in dark mode isn't actually black, it's more like a grey or brown depending on what style you choose. Makes it look like an LCD not an OLED. I've attached 2 screenshots of app drawers to illustrate. One is from my Pixel 7 which isn't exactly black, and the other is of my Galaxy A53 which is pure black. Just looking to change that if possible.
mewcatchew said:
Just a pet peeve of mine; the UI on Pixel 7 in dark mode isn't actually black, it's more like a grey or brown depending on what style you choose. Makes it look like an LCD not an OLED. I've attached 2 screenshots of app drawers to illustrate. One is from my Pixel 7 which isn't exactly black, and the other is of my Galaxy A53 which is pure black. Just looking to change that if possible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the only solution is to use a third party launcher
thattechguy_69 said:
the only solution is to use a third party launcher
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I bought Nova Launcher Prime a couple years ago, may as well use it. But for what it's worth this option should come stock.
mewcatchew said:
I bought Nova Launcher Prime a couple years ago, may as well use it. But for what it's worth this option should come stock.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are welcome to try this if you are stock-rooted. Flash in magisk app.
The drawback is that upon rebooting your phone, your phone relocks itself (not reboot). When you unlock it the second time, the mod takes affect. Without that post script, the phone would bootloop. This happens everytime you reboot your phone. Because of this, this mod is incompatible with the magisk module that is a "bootloop protector" as it sees this mod as bootlooping instead of relocking and disables the mod. This mod is using cool_modules installer from here:
GitHub - jairaj08/SystemUI-Patcher: A systemUI patcher mod use for injecting Xmls to SystemUI on All roms and android versions, Systemlessly.
A systemUI patcher mod use for injecting Xmls to SystemUI on All roms and android versions, Systemlessly. - GitHub - jairaj08/SystemUI-Patcher: A systemUI patcher mod use for injecting Xmls to Sys...
github.com
I tweaked it to use with Pixel Launcher.
To get your settings background black, you go to settings/ display/display theme and choose stock-black.
Might be worth a shot.
Also repainter app has this feature.
The reason why the color of the dark theme is not black but something similar to gray is because when you move white text on a completely black background, an annoying color plot is perceived due to the delay that the screen pixels have. OLED to go from completely off to on, and it is precisely here where the grays fulfill a very important task, since they generate a contrast that "hides" the phenomenon described above.
more info:
Into the Dark
Explore new color palettes, revamped contrast, and increased legibility as four Google products adopt Material’s dark theme
design.google
peter go said:
The reason why the color of the dark theme is not black but something similar to gray is because when you move white text on a completely black background, an annoying color plot is perceived due to the delay that the screen pixels have. OLED to go from completely off to on, and it is precisely here where the grays fulfill a very important task, since they generate a contrast that "hides" the phenomenon described above.
more info:
Into the Dark
Explore new color palettes, revamped contrast, and increased legibility as four Google products adopt Material’s dark theme
design.google
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So Google is using inferior OLED panels? I find my A53 has a much nicer screen & no issues with text in black background scrolling.
I mean, look at the fingerprint. I don't understand how this is a "Flagship" UI. My A53 is slower for sure, but the UI has nice blur effects, pure black backgrounds, the fingerprint isn't an icon; it's a pure white translucent fingerprint. I just expected better. I don't feel like rooting it and bending over backwards to get it to look decent. I put it up for sale and no one wants it. Will trade it in at Best buy for a discount on a Samsung. The pixel 7 takes great pictures, it's fast, but the battery life is mediocre and The UI is too bland for me; it's washed out.

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