My Dream Nokia #21: Nokia W6 – How Nokia can customise with Windows Phone Themes

YUM! Ovi Maps! And Opera ;p And MNB on Nokia Reader

We’ve got some fantastic designs here for you but this time it mainly focuses on the UI tweaks rather than the phone itself. The imaginary/concept handset is called the Nokia W6, this is just a shell to house the modified Windows Phone theme.

This was designed by Peter Lackman who emailed us saying:

Hello folks at My Nokia Blog,

As you already know, Nokia has stated regarding the WP7 partnership that they have been granted practically unlimited access to customize WP7 UI. They have also said that even though this is the case, they do not plan to do any drastic changes.

I’ve been thinking about this, and a few days back I decided to check with photoshop how would Nokia WP7 look if they should introduce a few minor things of their own to the UI, including the theme system from Symbian.

I made two sample themes “Blue leather” and “Summer” for an imaginary phone “W6” using WP7 and I think that the images came out all right, illustrating quite clearly a few possibilities that Nokia might choose to pursue.

Why am I writing about this to you? I think that this might be something that the Nokia community might be interested to see, if for nothing else, then just for showing some of the options that Nokia have with their upcoming implementation of WP7. And for fun, of course.

So this is more about the themes that can be tweaked with Nokia’s Windows Phone. At the moment, as shown in Vanilla, it’s very minimalistic – plain black (or white) background with coloured tiles.

Peter has modified this slightly with “blue leather” and “summer” showing:

• custom background wallpapers and
• revamped, theme style dictated live tiles in homescreen view with more live tile size options
• a reorganized App view with what looks to be
• a very helpful AZ for easy finding of apps (at the moment all you can do is scroll. I don’t know why you can’t “search” like you can with contacts).
• Collapsible category bars – with icons showing content of this category

Below shows “Blue Leather” – the background of which is a bluey gray leather. Still very much in keeping with the Windows Phone style.

“Summer” is a little bit more of a change with this strong Mango Orange background and squircle shaped tiles. Same features as “Blue Leather”

And just because, I wondered how it would look on an actual Nokia device:

I know there’ll be Symbian fans totally hating on it. But there’s a few out there too who say they’d love Windows Phone on Nokia hardware. Especially that of the camera in the Nokia N8. (Just imagine it’s beefed up for WP minimum requirements and that it would work with one menu button)

Blue Leather

Summer

About “My Dream Nokia”

I’m sure you’ve dreamt up your PERFECT Nokia device/UI. What it would look like, what it would feel like, what features it would have. Why don’t you share it with the world? Or at least with other Nokia fans .

It could be your own photoshopped or rendered work (seriously, you don’t need mega skills in either, basic paint job is often enough to convey a concept) of your dream product.

SEND this in similarly to tips@mynokiablog.com with the title “My Dream Nokia” and perhaps the model number (and a little description, maybe a few specs in the message area? Though this bit not necessary).

Who knows, maybe an image might flutter over to Nokia and through whatever route end up being real.

Tags: featured, My Dream Nokia, N8, Nokia, Nokia N8, Theme, Windows Phone, Windows Phone 7, WP7

Category: Concept, Nokia, Windows Phone