[Hero, G2 Touch Themes and Apps] m4rk84:
Okay I'm sure some ppl still run Android 2.1 so I hope this isn't a complete waste of time. I did post this on VR ages ago before their site went tits up and lost everything.

"How to perform "simple" theme changes in 2.1 based roms (tested on VR12).

Firstly, if I can do this, you can.

The only tool (apart from winrar and some photo editing software) you'll really need is AndroidSDK because you need to push/pull things using ADB (android debugging bridge) ->

http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html

Download and follow setting up instructions.

So now we have to "pull" the files from the phone we want to change.

1) Load command prompt and change the directory to "androidsdk\tools" eg:

C:\Documents and Settings\user>

C:\Documents and Settings\user>cd c:\androidsdk\tools <hit enter>

C:\AndroidSDK\tools>

(If you cannot find command prompt, type into search "cmd" and it should come up.)

2) Ensure your phone is connected via usb and select "charge only".

You can type "adb devices" into the command prompt to check that your phone is connected tho this isn't necessary...useful to check if you're having issues tho.

3) Now to pull the files we want. In this example we are only going to look at pulling "framework-res.apk" as this is the file that contains the images for the status bar, it's icons and the background of the status bar...amongst other things.

Type the following into ADB: adb pull <location of file you want to pull (+ file name)> <location you want the file to be pulled to (+ file name)>

So in the case of pulling framework-res.apk we type:

adb pull /system/framework/framework-res.apk c:\androidapps\framework-res.apk

"/system/framework/framework-res.apk" is the location of the file on the phone and "c:\androidapps\framework-res.apk" is the location the file will be placed on your computer. c:\androidapps is the folder on my c drive where I pull .apk's to (you'll need to make your own folder like this).

4) Locate the file framework-res.apk on your computer (in c:\androidapps if you're using the same folder name as myself) and open it with winrar. Do not extract anything we just want to have a look for some .png's. (.png is a type of image compression that preserves transparency)

Now that you've opened framework-res.apk open the folder named "res" then open the folder named "drawable-mdpi". In here you can find all the .png images I've previously mentioned. Do not close winrar as you will need it.

The .png for the status bar is named "statusbar_background.png" you can drag and drop this to you computer and open it with some image editing software.

I personally recommend GIMP as it is free and very good (http://www.gimp.org/). If you are not confident with image editors you can use http://fotoflexer.com/ for basic editing (clicking on the layers tab on fotoflexer allows you to edit the transparency of the image...remember to save images as .png)

5) Now that you have edited your .png you can drag and drop it back to the res\drawable-mdpi folder hopefully still open in winrar. Close winrar now...it's time to push the edited framework-res.apk back to your phone!

6) Go back to command prompt, if you have removed the usb from your phone at any time, plug it back in and type "adb remount" into command prompt. This remounts the phone for editing.

Now type the following into ADB: adb push <location of file on computer> <location of file on phone>

In this case:

adb push c:\androidapps\framework-res.apk /system/framework/framework-res.apk

and hit enter! This is how it should appear in command promt:

C:\AndroidSDK\tools>adb push c:\androidapps\framework-res.apk /system/framework/framework-res.apk

You phone should restart sense but if it freezes/gets a bit schizy type "adb reboot" into the command prompt to manually reboot the phone.

And it's as simple as that.

You can look through the .png's in res\drawable-mdpi to find more images you might want to edit. The background of the status bar drop down is called "status_bar_background.png" and actual drag down bar is named "status_bar_close_on.9.png".

I think I'll save the explaination of how to edit the bar at the bottom of the screen with the app drawer, phone and + for another time as it requires the knowledge of how to sign .apk's which tho isn't hard is probably quite time consuming for me to explain (due to my very limited knowledge)."

Hope this attempt at 'giving something back' helps someone.

Mark