[dkingsf]

I love many of these themes and greatly appreciate all the hard work by so many. The effort, creativity and even elegance in some of these is pretty amazing to someone like me who lacks the skills or time to develop them.

But I've had problems with all of the free ones, and certainly, from that experience will not currently pay for one without the chance to determine that no such issues exist in non-free themes.

I have no opinion on whether the issues may be from a beta plazmic release or the ability, knowledge or design by a theme developer.

That being said, I would like to list just what I consider to be major problems that developers should consider in their current or future projects.

My configuration: Storm 9530, quite a few web shortcuts, some used frequently, others occasionally. My 3rd party apps are TalkLock, Garmin Mobile, Google maps (works now, yeah!), BBFileScout. My Storm performs more than satisfactorily with configuration using the default Zen theme. App memory is 40MB after reboot, never down lower that about 20 no matter what I'm running. Opening and closing apps is quite responsive and hardly ever get the "spinning clock". Battery life is not great, but not terrible considering how much email and talk time I have everyday.

With this config using any theme EXCEPT the default Zen, issues encountered:

1. Memory leak. Some themes will cause app memory to get as low as zero. some memory is cleaned up but it seems that if memory gets below 10MB it will never recover and usually stay below 5MB. Some themes are better than others. Seems like the more functional a theme is, and the more graphically oriented (some of the best themes IMO) have more problem with this. A lot of waitin on the "spinning clock"

2. Inability to add a folder in portrait mode. Not sure why but the add folder function does not complete while in portrait. Have to switch to landscape to get it to save. Only 1 free theme did not have this issue. This must be plazmic, I assume.

3. Slow response answering/placing calls. I've checked app memory and it's been both good and bad when this occurs. It seems like some themes give processing priority to their own functions ahead of the phone function. Just a thought I had, no proof on it.

4. Installation. Using BBFileScout you can see under system\samples there are directories that store the folder and contacts icons. Also under mms there are pictures and tunes that can be stored that you could add to if you want to incorporate with your theme. Not sure if this would affect system memory (probably) or if plazmic is limited in it's ability to write files out to this location. Would be nice and I think allow some added new abilities/features to any theme.

Anyway, just a few thoughts. I will continue to try new themes and my favorites from here as they are updated to see what improvements have been made.

And my thanks to all for your hard work and suprising efforts!

[dkingsf]

Also forgot to mention on item 4 above: Wallpapers get lost from home screen on these free themes if I make any changes to the options from the home screen. They don't exist anywhere that I can find and cannot recover back.

[PRC]

Update your OS to BBCrackman's Hybrid, all themes work, no delays, Accelerometer is the quickest I've seen.

I hope you're not running 4.7.0.75..............

[ClassaN0va]

Update your OS to BBCrackman's Hybrid, all themes work, no delays, Accelerometer is the quickest I've seen.

I hope you're not running 4.7.0.75..............

I'm still running 4.7.0.75....

[StormJeeper]

Most theme makers post their wallpaper, and u can always open up your pics and hit bb button and click reset wallpaper and it will restore 2 default... Just letn ya know...

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[brackett5#CB]

So what causes these memory leaks? Every theme I have used has caused this. Is it important or will your blackberry survive with it?

[vyrus]

I agree, I had to go back to the Zen theme after trying a few today. Though the themes worked perfectly awesome and looked great, my application memory dropped very low. I'm not OCD about memory, and I see my phone go from 40MB to 20MB all the time and its no problem. But with the themes it gets down to 4-7MB. I'm no expert, but I'm guessing that can't be good.

-Cyrus