Theme Your Android Device With UOT Kitchen

Everyone wants their phone to stand unique from other Android devices. Developers around the globe have been working hard for this to become a reality and the outcome of their hard work is the UOT Kitchen. This guide here explains how to use the most famous online theming resource UOT kitchen to customize your android device. Before starting with the guide below is a little description of the UOT kitchen.

Ultimate Online Theme kitchen in short UOT kitchen is a online resource for customizing parts our mobile like changing the status bar icons, scrolling glow in settings menu, enter and exit transition effects, booting animation and many more that you need to try to know it. In short it is a great site for theming and themers to change the looks of the mobile in a pretty easy way.


This guide is written keeping in mind the HTC Explorer users but can be used to customize any android device with a few changes in between. All you have to do is follow these simple steps:


1. Firstly open the UOT Kitchen site. You’ll see the welcome screen as shown below.

2. Now click on kitchen tab and you will get the screen below with all the mods you need to select to apply to the final theme.

3. Now click on the mods you wish to make, like if you want to change the battery icon in the status bar select the battery tab and tick on “Use This Mod” and click on “SCB with %”(in this all the colors are predefined) or “Custom battery”(in this you can select the color at each battery level and battery bars of different styles) and select the one of your liking and click on generate preview to see how the mod looks like. In the mod I selected version c, new charger for which the preview looks as below.


Note: If you select the custom battery bar select the correct color of taskbar that you are going to apply in the status bar tab (if you select the wrong color later in your mobile the percentage numbers may not show up correctly).

4. Similarly now in the icons tab you can select the themed icon set or custom uni-color icons. If you select the custom uni-color icons don’t apply them as it has no affect on sense lockscreen.

5. Then moving to the status bar tab , in this you’ve to select mdpi and click on the mods you want to apply and click on preview


Note: The transparency doesn’t work with stock odexed rom but works on deodexed, the top bar text works for froyo only and the quick settings tab for 2.1 so leave these. After selecting the mods for my mobile the preview looks as below.

Tip: You may want to select the same color in some cases then just copy paste the color code so everything looks even.


6. Now in the pop up tab select the mods you like, in this the most beautiful one is the overscroll glow so don’t leave it and select other mods of your wish, for my mod the preview is as under.

7. Don’t go for the lockscreen mod as it is not for the htc lockscreen


8. Now in the window animations tab select the animations you want, there’s also a video showing how the animations look like check it and select one.

9. Don’t use the font mod instead use the FONT INSTALLER app from Play store. Now in the boot animation tab select mdpi and in “select place for boot animation” select /system/customize/resource/(Froyo default) .It’s says froyo default but this is the one that works with explorer.

10. Now follow carefully for the file upload part :


For proceeding with this first you need to have the com.htc.resources.apk , SystemUI.apk, framework-res.apk.


These files can be obtained by using one of the following methods:


· Using Root explorer:


Go to /system/framework/ and select mount r/w and copy the framework-res.apk and com.htc.resources.apk somewhere on your sd card.


Go to /system/app and select mount r/w and copy SystemUI to your sd card.


Now copy these files to your computer.


· Using ADB:


type the following commands one by one in the adb window.


Code:


adb pull /system/framework/framework-res.apk


adb pull /system/framework/com.htc.resources.apk


adb pull /system/app/SystemUI.apk


Your final screen should look like this with the required files:

11. Now after obtaining the required files using one of the methods above just upload them in the upload tab under “Select your rom from kitchen’s list, or upload your own files” and selecting Upload System Files then in the select the options in each section as shown below :

After selecting everything and uploading the files move on to the summary tab


In this you should see everything in green on the left side, if you see anything in red then it means that you have made an error in that section so go back where you made the error, correct it and then submit work to kitchen.


12. Then you will get a message that your work has been submitted and you’ll be given unique number for your pickup. Make a note of this number. Later go to the pickup page and wait till your file is ready to download. Then download it and flash through recovery.


If you’ve followed everything perfectly in the guide you won’t get a single error.


13. After downloading the zip you need to rename the bootanimation.zip file in system>customize>resource to hTC_bootanimation.zip(the case is important) using any archiver otherwise the selected boot animation doesn’t show up.


In case you are getting an error:


· If you get a shft error i.e. your mod is incorrect, follow the guide properly and check you’ve uploaded all the required files.


· If you get a ( status 0) error in the recovery while flashing check that you’ve selected Type EMCC in the update binary in Upload tab.


· If you got everything correct and flashed the theme but nothing has changed then go into recovery>mounts and storage>mount system and then flash the zip again.


Note: Theming for other devices can be made by replacing “htc” from above files.


You can visit the UOT Kitchen from here and play around.


Disclaimer: Blogtechnika cannot be held responsible for any damages to your device while following this guide.