HTC theme of the week: Zoe

Welcome to the HTC theme of the week, a series where I spotlight a theme I’ve found in the HTC Theme app, from a user I follow, a recommended theme, or eventually ones I’ve made myself. The Themes app runs on phones with HTC Sense 6 or higher and has a huge gallery of user contributed designs with custom wallpapers, icons, sounds and more.

What’s the name of this theme? Isn’t Zoe the name of a video highlight reel or app for HTC phones? The answer is yes and that’s exactly where this theme draws its inspiration from. I chose this theme, because of its relation to HTC. The designer was able to focus on a single area HTC has put a good amount of effort into and make that the focal point of the phone. It makes me proud to have this theme on the phone and I was hopeful it would draw some attention so I could share about HTC Zoe.

Zoe theme pros

The Zoe theme has those easy to recognize turquoise diagonal lines posted all over this theme. Those lines are the background for almost every aspect of the theme except for the app drawer and phone dialer which has a solid background.

All the app icons on the Zoe theme have the same squared background with the diagonal lines. Even the Zoe app has the background plus the same icon design on top of it. I like the uniformity of all the apps and the designer did a good job keeping it simple.

The HTC Clock and Weather icons are one of my favorite areas to cover while reviewing themes. The Zoe theme is a little light on the features here, but I like the overall theme so it wasn’t a big deal. Plus I like the solid background color on BlinkFeed. The second minute number was changing in my screenshot which explains why it looks different that the other numbers that were stationary.

Zoe theme cons

The Zoe theme packs a lot of comfort for me, but one thing I would have liked the designer to have included was weather icons. They could have had a squared background with white icons for a cool look.

About the theme designer

Marcos Machado is the creator of this week’s design. Marcos is an architect from Brazil and appreciates technology. He almost has two dozen themes and many of them are pretty cool with great looking clock and weather designs.The Zoe theme was added on January 11th and only has 682 downloads so far. Let’s show our love and support for all things HTC inspired by downloading this theme and supporting a great designer.

About my theme review criteria

When selecting themes to review in this column I look for themes that are complete and look like they have a lot to offer.

So what does a complete theme look like?

A complete theme has a collection of wallpapers, as many custom app icons as possible with the rest styled and/or textured, custom weather and clock icons, custom soft keys, modified keyboard, custom fonts, and unique sounds.

That’s a lot of features, but to me, that encompasses a theme with all the bells and whistles. Not all themes I review hit all the marks, but they at least have several of the items mentioned above. I do this in an effort to show you the creativity of the designers uploading to the HTC Theme app.

Theme of the Week: Zoe

Tapping the link above on your mobile will take you to a web browser and you may need to try the following item in order to see it in the Themes app:

• After you click on the link make sure you are *logged in at the top right and then tap the bookmark button near the middle of the screen. Then, on your phone open the Themes app and scroll to the right until you get to “MY BOOKMARKS” and the theme should be listed in there. *Make sure you log into the website using the same Google account used on your phone.
• If this doesn’t work for you, try searching for it in the Themes app: There is a search bar in the Themes app, tap the 3 stacked lines in the top left. Search will be in the grey bar across the top.