How To Customize Themes On Your Sidekick

Do you have a Sidekick 3, LX, Slide, or 2008? If you do, you've probably noticed (and loathe) the lack of customizable options on your phone.

To be fair, the only thing that can't really be customized for free is your ringtone. Sure, you can give people in your phone book special factory ringtones, but don't expect to download them off free websites and transfer them to your phone (no matter how many people who don't own Sidekicks may say that you can).

But there is something that you can make your own on your Sidekick, and that's your background. A great place to find really nice backgrounds is at sklxthemes.com. Some backgrounds even come with custom hinge sounds, so that your phone plays a music clip when you flip the screen up or down (how cool is that?).

Before you hop skip over to Sklxthemes to grab yourself a new background, let me give you a quick step-by-step process for putting these ringtones on your phone:

1. Hook your Sidekick up to your computer using a USB cable.
2. Open up the file folder that leads to your Sidekick (if it doesn't automatically pop up). It should appear in your "My Computer" file.
3. Once you're in the file folder for your Sidekick, you should see folders for music and DCIM. Right-click in open space and create a new folder entitled "Themes".
4. Once that file is created, find the theme you want and click "Download". Be sure you remember where the file downloads to: you'll need this for the next step.
5. Go to the location where the file downloaded to and click "Extract Files". The computer will ask you where to extract the files to; select the drop down menu and set the files to extract to the "Themes" folder you just created. Again, click "Extract Files" and your computer will start extracting them to your phone.
6. When the computer says your files are extracted, you're done! Safely remove your phone from the USB cable (the themes won't show up if it's still plugged in).
7. To change your theme, go to the Jump menu, hit the Menu button, and in that menu you should see either "Themes" or "Backgrounds". Going to that button will show you your available themes. Just click on the theme you want and you've got it!

Note: Ensure you have a MicroSD card in the memory slot. I don't think there's enough available space in the phone memory to store themes.

Hope this helps you out! And happy customizing!