What's new with themes on Samsung Note 7
Samsung is giving Note 7 users a couple of new options when customizing the look and feel of their phone.
Samsung's theme store is an easy way to add a personal touch to your phone. It's through the theme store you can change the wallpaper, icons, color scheme and font of your device.
Up until now, however, Samsung has taken a one-size-fits-all approach to themes. Meaning, if you found a theme you liked, but hated the icons, you either had to keep looking for a theme you liked, or accept the icons as part of the package.
With the Note 7, things are changing for the better. Most notably, you'll notice the theme store is now broken down into three main categories.
Wallpapers
That's right, you can now browse and find new wallpapers for your Note 7 within Samsung Themes. There's currently a lot of paid wallpapers, with free options scattered throughout. But over the past week, I've seen the number of free wallpapers continue to rise -- hopefully that trend sticks around.
Along the top you'll find a section dedicated to wallpapers you have already downloaded from the store, as well as a link to your phone's gallery where you can pick from your own photos or saved wallpapers.
Tap "Apply" to assign a wallpaper to your home or lock screen (or both).
Theme
A theme store wouldn't be a theme store without a theme section, right? Right.
This section of the app looks and works more or less the same as it always has. You browse through a list of themes, find one you like, download it and apply.
Again, the top of the page has a section dedicated to themes you've downloaded from the store. This is where you can go to quickly change between themes, see which have an update, or delete them from your account.
Unfortunately, despite being able to set wallpapers and icons independent of the assigned theme, you aren't given the option to apply only certain characteristics of a theme. For example, it would be nice if you could opt to apply a color scheme and font, but not the icons and wallpaper (or any combination of your choosing).
Icons
The last category, but perhaps the most fun category, is Icons. As previously mentioned, you can now change the icons on your device regardless of the theme you're using. There's a fairly even mix of paid and free icons currently in the store.
When you open an icon pack, there's a few screenshots at the top of the page to preview what the various icons will look like for particular apps.
Keep in mind, icon pack won't replace every single app icon on your device. Just like applying a theme, icon packs will only replace the core apps (think Samsung apps like Phone, Settings, Email and so on)
All in all, the new theme store's capabilities are a welcome addition to the Galaxy lineup. Breaking each part of a theme down into various categories -- albeit only three right now -- adds a seemingly infinite amount of customization options to your device.