It’s no secret that I think Audio Themes are a great feature. When we first found out about them on the 5700 XpressMusic, I was pumped, and I was even more excited to see that they’re supported on both the Nokia N78 and N85, the latter of which I’m reviewing now. Unfortunately, it appears as though Nokia would like to keep these cool extras a secret, only available to those who know to look for them.
When I got the Nokia N85, Audio Themes was one of the first features I checked out. I found them, annoyingly, hidden in the already-hidden Themes section (why, Nokia, did you remove the Themes icon from the menu? If anyone else is wondering, you can download and install this to fix that). The N85 came with 4 audio themes pre-installed, and I was a bit annoyed to find that there was no option to ‘download more’.
No worries, surely they have them available in a special section in the Nokia Download! app, since there are another dozen available to download from Nokia’s website. Unfortunately, there was no such folder. Why isn’t exactly clear. I’m not sure why Nokia wouldn’t want to make it as easy as possible for new N85 or N78 owners to get to these cool extras, but they have.
On the Nokia website, there is also no option to preview the Audio Themes. You’re simply presented with a list of titles/descriptions, followed (thankfully) by the .sis download link. So….to get these audio themes, I used the Barcode Reader application (which was also well-hidden) to quickly get to the Audio Themes download page on my Nokia N85′s web browser. I could then, individually, download each theme, install it, preview it, and decide if I wanted to keep it.
What a great way to ruin such a cool little extra feature, by making the consumer jump through as many hoops as possible. I can guarantee you that no normal consumer would go through such a hassle to get to these.
For all the other frustrated N78, N85, or 5700 XpressMusic owners out there, I’ve gone ahead and downloaded all the themes and zipped them up in a single file, which you can download here and open right from your phone.
