ROM: AOKP Milestone 4, builds 28, 30-32
Themer: chopper the dog
Thread: http://rootzwiki.com...us-apexbrowser/
Background
If you have grown weary of the holo blue color scheme of stock ICS, this theme is for you. While most themes either have at least a fair amount of holo blue in them or are a recoloring of the holo scheme, chopper the dog has eliminated nearly all traces of holo blue, and his theme contains significant graphic design work. It's obvious that he has put a great deal of effort into designing this theme.
Before I go into more details about this theme, allow me to give you some background on the themer himself. Chopper the dog has been in the rooting/modding community longer than Android itself, having been a member of XDA back when Windows Mobile was a dominant smartphone OS. I first knew him from the Fascinate community, for which he designed Gingerbread versions of the Mashup and Honeycombish, as well as a port of REVOlution and an "Ice Cream Sammich" theme (these were for a vanilla gingerbread ROM by jt1134 and a modding of that ROM called TSM Pool Party by sbrissen). It was no small effort, though, to port Mashup and Honeycombish to the Galaxy Nexus and to AOKP. Not only did he have to resize and otherwise edit hundreds of images, but he also had to adapt these images to an entirely different framework and a more-than-incremental upgrade of Android.
Features
ICONS
The first thing you'll likely notice is the photo-style toggle buttons, which are much more visually striking than the flat icons of stock ICS (provided you have your toggles set to "icon only" in ROM Control). Moreover, they are multicolored, a welcome departure from the flat, monochrome look featured in the stock holo theme. More photo-style icons can be seen in the main settings screen and the power menu
COLOR SCHEME
As I mentioned above, this is no holo-style theme, neither is it a recoloring of the stock theme. The dominant colors are green and grey, though, of course, the icons contain several other colors besides these. It is not an overpowering color scheme, but it’s a subtle yet complete departure from the stock holo blue scheme.
BACKGROUND GRAPHICS
Many themes either retain the stock gradient background, a solid black background, or a different-colored gradient for settings screens and other windows (such as the AndChat IRC client, which borrows the stock/themed background from the ROM). Mashup, by contrast, contains a Mac-style wallpaper background that resembles a pattern of curved, stretched diamond shapes.
The context/app menu is also a refreshing departure from the greyish color of stock context menus, with a semitransparent black background.
THEMED APPS
Chopper the dog provides a themed version of Apex Launcher in his thread that replaces the slight touches of holo blue of the launcher with grey, and a themed ICS Browser+ that replaces the holo blue in the QuickControls with grey.
Variants of Mashup
There are a couple of variants of the Mashup theme maintained by Zaphod-Beeblebrox called Taste the Rainbow/Chopper Mashup (link) and Old Geezer’s Big Icon/ Mashup (link). Taste the rainbow features multicolored status bar icons as seen here:
Whereas the original Mashup icons feature a metallic grey look as seen here:
The Old Geezer variant features, as the title suggests, oversized status bar icons tailored to those who have trouble seeing the normal-sized icons in most status bars. Otherwise, however, the two variants are identical to Mashup.
Final Thoughts
This is an excellent theme for those of you who are looking for something different from the stock holo look, and the one I run most often on my phone. You might also enjoy Chopper the Dog’s Honeycombish theme (same thread as Mashup), which obviously features a more purple/indigo color scheme and icons borrowed from Honeycomb. Both are excellent themes that have practically no trace of holo blue to be found.
