I was trying to create dialogs and alert dialogs that look the same on all Android smartphones, after he realized the different types of smart phones do something different with the default themes and make buttons, dialogs, etc. look very different from one phone to the other. Everything looks very different in the simulator than it does on a Droid X or Droid 2 for example. Things look more similar on a Samsung Galaxy S, or HTC Incredible, but even there you can see some differences.

Some Android phone manufacturers replace the default themes, and styles, and drawable assets with what they think looks good and customized. Unfortunately, the side effect of this customization is that what works great in the emulator, and most phones simply does not work these devices. Eg, Motorola Droid 2 and X have a customized theme that uses really dark backgrounds, and red foreground colors. This can wreck many applications that are designed for a light background with dark text color.

This tutorial will show you how to use Android’s theme-ing capabilities. You can set background color, image, etc. on widgets, dialogs, and activities.