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It’s old school here today at BBGeeks’ Theme Review Wednesdays. We’re going to three of our oldest contributors: Themes4bb, Cherri Chiodo, and JC Designs. All three create and distribute excellent themes, and we’re lucky to have them among the top BlackBerry theme creators. We’ll take a look at new ones from Cherri and Themes4bb, and a top-seller from JC Designs. As always, it promises to be a theme-filled experience.

Aliencology

The second I saw this theme, I knew I had to review it. It’s a futuristic-looking theme that takes advantage of many advanced OS features. Yes, this includes the Today preview, something I consider a near essential for themes on OS 4.6 and up. Even better, they don’t take up a spot in either dock. They’re set up in tabs along the left side. The bi-directional scrolling allows you to access them separately from the top and bottom docks.

Yes, there are two docks in the Aliencology theme. The first is your typical icon dock, fitting in seven customizable icons. Then up top it has spots for Options, Manage Connections, Profiles, and then two third-party applications. The clock integrates perfectly, complete with date. The battery, signal, and other indicators fit in perfectly with the theme.

If you’re a Tour, Curve 8900, Storm, or Bold user you can get the Aliencology theme at the Themes4bb store for $6.99. Mark my words, when I finally buy a Tour, I’m going to load this up immediately.

NeoBlue

We haven’t done a JC Designs – Gadgetbean review in quite a long time. This one is most certainly deserving of a look. It’s the NeoBlue theme, and it packs a lot of icons into the Home Screen, something we always review positively on TRW. It also takes advantage of the Today Preview. At some point or another, we’re going to just stop mentioning that, because every theme worth it will incorporate the feature.

NeoBlue features two sliding docks, one on each side of the screen. This way your Home Screen is free of clutter if you so choose it to be. Scroll left and you’ll have three icons: Messages, Calendar, and SMS. These will use the Today preview in the center of the screen. Scroll over to the right and you’ll see three customizable icons. Scroll down and three more will appear. There are nine in total, so a total of 12 icons on the Home Screen, plus Profiles. The icons are also neat, done up with a blue tint. The theme more than passes muster from an aesthetic standpoint.

You can get the NeoBlue theme at the BBGeeks Store for $6. That link covers the Tour, 8900, Bold, and Storm versions.

Accentuate

Finally, we come back to Cherri Chiodo for what promises to be a unique BlackBerry theme. And, as usual, she delivers. This one is called Accentuate, and it’s an aesthetically pleasing and functional theme. It’s tough to get the right balance of the two, but I think Cherri does a great job in this case. The custom icons, Cherri’s specialty, fit perfectly with the gray carpet background.

The newer versions use the Today preview, while the Curve OS 4.5 version — how many of those do we see nowadays? — uses a Calendar Today. Below the text there is room for seven icons, set by the user. Maybe it’s just the color scheme of the icons she chose for this particular screen shot, but I think it looks really sharp. The green of the battery meter and the blue of the signal meter go well against the gray carpet. And, thankfully, she uses a normal font on this one.

You can get the Accentuate theme at the BBGeeks Store for $5.99. That’s the link for the Curve 4.5 version. Here it is for Curve 8900, Bold, and Storm.

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