noob questions (skin vs theme)

[dancing-bass]

no i didn't search this one, sorry. answer the question, then flame/shoot me!

Ok So I get that 2.1 or whatever is the base OS. So what/how do skins or themes effect this? I have heard of the OS being "skinned" with "sense" or "motoblur"? What does that mean? is that just extra/different functionality from the phone's manufacturer?

So if my device already is "skinned" I'm guessing a theme is just eye candy... mostly for visual appeal, but maybe with some functionality (ala a "today" theme from Blackberry)

Thanks for the answers... and thanks for helping a noob like me! I'm gonna wait till March to see what phones my carrier releases. I just might join the world of Android

 

[Tarpit_Carnivore]

Skins are referred to what handset manufactures modify on the phone. HTC - SenseUI, Moto = MotoBlur and Samsung = TouchWiz. What they do and change is all different depending on the manufacture or even the device. The most common way to notice is the launcher on the homescreen. Each of the above three differ from each other and differ from Vanilla (Stock Android). Other things that may be different are lockscreen, skin specific widgets, modified apps like mail/messaging/gallery/etc or even system settings -- HTC modified the Exchange Sync from the way stock android worked.

Themes refer to someone modifying the contents of the ROM to change colors or icons; it can also just be a general statement about the way a user has customized their phone via widgets/launchers. A lot of custom ROM builders will also create their own theme for their ROMS. Themes can be downloaded and applied via ZIP in Recovery or through things like MetaMorph. Some will even theme apps to build in custom look & feel to the app and then repackage the app in a zip/apk to be side-loaded.