🥇Do It Yourself or How to Customize a Snom Phone. Part 2: Icons and Images

As we promised in the first part of the article, this continuation is dedicated to the manual modification of icons on Snom phones.

So, let's get started. Step one, you need to obtain the firmware in tar.gz format. You can download it from our resource here. All Snom icons are available and included in each firmware version.

Note: please note that each firmware version contains configuration files specific to the version and models phone. Using configuration files that do not match the firmware or phone will lead to issues.

After downloading and opening the customizing.tar.gz file, it should look as follows. The actual contents of the files depend on the phone and firmware version:

Step two, preparing icons for the phones. As you know, Snom phones come with both color and monochrome displays, and accordingly, the icons will differ.

I. Changing icons for phones with color displays

Icons and images on phones with color displays are stored in PNG format. This makes them easy to edit in virtually all modern image editors. However, after editing, it is recommended to optimize the PNG files using tools like optipng, pngquant, or pngcrush to remove any excess information and optimize file size.

Icon image sizes:

Context-Sensitive Key Icons 24x24px
SmartLabel 24x24px & 18x18px
Titlebar Icons 18x18px
Menu Icons 18x18px
Call Screen Icons 18x18px — 48x48px
File Format: PNG

After creating the desired icons, upload them to the phone. You can upload them in two ways:

Through the web interface manually
Using auto-provisioning

Let's start with the first option – uploading via the web interface. To upload, you need to go to the phone's web interface on the tab Preference/Appearance and select Custom Images:

Next, find the icon you want to change and upload your own version:

If your own version is unsatisfactory or 'crooked', you can always revert by clicking the 'Reset' button

Note. 'Software update' and 'Restore factory settings' do not delete uploaded images.

As you can see, manually it's quite simple, but if you need to change several phones, this process will take a considerable amount of time. So let's move on to the second option.

Option two – loading via auto-provisioning.

First, you need to create a tar archive from the previously downloaded archive customizing.tar.gz. When creating the archive, remove all files and directories that you do not need to modify, but make sure you keep the directory structure.

Note. You do not need to archive all files that were originally in the archive. It is sufficient and recommended to only archive the files you have modified. The more files you include in the archive, the longer it will take for the phone to configure.

Next, we take several steps:

1) create an XML file, for example, branding.xml and copy it to your web server (HTTP), i.e. http://yourwebserver/branding.xml:

2) Access the phone's web interface in the Advanced -> Update -> Setting URL section and specify the link to our file yourwebserver/branding.xml

3) Restart the phone and enjoy the result

Let's take an example. The goal is to change the LDAP icon on the phone

First, we will need the tar archive for the current firmware version. In this example, I used version 10.1.30.0 on D785, so I used "snomD785-10.1.30.0-customizing.tar.gz"
Download snomD785-10.1.30.0-customizing.tar.gz and find the LDAP icon (you will find it under the name ldap.png). Remove all other files and directories, making sure to keep the file name ldap.png, as well as the directory structure.
Edit the file ldap.png to make it look as desired.

Note: you can replace the image with a new one, but in this case, you need to ensure that the modified image size is the same as the original size (in this example, the size is 24×26)

Create a tar archive of the file, ensuring that you have preserved the original directory structure. Путь будет выглядеть так: coloured / fkey_icons / 24×24 / ldap.png
Create an xml file to inform the phone about the need to load the tar:

Specify the link in the web interface and restart the phone
After the reboot, check the result

II. Changing icons for phones with monochrome displays

Icons on monochrome devices are not stored in standard image files like .png or .jpg but are raster fonts that include all the symbols used in the user interface. In the context of private usage, Unicode tables starting with U+EB00 define Snom icons and can be directly modified using tools likeFont Forge».

Opening a raster font file with Font Forge should display a list of the icons being used. The actual contents of the files depend on the phone model and firmware:

Icon specifications for phones with monochrome displays.

For models D305, D315, D345, D385, D745, D785, D3, D7:

Context-Sensitive Key Icons 17×17 — Baseline x → 0 / y → -2
Titlebar Icons 17×17 — Baseline x → 0 / y → -2
Label Panel Icons 17×17 — Baseline x → 0 / y → -2
Maximum Size of Icons 32×32

For models D120, D710, D712, D715, D725:

Context-Sensitive Key Icons 7×7 — Baseline x → 0 / y → 0
Titlebar Icons 7×7 — Baseline x → 0 / y → 0
SmartLabel Icons 7×7 — Baseline x → 0 / y → 0
Maximum Size of Icons 32×32

After creating the required 'image' and subsequently exporting from Font Forge, the following settings need to be used:

After exporting, create a tar file containing the just created file with the name of the file that will be replaced.

tar -cvf fonts.tar fontfile.bdf

Since we are essentially modifying a font rather than images, it should be uploaded via auto-provisioning as a font, specified in the XML settings file:

Thus, we have examined in detail the customization options for Snom phones that you can use to tailor the design and functionality of the phones to your or your client's needs. Below are several examples of the results of such customization:

For a hotel

For an airport