Series 40 and Symbian devices support transparent icons that use either simple or alpha transparency. Animated icons are not supported.
The following image formats are supported:
GIF
PNG
SVG (Only in Symbian, in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and later)
For more information, see section Scalable icon support
In Symbian, it is recommended to provide SVG icons in addition to PNG or GIF icons.
For icons that have only one raster (typically PNG), the icon must be sufficiently large so that the scaling algorithm has enough information to create an accurate scaled down version.
In Series 40, the following image formats are supported for the MIDlet-Icon attribute:
GIF
PNG
A MIDlet suite icon or MIDlet icon is shown in Canvas or Screen (Form, List, and TextBox) status pane in
S60 3rd Edition FP 1 devices, but not in Series 40 devices or S60 3rd Edition FP2 and newer devices.
In Symbian, a MIDlet icon can be shown in Active Standby shortcut.
Icon lookup order
In Symbian, there are several classes of icons, with some overriding others. The lookup order in the JAD file goes as follows:
Nokia-Scalable-Icon-MIDlet-<n> (In
S60 3rd Edition FP 2 and newer)
MIDlet-<n>
Nokia-Scalable-Icon (In S60 3rd Edition
FP 2 and newer)
MIDlet-Icon
Platform default icon
If UI element icons are set as null, no icons
are displayed.
If none of the MIDlet icons are supported by the implementation, the MIDlet suite icon is used. If none of the MIDlet suite icons are supported, the system default icon is used. If at any step the specified image file is in unsupported format or is corrupted, or the specified image cannot be found, then the lookup proceeds to the next step.
Note: It is recommended to have transparent background in icon
images. When icon images use transparency, theme graphics are shown
through the transparent parts of an icon. Additionally, icons do not
need to be rectangular. In List icons, the highlighted
icon will also show through these transparent parts. Transparency
is available for PNG and GIF images.