Would ideally want to change droplist background & text color, rather than playing with the theme?
Yes, but the java API "AutoCompleteTextView" do not support [directly] this....
Ok, in programming "all is possible" but I do not know how long I can do this yet....]
About theme:
Go to your application folder "....res\values-21"
the variant is here:
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="android:Theme.DeviceDefault">
compare with the file "styles.xml" from demo "AppAutoCompleteTextViewDemo1"
["....res\values-??"]
the variant is here:
<style name="AppBaseTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.Light">
So, you can try a simple change....