Improve iPhone Battery Life By Managing Backlight Brightness
For iPhone and iPod Touch users, poor battery life has always been an issue. The power hungry device drains most juice out of it’s battery to keep the wonderful display lit. While shorter auto-lock intervals and auto brightness for screen does help, it can be annoying due to permanent locking and unlocking of device, especially if the user is waiting for something to complete. What then is the remedy for your screen’s battery killing appetite? Let’s find out after the jump!
For a solution to your screen’s battery sucking issues, free Cydia tweak ScreenDimmer is what you’re looking for! From the developers of 3G Unrestrictor and Firewall IP, this nifty little tweak for the jailbreak community saves loads from your battery by allowing you to dim the screen-brightness after a pre-defined time, or if you wish, turn the backlight off altogether. If you have a very powerful external light source, this *can* work but its debatable if it’ll be too readable under most circumstances this way. Still, there may possibly be situations when it can come handy, when you want the device to be in active mode as opposed to standby mode, yet don’t want to waste the battery by keeping the screen backlight on.
One of the best bits about this tweak is its minimum footprint. Instead of installing as a separate app, this tweak adds its configuration interface under the native Settings app, and has the ability to turn off backlight, dim it after a certain time, and exclude certain applications from this setting. That way, you will always be able to keep the backlight operating as normal when it comes to certain apps where it would be required, such as the camera app, your favorite book reading app etc. It also does not dim the light when the battery is charging, or when some application is using the device (navigation software, video players, games etc). You can simply set the settings once and forget about it. You should immediately start to notice how your battery lasts longer as screen brightness is no longer hogging it down.
ScreenDimmer is available for jailbroken devices only, since it is available exclusively on Cydia Store for $0.99 via the BigBoss repository, and you can’t find it in the Apple App Store. It requires iPhone OS 3.0 or higher.
Tried ScreenDimmer out and want to tell others of your experience? Know of other power saving tips for the iPhone? Why not share them with us and our readers in the comments below?
