Turn off backlight on front four soft buttons?

[nerdherd]

Does anyone know of a way to disable the backlighting on the front four soft buttons? I use my phone as an alarm clock in the table dock, but those four buttons stay on all night long and are very bright. I always just turn the screen of the phone off to get rid of the light, but I'd much rather leave the screen on but turn those four buttons off. I want to be able to check the time without having to press the unlock button.

Also, when watching a movie the buttons stay lit and it's a little distracting.

Any ideas?

[breakmyfootoff]

Originally Posted by nerdherd

Does anyone know of a way to disable the backlighting on the front four soft buttons? I use my phone as an alarm clock in the table dock, but those four buttons stay on all night long and are very bright. I always just turn the screen of the phone off to get rid of the light, but I'd much rather leave the screen on but turn those four buttons off. I want to be able to check the time without having to press the unlock button.

Also, when watching a movie the buttons stay lit and it's a little distracting.

Any ideas?

If you root your phone and then flash the 2.1 ROM onto it and then flash back to the 2.0.1 ROM the lights on those 4 buttons will stay off (indefinitely until you turn auto brightness off and back on again) lol. Way to much trouble (plus you dont have a backlit keyboard) and actually a bug instead of a fix. I just posted it cause mine did that and so far it's the only way I know of to do it lol.

[banden]

Nerdherd, here's a work around. It's really not as combersome as it sounds, but it's a process none the less.

Before docking the phone for the night:
Menu > Settings > Sound & Display > Brightness
Turn Automatic Brightness off (if not already)
Slide the brightness slider all the way to the left (lowest possible)
Tap OK.

Then power off the phone. Then place it in the dock.

Putting it in the dock will start it back up, you will also need to unlock the screen to see the clock. Use the power control widget to up the brightness in the morning.

It's way more than it should be, but it's workable until a fix is created or implemented.

[nerdherd]

Perfect, this is exactly what I was looking for. I always leave the brightness on the lowest setting anyway, and just manually control it with the power control widget so this really isn't too much of a hassle for me. Using the 2.1 clock from another thread here I don't even have to unlock the phone once the phone starts up after being placed in the dock.

Hopefully Google figures out that people don't like sleeping with those bright lights in their eyes and fixes this with 2.1...

[blazingwolf]

jinx10000 over on alldroid.com wrote a program you might be interested in. It will turn the buttons off and make the backlight dimmer.

Originally Posted by jinx10000

Ok I wrote a small app that has the following:

Two buttons:
- Button one - Click for low brightness
- Button two - Click to turn keylight off
Preferences - press menu:
-Set low brightness level 2 - 20
-Checkbox: Retain Settings

This program allows the phone brightness to be much darker than normal. The brightness resets when the screen goes off. However, I wrote some code that detects the phone being unlocked and resets the brightness to the lower level. You can turn this on and off in preferences with the checkbox.
This program can also turn off the keylight. After you press the Click to turn keylight off the program will wait ten seconds and then turn off the keylight. This gives you time to turn your deskclock on and then the keylight will go off. This will also reset when the phone is turned off.

This is a rough fix until someone can come up with something better but it works. Thanks to kelchm for the necessary code from the first post.

Requires root. Delete the .zip off of the file (not real zip) and install through app installer.

Original thread. This post is on the 3rd page.
http://alldroid.org/viewtopic.php?f=...=unread#unread

[nerdherd]

Originally Posted by blazingwolf

jinx10000 over on alldroid.com wrote a program you might be interested in. It will turn the buttons off and make the backlight dimmer.

Sweet! This is exactly what I was hoping to find. Now I just have to get around to actually rooting the phone...

[DPrynce]

Another reason for me to get busy and root my phone. The only thing I am really waiting on now is for 2.1 to release. After that I am sure I will get busy and root up.