For those who ditched winterboard

[fizz7283]

I haven't had my iPhone without winterboard in about two years now and I'm starting the think that winterboard may be depleting the battery quicker than necessary.

Now I'm not 100% sure it is winterboard to be honest. I have a few tweaks like bigify, intelliscreenx, springtomize 2, infinifolders, gridlock and no lock screen. I struggle to get 6 hours usage out of my phone with the brightness at approximately 30%. Everything else is turned off (BT, wifi, all location services).

So for those who ditched winterboard, was your battery life increase very significant? I was thinking about removing it and just theming the icons manually, but if the battery increase isn't that much better, I may as well just keep winterboard.

I know this is a topic that's discussed quite a bit, but it always seems to be people who have never used it versus people who have always used it. I would love to hear input from those who have used it and removed it.

Thanks in advance!

 

[labman]

it's not so much winterboard imo but what you run on it anytime you run anything that is graphically intense it is going drain battery faster. here is the best way to test right down all your winterbaord tweaks uninstall then uninstall winterboard to run like this for a few days. use it the same way hows the battery life after. then if you want reinstall winterboard and add one tweak at a time. this will give you a better idea if wb is the culprit or if it is.

 

[MastahRiz]

^Agreed. Just installing winterboard doesn't do much. Applying 50 themes at the same time however, will give you a noticeable drop in battery life.

I used winterboard for the better part of 2 years but have recently decided to leave it behind. I still theme certain aspects of the phone, but do so manually by permanently replacing icons or images throughout the iOS and apps. For example I deleted the dock.png because I didn't want a dock, and I replaced my Siri artwork file with a custom one because I wanted a red siri. I backup the originals just in case, but I've had an iPhone long enough now to know what I want.

 

[fizz7283]

I use the blaze hd theme and color mods, practically everything is themed so that probably is what's causing the battery drain.

Would theming certain things like icons and iPod app and springboard badges manually cause any extra battery drain ? I've never themed anything manually, just through winterboard.

 

[MastahRiz]

Manually themeing has no affect on battery life. You're just replacing the stock icon with a different icon so it's just the default part of the OS after that. Even if I remove something like the homescreen gradient that darkens the wallpaper at the bottom of the screen, I replace it with a blank icon just in case there are ever any other dependencies or whatever. I always keep backups just in case though.

If you want do an entire theme manually though, it'll definitely take you some time, but it is possible.


EDIT:

Also, I used winterboard pretty heavily and ever since upgrading to iOS 5.1.1 my battery life has basically doubled. Sounds too good to be true, but it has been at least a week and so far so good. It'll probably prevent me from ever installing winterboard again in the future.

 

[LoloBond]

I don't see how Icon with the same resolution will cause your battery to drain.

 

[fizz7283]

Well for some reason my icons aren't changing when I do it manually. Made sure the names are all the same, respring, reboot, not working. I think it may be the size? I'm using glasklart icons without the mask, the size is different.

I made a copy of the theme and deleted a lot of the stuff I don't really worry about. I spend most my time in the music app and Facebook so I kept those themed and the icons, use this for a few days to see if deleting all the progress indicators and all that kind of small silly stuff helps. If not I may just try removing winterboard all together and not even worrying about theming at all. I'd rather my phone last me all day when I can't make it to a charger rather than having themed icons and what not. Although I never thought I'd think that way lol

 

[Mortalias]

So far the biggest battery culprit for me has been Intelliscreen. Maybe this could be the source of your problem?

I only have it fetching Facebook and Twitter, as the Mail and RSS feed really took a hit.

 

[fizz7283]

So far the biggest battery culprit for me has been Intelliscreen. Maybe this could be the source of your problem?

I only have it fetching Facebook and Twitter, as the Mail and RSS feed really took a hit.

I don't have mail, twitter, Facebook or rss set up for it. I only use it for the top shelf and isxquicksettings. I can't imagine that would take up too much battery? I don't even have notifications on for anything except phone and text messages, not even words with friends or Facebook or anything else.

 

[fizz7283]

Well I tried removing winterboard and bigify today and WOW. I never realized how laggy my phone was with winterboard. Opening folders always took like five seconds and I thought it was because I have infinifolders and have a grip of apps in them, but it seems as if it was winterboard making it lag. Everything on my phone is so much quicker now.

My battery life nearly doubled as well. I used to get about an hour to an hour and ten minutes for every 15% of my battery, today I was getting right at two hours for every 15% used.

I really loved theming my phone and having it match my back plates and cases, but I honestly believe I enjoy having a faster phone and better battery life.

I don't think I'll be using winterboard again. The visual tweaks I can definitely live without I think.

And I've still got infinifolders, activator, intelliscreenx, springtomize 2 and a bunch of other tweaks installed. I can just imagine what my battery life would be like if I removed a couple more things that I don't really "need" lol

 

[nwmtnbiker]

Well I tried removing winterboard and bigify today and WOW. I never realized how laggy my phone was with winterboard. Opening folders always took like five seconds and I thought it was because I have infinifolders and have a grip of apps in them, but it seems as if it was winterboard making it lag. Everything on my phone is so much quicker now.

My battery life nearly doubled as well. I used to get about an hour to an hour and ten minutes for every 15% of my battery, today I was getting right at two hours for every 15% used.

I really loved theming my phone and having it match my back plates and cases, but I honestly believe I enjoy having a faster phone and better battery life.

I don't think I'll be using winterboard again. The visual tweaks I can definitely live without I think.

And I've still got infinifolders, activator, intelliscreenx, springtomize 2 and a bunch of other tweaks installed. I can just imagine what my battery life would be like if I removed a couple more things that I don't really "need" lol

Here's a couple other things that are installed along with winterboard. If you actually find a setup you want it might be best just to restore and start fresh. Libhide and pincrush are installed with winterboard. Here's a screenshot. You can go to Cydia and click on manage/packages/simple is in upper right corner and and click on pincrush and libhide and hit remove. When you hit remove it'll give you a list of what it is going to remove make sure they have no other dependencies. I'm not sure what isx uses...

 

[Jessica Lares]

I don't use my iPhone anymore, but jailbroke it and themed it, but I can tell you that I haven't charged it since the 29th, and I'm down to 48% with all my tweaks with just using it once or twice.

The notifications you have setup kill the battery faster. That is fact. The moment I got rid of all my social apps, the battery lasted longer. These are the only tweaks I have on mine:

Activator
Dashboard X
FolderEnhancer
IconControl
NCSettings
Springtomize
WinterBoard

 

[fizz7283]

Does libhide have anything to do with hiding icons? When I removed winterboard it just removed the themes and winterboard, those two things weren't on there.

And thanks for the advice, but there's no way I'm going to restore. It takes my computer about 8 hours to load all of my music onto my phone lol it's such a hassle.

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I don't use my iPhone anymore, but jailbroke it and themed it, but I can tell you that I haven't charged it since the 29th, and I'm down to 48% with all my tweaks with just using it once or twice.

The notifications you have setup kill the battery faster. That is fact. The moment I got rid of all my social apps, the battery lasted longer. These are the only tweaks I have on mine:

Activator
Dashboard X
FolderEnhancer
IconControl
NCSettings
Springtomize
WinterBoard

I learned very quickly that notifications kill the battery, that's why I don't have them set up for any apps. I usually turn location services off as well because I don't use anything that needs it unless I'm using navigon and I turn them on via ISX quick settings then.

If I could get even more battery life I would be completely amazed. With the way my battery went today I would be able to get about 12 hours usage out of my phone which is way more than enough for a day.

 

[Jessica Lares]

I learned very quickly that notifications kill the battery, that's why I don't have them set up for any apps. I usually turn location services off as well because I don't use anything that needs it unless I'm using navigon and I turn them on via ISX quick settings then.

If I could get even more battery life I would be completely amazed. With the way my battery went today I would be able to get about 12 hours usage out of my phone which is way more than enough for a day.

Just try removing stuff in Cydia and see if that helps. You know, not core stuff, but the tweaks. And go from there.

Wish there was a battery usage task manager like there is in Android. Heh.

 

[HiDEF]

^Agreed. Just installing winterboard doesn't do much. Applying 50 themes at the same time however, will give you a noticeable drop in battery life.

I used winterboard for the better part of 2 years but have recently decided to leave it behind. I still theme certain aspects of the phone, but do so manually by permanently replacing icons or images throughout the iOS and apps. For example I deleted the dock.png because I didn't want a dock, and I replaced my Siri artwork file with a custom one because I wanted a red siri. I backup the originals just in case, but I've had an iPhone long enough now to know what I want.

Does this only remove the dock and icons or just the dock?

 

[MastahRiz]

Does this only remove the dock and icons or just the dock?

Just the dock. The icons remain. If you want to get rid of both, I think springtomize has that option to get rid of the dock, both visually and functionally.

 

[fizz7283]

I went on another cleaning spree and removed quite a few things I always thought I "needed" to enjoy my jailbroken phone.

Since I realized it was winterboard causing lag in opening folders I no longer needed appscenter in the NC since folders open quickly now.

I didn't need the noOTA badge to hide the red badge on settings for the update since I can do that with springtomize.

Instead of using no lock screen I just set it up with activatie so one home button push unlocks my device wheb it's locked. Not as quick as no lock screen, but definitely manageable since I was able to remove another tweak.

Removed wallpaper jpegifier since I don't have winterboard so obviously don't need it.

Removed gridlock, don't need it since I'm not using overlays on my widgets anymore. I will just put what I need in the dock and the other two icons and two folders at the top of the screen on the second page.

Removed icon renamer since I'm hiding app labels there's no need for it.

I have no clue why I thought I needed all of these things? And the sad part is I've been justifying them for quite some time. Told myself the slight lag and slight battery decrease was worth the small tid bit of functionality they added and the "wow that's cool looking" factor. I was lying to myself, it wasn't worth it.

I still wonder if there's other things I could live without..

 

[SFC Archer]

I am one that also used the heck out of Winterboard and wanted my phone to always look personal to a point I even modified the themes to my own preference. Got so tired of renaming and changing and updating every time there was a new iOS release. It is gone and battery life is back to all day for me and I always charge every night while I sleep. I only use:
Activator
Dashboard X
IntelliScreenX
NCColors
NCSettings
Sprintomize2
Unfold
You may want to take a look at DashboardX as it will allow you to put some useful widgets on your homescreen which gives it a personal look and feel to it. I have also gone into the heart of the iPhone to customize a few things permanently and love the ease, no lag, and increased battery performance.

 

[HiDEF]

Just the dock. The icons remain. If you want to get rid of both, I think springtomize has that option to get rid of the dock, both visually and functionally.

I just wanna get rid of the dock itself, not the icon; will Springtomize do this?

 

[MastahRiz]

I just wanna get rid of the dock itself, not the icon; will Springtomize do this?

Well if you get rid of the dock through springtomize, it will also get rid of the icon. Springtomize removes the dock completely, so not only do you not see the dock anymore, you can no longer drag icons down to the dock to 'dock,' them there.

Removing the png just gets rid of the background image behind the dock icons, nothing more.

 

[fizz7283]

Oops. Accidentally reposted that somehow.

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Well if you get rid of the dock through springtomize, it will also get rid of the icon. Springtomize removes the dock completely, so not only do you not see the dock anymore, you can no longer drag icons down to the dock to 'dock,' them there.

Removing the png just gets rid of the background image behind the dock icons, nothing more.

You can just get rid of the dock png under the theming portion of springtomize. That's what I did, don't like the stock dock at all.

 

[SFC Archer]

Well if you get rid of the dock through springtomize, it will also get rid of the icon. Springtomize removes the dock completely, so not only do you not see the dock anymore, you can no longer drag icons down to the dock to 'dock,' them there.

Removing the png just gets rid of the background image behind the dock icons, nothing more.

This is not true.

If you use "Dock", "Hide Dock" = "On" then the dock and all icons will disappear.
If you use "Theming", "Custom Dock" = "On" then "Choose Dock", "NoDock" and respring, the dock will be gone but the icons will still be there.

Hope this clarifies for both posters

 

[fizz7283]

I am one that also used the heck out of Winterboard and wanted my phone to always look personal to a point I even modified the themes to my own preference. Got so tired of renaming and changing and updating every time there was a new iOS release. It is gone and battery life is back to all day for me and I always charge every night while I sleep. I only use:
Activator
Dashboard X
IntelliScreenX
NCColors
NCSettings
Sprintomize2
Unfold
You may want to take a look at DashboardX as it will allow you to put some useful widgets on your homescreen which gives it a personal look and feel to it. I have also gone into the heart of the iPhone to customize a few things permanently and love the ease, no lag, and increased battery performance.

I tried replacing my icons because that's the only thing I really wanted to keep. For some reason they weren't changing with the ones I wanted. I'm pretty sure it's because the size was different.

I was like you, changing things that complete themes even had. I wanted my phone to loil exactly how I wanted it to and it was taking up too much of my time and battery.

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My posts are just littered with spelling errors today lol damn you iPhone keyboard. I'm going to quit editing them and just let the errors go.

Currently what I have on my phone are the following:

Activator
Bitesms
Browser changer
Ifile
Infinifolders
Intelliscreenx
Lockdown
Now playing detail info
Springtomize 2
Weekillbackground pro

Looking at the list I really do think I need these things, I've become so dependant on all of them and I'm not sure removing them would benefit me at all. Since I'm not theming anymore, I could possibly get rid of ifile, but I don't think that would do anything for the battery life at all since it's not something that's constantly running.

 

[MastahRiz]

Hope this clarifies for both posters

Thanks! Forgot about the themeing section all together.

 

[SFC Archer]

I tried replacing my icons because that's the only thing I really wanted to keep. For some reason they weren't changing with the ones I wanted. I'm pretty sure it's because the size was different.

I was like you, changing things that complete themes even had. I wanted my phone to loil exactly how I wanted it to and it was taking up too much of my time and battery.

Easiest way I have done this is to drag a copy of the app I want to replace into photoshop, overlay the image on the original and edit to my specifications and save. Rename the original and then drag my edited version back in to the folder. I believe Gimp will do this as well if you do not have photoshop.

Also recommend that you keep Gridlock because it gives you the freedom to place your icons wherever you want if you are/are not using widgets. Gives you a personal feeling to be able to leave blanks slots in places and it does not affect performance at all.