Worth installing Winterboard on my iPhone 4?

[kalirob99]

I haven't installed it so far due to it's a tad inefficient, or at least it was in the past. But I'm not sure if that matters with an iPhone 4. What are the pros and cons from what you guys have seen? And is there any real effect on battery life? Thanks in advanced guys.

 

[tesilential]

Do it, it's a lot faster than SSH'ing into your phone.


And if you prefer you can still SSH the themes in, and control them with winterboard.


It lets you change your theme instantly and non permanently.


Seriously dude, it's free.


Install it and see for yourself.

 

[rotobadger]

Agreed. I do a lot of tweaking to themes and UI sounds via SSH or iFile but can't imagine not having Winterboard. Very handy.

 

[murdercitydevil]

If you have any interest in themeing, there's absolutely no reason not to have WB. The whole thing about it eating up battery life is nullified if you use it in winterboard mode. And since all the themes nowadays are being made properly with bundle identifiers, they work perfectly in WB mode, which AFAIK uses up less memory.

 

[Claude626]

If you have any interest in themeing, there's absolutely no reason not to have WB. The whole thing about it eating up battery life is nullified if you use it in winterboard mode. And since all the themes nowadays are being made properly with bundle identifiers, they work perfectly in WB mode, which AFAIK uses up less memory.

This.

Remember that Winterboard is sorta like a gateway for OTHER programs to run. The OTHER programs [your themes/tweaks] are the ones that are actively running and THAT may be the culprit. It's like... you're a boss of a party and you specifically tell the door guy to let certain people in... then when they trash your party, you turn around and blame the door guy.

There are lots of themes and tweaks that has things running in the background. And if the developer doesn't give a damn about efficiency, he may very well make it do a lot of things continuously unnecessarily. Take time and date calculation on themes like LockMS for example... where it needs to perform autonomous tasks(maintain time in this case). Every second, that theme is making the iPhone calculate second, minute, hour, month, date, year and day. All of that every second. When I rewrote my SlantedLock, I cut back so that it only does seconds calculation every second... and only update minutes every 60 seconds... and only update hours every 60 minutes... and only update day every 24 hours... etc. (Do the math to see how many calculations I just cut back over the course of a day. ) Minor calculations? Possibly, but tack on a few more themes that does something similar or even heavier processing. The point I'm trying to make is that it all depends on how much the theme developer cares for efficiency. It's running on a limited resources device power by battery after all.

More computation = more CPU work = more battery usage. It's that simple.

 

[kalirob99]

Awesome, thanks guys for taking the time to clear this up. Considering the last phone I used Winterboard on was a 2g, my worries are severely outdated hah.
EDIT: off topic I have been seeing some battery life issues since my last restore. Downgraded mobilesubstrate and still seeing a drain. Any ideas as to what apps could cause this?