A plethora ofAndroidsmartphones on the market today support ‘always-on-display’ functionality in which the background remains dark, but thetimeanddateappear in legible white font for your convenience.
Until now, you couldn’t experience this effect on anApplehandset, but a newjailbreak tweakdubbedSemperonby iOS developerLaughingQuollmimics this functionality on any jailbroken iPhone or iPad runningiOS 11.
Thescreenshotsabove depict what your locked device’s display will look like after installing Semperon. It will continuously look this way whether you’re interacting with the handset or not, hence the “always-on” aspect.
The tweak automatically shifts the time from the top of thedisplayto the bottom, and back again, after a certain amount of time; this feature combats screen burn-in, an adverse side-effect that often results from having the same thing showing on your display for too long.
After you’ve installed Semperon, you’ll find a preference pane in the Settings app:
Here, you can:
The developer includes a Respring button for your convenience so that you may save changes to the preference pane each time you make them.
If you’re considering trying Semperon, then keep in mind that an always-on-display uses morebatterylife. The drain is less profound on theiPhone Xbecause of the nature of dark colors onOLEDdisplays, but LCD-equipped iPhones will see a more drastic impact. The tweak mitigates battery drain by automatically dimming the backlight whenever possible.
As for the functionality, the always-on display comes in handy because you always have a display to glance at when you want to know what time it is, and it gets dim enough that it won’t keep you up at night.
If you’re interested in trying Semperon for yourself, then you candownload it for $1.99 from Cydia’s Packix repository. The tweak requires ajailbrokeniOS 11 device to be used and will not work with FastUnlockX or similar add-ons.
Note: After you install Semperon, you’ll also need to manually install two dependencies from Cydia: 1)libSparkAppListand 2)PrefixUI. Citing the developer, these aren’t installed automatically because of an APT bug present in this version of Cydia on iOS 11.
What are your thoughts about having an always-on-display on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments section below.
