Got this from pocketpcthoughts.com..

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/arti...bd7e3c699bbb4d

Windows Mobile offers users an easy way to customise backlight timeout settings, but it doesn't offer much choice with regard to preset values. By opening the Backlight applet (Start > Settings > System > Backlight; the exact sequence may vary from device to device), you'll notice a set of options as shown in the image below. You can tweak the timeout settings for battery power and external power, but the fact is, the range of values in the drop-down box is meagre at best. What if you wanted 5 seconds, 15 seconds, 45 seconds, or even 30 minutes?

With a registry editor, you can change all that.

In this guide, I use Resco Explorer 2005. Remember, you're on your own with registry hacks, so proceed at your own risk.

• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ControlPanel\Backlight.
• You'll notice two DWORD entries present: ACTimeout and BatteryTimeout. The former refers to the backlight timeout setting on external power, while the latter refers to the backlight timeout setting on battery power. These two entries are highlighted in the image above.
• Open either of the two entries and modify the value to a number of your choice. It stores the information in seconds, so if you want a timeout setting of 15 seconds, enter 15. If you want a timeout setting of 1.5 minutes, enter 90.
• Save the changes. You won't need to soft-reset your device as the changes will come into effect immediately.

The aforementioned steps should work on most Pocket PCs. If not, your OEM has your device's backlight settings assigned to a different set of registry keys.

This works for me, but something keeps hijacking the sregistry setting and reverts batterytimeout to 7 seconds. How can I stop that from happening?

Me too. After the Sprint ROM update, my backlight timer defaults to 10 seconds no matter what I do. It seems to hold the custom setting until I put the device to sleep, then it goes right back to 10 seconds. Most certainly a bug...

I was having the same problem (it reverting back to 7 seconds in the registry). There's a subfolder beneath the key listed above, and within it is a dword value regarding something about "Lock". Flip that bit from 1 to 0 and the problem will go away (or at least it did for me). Sorry I can't remember the specific key/string right now, but I remember there being only one sub folder with only one or two entries in it.

Dave

That seems to have worked! Thank you.

I'm glad it worked. Once or twice, I've noticed it's been switched back after messing around with the device lock settings. But it seems to stay put unless you start changing settings in regards to the password/lock functionality. Afterwards, just change it again and you'll be all set.

Dave

Thanks! I was about to pull out my last few hairs over this backlight thing. The reverting back to 10 sec was gonna be the death of me! All's good now, though...thanks again!

Just make sure that you change the setting to the desired time and then do the registry hack in order for it to take.

FYI - Mine reverted back to 7 seconds again today for some reason. I have yet to figure out what it is that makes it revert. So, you may want to bookmark this page so that you know where the key is next time it does it.

Dave

This just happened to me. The LockLevel key would revert, so I just deleted the whole LockLevel key, and no more problems!

I actually found that setting the Backlight timeout to the same value of the Sleep timeout makes the behave much nicer.

Can't tell you how many times I'd think it was on and tap on screen and it's not. Or hit power button to turn it on when it was already on have have it disconnect GPS or ActiveSync over blue tooth.

This way if the screen is black I know it's off !!! no more cat and mouse guessing. Setting the timeout short does not save all that much battery. It's the phone on an active call that eats battery the most, wifi being second. Everything else is small potatoes.

I wanted to change the TTY keyboard back light setting to something longer than 5 sec on my Samsung SCH-i730. I have RegEdit software but I don't which register to change. Does anybody know what it is?

Since upgrading to Kriwin's clean and simple 3.5 ROM and reinstalling everything I was getting very frustrated with my backlight settings changing. I wanted it to stay alwaya on when on external power for use with GPS or Google traffic maps but it kept dimming and then powering off.

I think I found the problem and solved it. I use Phone Alarm and it has backlight settings that do not automatically follow the WM5 backlight or power settings and need to be independently set or they will orverride the WM5 settings.

I did not see this Phone Alarm setting on my phone to adjust back light from the 8-seconds.

BreGod23,

I am not sure what skin you are using, but mine has a box for "config" on the today screen. Click that. Go to the "profiles" tab. Scroll down. Click and hold on "BackLight External" and a dialog block opens up at the top with options from 0 (always (on?) to 60 minutes.

However something just changed mine back to 5 minutes, so this is only part of the solution (if there is one).

I am getting frustrated as it makes it more difficult to use for maps/GPS - I did not have this problem before when powered by my car charger.

I am running WM5 and I don't have any of those options you just mentioned.

BrewGod23,

Those are Phone Alarm options, not WM5 ones.

It may make a difference which skin you are using. I am using "Joel_Full"

Using that skin there is a smaller box called "config", just under the profile box (Mine says "Home")

Is Phone Alarm an application? Maybe I don't have this application installed and running on my phone.

Yes, Phone Alarm is an application