intelligent backlight system

[leonthepro]

One thing that I find annoying about the iPod is the backlight system.
Firstly, to put the backlight on you have to go to settings, and then scroll down a few places, click on backlight and scroll some more. This is all very difficult in the dark (which is surely the most common time when you turn your backlight on). I often end up switching the clicker off, changing the language etc. etc.
They should put the backlight timer on the top of the settings menu, then I could easily get to it without turning on another light.

Also, a good idea would be some sort of intelligent timer, the backlight is always on a set timer (2secs, 5secs etc.) It could quite easily be adjusted to work specifically with whats on the screen. So for example, if the song title is scrolling, the backlight waits until it has all been shown...or if your playing a game, the backlight stays on throughout the game.

These improvments are something which could be easily updated with new firmware.

[MicFlash]

What gen iPod are you using? I know that my 30gig with the newest firmware has the timing feature of the backlight built-in. It works and accomplishes everything you mentioned

[ephraim]

I've got a second-gen, and it does most of all that too. Maybe the first-gens didn't have the same backlight features? I thought they were all the same...

leonthepro: When it's dark and you can't read the screen, press and hold the Menu button for a couple seconds ? that always turns on the backlight for 30 seconds. In the newest firmware for the first- and second-gen iPods, there's also a Backlight item in the very top-level menu, at the very bottom. So you could also hit Menu a bunch of times, scroll down quickly, and hit Select.

The "intelligent" timer is a good idea, but I don't think it would be very easy to implement in such a way that it works for everyone; we're all trying to read different things on the screen at any given time, so any presumption about that would probably just make a lot of people frustrated in the end. I find that 10 seconds is enough for me to read everything on the screen most of the time, and it doesn't significantly affect my battery life either.

[leonthepro]

I wasnt aware about the ability to turn on the backlight by holding the menu button, just tried it on my 2nd gen 10gb ipod with 1.2.6 firmware, and it works (thanks for the advice)!!

I guess my problem has already been addressed, I was planning on getting a 3rd gen ipod, I'm now even more tempted to get one.

[torchedlh]

i do agree about the game thing. i usually have my backlight timer set to 5 seconds. and sometimes when playing brick the backlight will go out for .000000001 seconds...