BatteryCenter: Battery Widget

[Joshua Tucker]

Widgets for iOS 5 continue to trickle into the community. It has been a popular spot for development in light of the iOS 5 beta being jailbreakable. Creator of MusicCenter, Aaron C. Wright (@WrightsCS), has created another widget to add to his collection called BatteryCenter.

It's a simple widget that displays your current battery percentage and a large battery bar. Also it shows you whether your iDevice is charging, full, or unplugged. At this point, the implementations are limited but have potential. Here are two suggestions I can think of that would make BatteryCenter much more useful.

• Theming capabilities
• Estimated time until 0% power (similar to Mac)

The calibration for the battery percentage is a little off from real-time but hopefully that will be fixed soon. Aaron has now released two widgets with the tag line "Center." I'm sure he will continue to bring more to the table in his suite of "Center" widgets.

Follow Aaron (@WrightsCS) on Twitter for more information about BatteryCenter and his other projects.

Source(s): Aaron C. Wright

[Sem656]

How exactly would "theming capabilities" make it more useful? Idk it's pretty cool but not really useful. I don't need a widget when I have all that on my status bar.

[transam7816]

How exactly would "theming capabilities" make it more useful? Idk it's pretty cool but not really useful. I don't need a widget when I have all that on my status bar.

Same here. I mean it's cool if you wanna take up space in the NC. I already have my percentage up top so I don't think I'll get this.

[z3r01]

Well I guess I would rather ignore my battery icon on the top right and just open notification center better.

Come on community , save these useless widgets for your experiments of discovering iOS and let's work on some real widgets! Don't flood notification center with things that aren't necessary like winterboars themes when it first started ! ;-)

[ca3]

this one isnt as exciting as the toggle switches.... its not needed, i love the idea and hope apple will either implement it themselves or let apps in the app store that will add this feature. only time will tell

[Joshua Tucker]

How exactly would "theming capabilities" make it more useful? Idk it's pretty cool but not really useful. I don't need a widget when I have all that on my status bar.

You're correct, my choice of words may have not been the best. However, anything to enhance or allow user customization generally makes it more appealing to the user.

Well I guess I would rather ignore my battery icon on the top right and just open notification center better.

Come on community , save these useless widgets for your experiments of discovering iOS and let's work on some real widgets! Don't flood notification center with things that aren't necessary like winterboars themes when it first started ! ;-)

Remember that a a great way to get knew ideas is to release small ones and get suggestions from users. I would agree that some of the widgets may be "less" useful then others however it is a great way to test the waters and get feedback from users. Users see implementations from a different view then developers do.

[asmacumber]

Because yeah, it's hard to look up the extra half inch and see the same info on the status bar.

I'm all for cool widgets, but only if they're actually useful.

[PathKiller29]

dude come on...
its more for the learning experience for devs...
if i make something, which im trying.
it can be the most useless to u all in the notification center
but hey, i learn from it

[mmaboi21]

I am definitely liking the potential for iOS 5 tweaks/themes, regardless if thus is useful or not it's just a nice integration.

Has anybody noticed the "native feeling" of the jb apps that are new?? I mean it doesn't feel like iOS 4. Maybe it's just me or devs are getting a lot better at really tweaking things to make them run as if it was default.

[Sem656]

[QUOTE=Joshua Tucker;6101158]You're correct, my choice of words may have not been the best. However, anything to enhance or allow user customization generally makes it more appealing to the user.

Agreed. Also pretty cool you actually read through comments on your post and take time to reply. Doesn't seem to happen a lot.

[danielbonnells]

I dont think it would be very useful, but hey I wish i could develop something like that lol. BTW why does it say a different battery percentage on the widget than on the statusbar? haha

[reznor9]

I was about to post as well that I think this is completely useless... its like adding a widget that displays your carrier name and signal bars... but if its in the name of learning then its all good.

[mmaboi21]

dude come on...
its more for the learning experience for devs...
if i make something, which im trying.
it can be the most useless to u all in the notification center
but hey, i learn from it

couldnt agree more

[jonkjon]

It's very useful if you are using themes where you want to hide the battery from the status bar, using statustweak or others, and need alternative ways to still see the battery level......
Good job!