A couple of nights ago I got a backlight problem with my iPhone 4. I’m sure that the screen was fine because I could here the click sounds of the keypad when I try to enter the pass code, I realized that the light was so dim I had to use a flashlight to see just a hint of what I needed to tap. I then searched the net for any fix that might be able to help me solve this really irritating problem. I was already thinking the worse that it might be a hardware problem and something needs to be replaced, i just got this phone and I’m not ready for it to be going to a repair shop any time soon.
First what I did is I used VNC viewer on my laptop which means I had to turn on the wifi on my phone which was a bit difficult because of the extremely dim screen, my phone was jailbroken so I used SBSettings to turn on the wifi and veency (had to tap the accept button also aaarrggh!). From what I’ve read these are the stuff I tried to fix it: (not the exact order)
– turn off the pass code on entry
– turn off automatic brightness
– hard reset
– wipe light sensor (I thought that it might be the hard case I’m using)
– deleted some stuff in the lib folder (Zi used ifunbox)
I had no problems connecting to iTunes which was good. It was already around 2am and I’m not getting anywhere, I’m not even sure why I had this black screen problem in the first place. The phone was not dropped and it did not get wet either. I was already thinking when I should go to the repair shop. So as to rule out everything I decided to restore/update my phone. I am one of the few that did not jump to the iOS 5 update bandwagon because I wanted to patiently wait for the untethered jailbreak first. Since my phone is factory unlocked I did not hesitate and restored my iPhone with the iOS 5 firmware that I’ve already downloaded from ipsw downloader.
Okay before I restored I backed up my files on iTunes and I also saved my shsh on Tinyumbrella. So after restoring was finished I chose to use the back up on my iTunes. While it was restoring my backed up files the screen was lit up like it was normally, this gave me hope but I wasn’t that contented until the restore was finished. On the last few moments before it started syncing the apps the screen turned dark again and I was back to where I was. I was a bit perplexed and totally disappointed, so I thought about it again and I decided to do a clean restore and not use the back up from iTunes. This time it worked! I was so relieved and thankful that I did not have to get my phone fixed and shell out the money I’m saving to buy an Otterbox case. Whew! I finished around 4 am 💤
I still don’t know what happened to my phone, it clearly wasn’t a hardware problem. I’m not sure if it was one of the tweaks I used on Cydia or an app I used, before it happened I was on the lock screen trying to enter my pass code.
Surprisingly I’m enjoying my unjailbroken iPhone on iOS 5, Gestures is the coolest! Good thing Apple faced the fact of the home button problems people are experiencing from their iPhones. I wished they ported Siri too though 
Well anyway that’s it for now. I’m thinking of jotting down some pros why you won’t need to jailbreak if your on iOS 5. ^_^
♥ iPhonedipity ♥ 