How to Show iPhone Battery Meter in Percentage

by Simon Ng on July 4, 2009

Other than those prominent features (e.g. video editing, voice control), iPhone 3GS has come with some minor but nice touches. One of them is the battery percentage switch in Settings that allows you to change the battery life indicator to percentage representation.

I’m sure not all of you are using iPhone 3GS or have any plan for the upgrade. But you probably want to use this precise battery meter to show the battery life on iPhone 2G/3G.

In this post, I’ll walk you through and show how you can change the battery indicator to percentage form. And, don’t worry. This guide is not just designed for iPhone 3GS and it applies to all iPhones (to be exact, jailbroken iPhone).

For iPhone 3GS

1. Go to “Settings”

2. Tap General -> Usage

3. You can easily change the battery indicator to percentage by turning ON the “Battery Percentage” option.

iphone3gs-battery-meter

For other iPhone users

I’m not sure why Apple does not release this minor feature to older version of iPhone. But if you have jailbroken iPhone, you can also change to battery percentage with minor tweak.

Tip: If you haven’t jailbroken your iPhone, you can follow this jailbreak guide for iPhone 3.0 (Windows / Mac).

1. Launch Cydia

2. Search for SBSettings and install it

sbsettings-cydia

3. Once you complete the installation, you can launch SBSettings by swiping across the status bar.

Launch SBSettings

4. Tap “More” button in SBSettings

5. Tap “Extras & Options” and turn ON “Numeric Battery”

sbsettings-more sbsettings-extras

6. Click Home button to go back to home screen and you’ll notice that the battery indicator changes to percentage.

As always, leave me comment and let me know if this works for you.

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Tagged as: Battery, iPhone, iPhone Hack

{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Walter July 4, 2009 at 10:17 am

I am using a JB 3.0 3G, but I cannot search the SBSettings from Cydia successfully; but some other SBSettingstoggles. Pls advise.

BTW, I did it success when I was in version 2.2 sth.

Pls help.

2 davedalus July 5, 2009 at 6:23 pm

GFreat blog.

On my jailbroken 2.2 I had the numeric battery which took the place of the graphic one. Do you know if there’s any way to hide the graphic one so that there is more room on the status bar (for weather & status icons)?

3 Simon Ng July 5, 2009 at 7:24 pm: @davedalus, seems there is no way to hide the graphic battery icon. If you find one sooner or later, do share with me. Thanks.

Reply

4 davedalus July 5, 2009 at 8:17 pm

thanks for the response, will let you know if I find one.

5 Titus July 12, 2009 at 8:44 pm

It works well and very impressed.

6 Omaley13 July 14, 2009 at 5:03 am

very nice, tks

7 Jedi July 17, 2009 at 2:54 am

i have 2.2.1 jailbroken. it worked for me before but now when i toggle it it just shows the number with no percentage symbol or battery icon what happened. or how can i fix it to be percentage symbol, number and icon.

8 Jason July 19, 2009 at 1:39 am

thanks man. works like a charm

9 davedalus August 13, 2009 at 1:45 am

Hi Simon, quick update on this. Modmyi have just released a tweak called ‘battery control’. Once installed, it puts a new menu in settings, where the battery percentage and image can both be toggled on/off. It isn’t the touch control we had before to switch between the two, but it does free up the statusbar for weather, RAM etc.

hth.