I am only asking for the backlight control, not altering the LCD as it functions now. In a residential environment, even on the dimmest setting, the backlight can be quite bright!
Imagine this bright light next to your bed when you try to sleep!
Incidentally, the backlight is independent to the LCD. When you set the backlight to go off, you can still see the LCD when looking at it under sufficient light, but it's very hard to see unless it's a very bright light. (flashlight works well, for instance) It would still be handy to have a user-controlled turn-off feature for privacy, even though that is not my primary desire. If you were on a call to a "private" number and you didn't want someone walking in and easily viewing the number, switching the backlight off alone is enough to prevent a casual viewing of the screen.
The existing hardware/software only extinguishes the backlight, not the LCD, and all I'm asking for is the feature to work in a useful manner.
When you set an off time, in CCM the backlight will turn off, and can be turned back on by tapping the touchscreen or by pressing the backlight/touchscreen control button on the lower right. (provided the idle timer is set larger than zero) At that point it will stay on until the timeout value is reached. The problem is if you set the timeout value to a low setting, such as 1 minute, which is reasonable for residential use, then the backlight will ALSO extinguish during "on" hours after the idle timeout hits! So the on/off timers have no valid function for keeping the light on if you set a small idle value.
This is not an acceptable or sensible way for this feature to work. The "force on" times should override the idle timeout, that is all I am asking.
I also don't see why the relevant engineers wouldn't allow the control button to shut off the backlight upon user demand. By holding the button down, you can disable the touchscreen, but there is no way I can find to disable the backlight, save for the timeout variable.
I'm sure I could come up with an Electronic hack using a small flip-flop and some circuitry that would turn the control switch into a backlight control toggling the backlight on and off, but that would be a time-consumptive and silly modification to perform on what is the top-of-the-line IP phone sold by the leader in IP communications. There should be a user-control for shutting it off, wouldn't you agree?
