Patent ID: 7205973

Claim:
A method for dimming backlighting of a display comprising: detecting a period of inactivity; in response to detecting the inactivity, determining a dimming interval over which a level of the backlighting is to be reduced from an initial level to a reduced level that is greater than zero; reducing the level of the backlighting from the initial level to the reduced level in a plurality of steps over the dimming interval, wherein the duration of the steps is variable; detecting the occurrence of activity; and in response to detecting the activity, increasing the level of backlighting to the initial level, wherein a length of the dimming interval is designed to limit perceptibility, to a user, of the reduction in backlighting level by reducing the backlighting at different rates over different portions of the dimming interval, each of the different rates being related to a non-zero scaling factor that is applied to a current backlighting level for a corresponding portion of the dimming interval and the current backlighting level is less than the initial level but greater than the reduced level.