[General Questions and Answers] arcadesdude:
Um...I did that but it didn't work. Exactly like that. But I still had the circle battery at the top.

I removed android:visibility="gone" so the line that was left was:

<ImageView android:id="@id/battery" android:paddingLeft="4.0dip" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" />

and recompiled the SystemUI.apk as explained above (copying over files that were not changed and deleting gemini_status_bar.xml and resources.arsc as instructed). APKMultiTool generated the unsignedSystemUI.apk which I changed the name of back to SystemUI.apk and used adb push in recovery to overwrite the older version.

I only edited one xml file gemini_status_bar.xml though. You mentioned it needs two xml files to be edited so maybe I missed one somewhere?

I regrabbed my SystemUI.apk from my phone and decompiled it again and see that my changes didn't take. Strange. I'm trying again now.

I also see one other mention of circle battery in:

C:\Users\User\Desktop\APK-Multi-Tool\projects\SystemUI.apk\res\values\ids.xml/272: <item type="id" name="circle_battery">false</item>

But I'm not sure if that needs changing or not.

So I'm trying to recompile SystemUI.apk again...and...

This time APKMultiTool didn't ask my if it was a system apk because I used option 11 (compile system apk) and did not ask for a keep folder. It only asked if I wanted to copy over files that weren't modified to ensure the least number of errors which I responded Y to. No keep folder was created.

Decompiling that apk which was just created shows that no changes were made. Why did APKMultiTool not prompt for a keep folder?

There is option 12 (compile non-system apk) which DOES prompt for a keep folder but will that work on a system apk? I'll try. The option to compile non system apk does prompt for the keep folder which I deleted resources.arsc from the root of that keep folder and also /res/layout/gemini_status_bar.xml.

Renamed to SystemUI.apk, rebooted recovery, mounted /system partition and after running adb push:

c:\Program Files\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20130219\sdk\platform-tools>adb push
SystemUI.apk /system/app/SystemUI.apk
* daemon not running. starting it now on port 5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
6481 KB/s (3152567 bytes in 0.475s)

It looked like it did something. First my wall paper changed back to default and my status bar up top is solid black. No icons at all and the notification shade doesn't pull down although I can run apps and such...strange.

I'll revert to a backup until you can suggest something for me to try. Or perhaps a specific version of APKMultiTool or another way to compile it as a system apk that works.

EDIT: I see you attached a modified version of SystemUI.apk which I decompiled to verify the changes were made and saw that they were so I tried to push it to my phone and...

c:\Program Files\adt-bundle-windows-x86_64-20130219\sdk\platform-tools>adb push
SystemUI.apk /system/app/SystemUI.apk
10475 KB/s (2831935 bytes in 0.264s)

...That worked! I wonder what would account for the variance in sizes of the two SystemUI.apk s (the one I compiled which didn't work 3152567 bytes and the one you compiled which worked 2831935 bytes). The APKMultiTool version I have (1.0.11) worked fine on de/re compiling framework-res.apk for the brightness values but seemed to not want to work with SystemUI.apk properly (nor prompt for keep folder if decompiling as system apk).

Thank you again for making this change. If you know why the above happens I'm open to suggestions. :)