Question

I can’t find anything definite using my favourite tool, however I thought I would put it out here…

Is there a way, using the iPhone SDK, for an app to detect if the device is in a state of receiving power (charging, dock, etc.)?

I would like to be able to disable the idleTimer automatically if the device is receiving power (otherwise it is a user-specified setting).

Answer 1

Yes, UIDevice is capable of telling you this:

[[UIDevice currentDevice] setBatteryMonitoringEnabled:YES];

if ([[UIDevice currentDevice] batteryState] == UIDeviceBatteryStateCharging) {
    NSLog(@"Device is charging.");
}

See the UIDevice reference in the docs for more info, and for other values of batteryState.