How to turn off screen without affecting anything else? When I press power button, it not just turns off the screen, but also locks the screen. I use WidgetLocker Lockscreen which is somewhat heavy. So, many apps stop working. For example, an in-app download is stopped after screen lock. The heavy foreground apps are unloaded from memory after screen lock.

When I need to run such apps for long, I make screen timeout period infinite. But, it consumes a lot of battery juice. So, I want to turn off screen and only screen. How to do this?

Please, don't suggest me to ditch WidgetLocker Lockscreen.

My device is Galaxy S which is rooted (ICS).
Depending on your kernel it might be possible to turn the brightness off your screen to 0 via t he appropriate sysfs file.

On a Sony Xperia Acro S currently running a custom AOSP-Based 4.2.2 ROM (SlimBean 6.2) i found the following:

130|shell@android:/ # find /sys/ -name brightness
...
/sys/devices/i2c-3/3-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness
...


the following command turns my screen off but keeps the apps running:

echo 0 &gt; /sys/devices/i2c-3/3-0040/leds/lcd-backlight/brightness


if you combine this with an app which keeps the wakelock for your device, you should be fine.