Today I wanted to install the ‘Android Lockscreen’ application from Cydia. Great app, great substitute of swipe and/or security code, combined. To be able to fully use this lock screen replacement I would have to disable the Auto-lock feature as found in ‘Settings’ – ‘General’ – ‘Auto-lock’. But, to my surprise, the ‘Disable’ option was not there. Only 1-5 minutes. So I tried using the Android Lockscreen with the Auto-lock set to ‘5 minutes’. Result: from 1-5 minutes everything works as planned (Android Lockscreen) but after 5 minutes BOTH Android Lockscreen AND Security code are activated. This is definitely NOT user-friendly and surely not the intention of the superb Android Lockscreen.
After doing some research the absence of the ‘Disable’ option in the Auto-lock settings is due to the presence of an enabled Exchange account. After disabling Push, and disabling calendar, contacts and e-mail synchronisation, the ‘Disable’ option re-appears. But, when selected, and re-enabling the Exchange syncing and Push, it is set back to 5 minutes. No luck so far.
Further research suggests this is a setting on the Exchange-server side. In ‘Device security’ settings of the ‘Mobile services’ configuration there is an option to enforce password-security upon the device. See http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-515690.html for more details.
As I have a hosted Exchange solution, I cannot configure the Exchange server itself. However, using the web-admin interface of the Exchange mailboxes and hosted organisations I managed to find an option to disable device password security. However, it WAS already disabled. So no luck there either.
Finally, I noticed in the same thread something about the Apple iPhone Configuration Utility which allows corporate users to deploy configurations to multiple iPhone at once through e-mail. So I downloaded that, created a profile with just the Auto-lock options enabled. E-mailed it to myself, installed it and voila, the ‘Disable’ option is back!
The configuration file I used can be downloaded here. Hope this works for others, too. Please let me know in the comments.