The concept is novel, but the practical uses are almost nonexistent. Tweaks like the newly released Augmented let you replace your device wallpaper with a live feed of what’s currently being seen by your device’s camera, but as you might expect there are a variety of downsides. Regardless, Augmented does what it’s intended to do.

Augmented, available now in the Cydia Store, lets you quickly and easily replace your normal static or dynamic device wallpaper with a live-running video feed of what’s behind your camera. After installing the tweak, all you have to do to get it running is head to the Settings app, tap the Augmented section, and tap the “Enable” toggle.

The tweak also lets you change the “Background Display Time” which determines how long the camera feed wallpaper will continue to run after you leave the Home Screen. Notably, the tweak flickers when the camera is started up and setting this to a small number will increase the occurrence of those flickers. Smaller numbers, however, will save battery as the tweak won’t be running the camera when not needed. Higher numbers will worsen battery life dramatically, but flickers will be almost nonexistent.

Additionally, there are certain apps that can be set as “blacklisted” which will never allow the camera to run in the background. Overall, flickering should be a minor issue in comparison to how much battery this tweak uses. As noted in the below video from our channel iPhoneHacksTV, using the tweak dropped the battery on our phone an entire 8 percent when using the tweak for just ten minutes.

Augmented costs $0.99, is available right now on the Cydia Store, and requires iOS 7. According to the tweak’s developer, it was “tested only on the iPhone 5s, but should also work on the 5 and 5c also. I can confirm that the tweak works perfectly on the iPhone 5.

Is the drop in battery life worth the “wow factor” that comes with this tweak?