I've seen some posts in the DEV area where they may be working on an alterntive. One thing I saw was they were considering turning on a small number of pixels with different colors for different conditions, while the phone is in standby.
They make the case that for this phone, that the light being on is just turning pixels on or off, with different colors. So, with no backlighting, just a small number of pixels on, would not use much battery to speak of.
It'll be interesting to see if anything comes of it.