iOS 7 status bar back to iOS 6 default style in iPhone app?

Question

In iOS 7 the UIStatusBar has been designed in a way that it merges with the view like this:

Answer 1

My solution was to add a UIView with height of 20 points on top of the window when on iOS 7. Then I created a method in my AppDelegate class to show/hide the "solid" status bar background. In application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions::

// ...

// Add a status bar background
self.statusBarBackground = [[UIView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.window.bounds.size.width, 20.0f)];
self.statusBarBackground.backgroundColor = [UIColor blackColor];
self.statusBarBackground.alpha = 0.0;
self.statusBarBackground.userInteractionEnabled = NO;
self.statusBarBackground.layer.zPosition = 999; // Position its layer over all other views
[self.window addSubview:self.statusBarBackground];

// ...
return YES;

Then I created a method to fade in/out the black status bar background:

- (void) showSolidStatusBar:(BOOL) solidStatusBar
{
    [UIView animateWithDuration:0.3f animations:^{
        if(solidStatusBar)
        {
            [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleLightContent];
            self.statusBarBackground.alpha = 1.0f;
        }
        else
        {
            [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarStyle:UIStatusBarStyleDefault];
            self.statusBarBackground.alpha = 0.0f;
        }
    }];
}

All I have to do now is call is [appDelegate showSolidStatusBar:YES] when needed.