I think you should take a moment to step back from worrying about this particular alligator, and go back to your original question of how to drain the swamp.
The typical user does not spend long periods of time gazing at the Launcher. Even when the Launcher is active, you can't count on your app being displayed because the user might have only one category of apps visible. If your goal is to remind him that auto-poweroff is disabled, doing something at the Launcher level (like changing your icon, or animating it) isn't going to cut it.
That was why I suggested a periodic alarm (say every 10 minutes, or every 30 minutes) which uses the Attention Manager to display a "subtle"-level alert. That would get the user's attention no matter what app he was running, but would not be disruptive. You could even use this attack as a way to decide that he's gone off somewhere and forgotten the device is on, and decide (after an hour or 2) that you should poweroff anyway.
H
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