How to completely remove UIStatusBar in iOS Application?

I can get the status bar to hide, but the application still respects the height of the bar (see image below). I also need to make sure there's not a 'flicker' of the status bar hiding on initial load since it pushes the nav menu button down and it jumps back up on hide.

Methods I've tried:

Added the following in my main controller. This one flickrs the layout on initial load.

// hide the status bar 
ionic.Platform.fullScreen();

Set Key, Value pairs in info.plist

<key>UIStatusBarHidden</key>
<true/>
<key>UIViewControllerBasedStatusBarAppearance</key>
<false/>

which equates to:

Status bar is initially hidden = YES
View controller-based status bar appearance = NO

Tried using the the StatusBar plugin on load:

  .run(function($ionicPlatform) {
    $ionicPlatform.ready(function() {
       // Hide the status bar
       if(window.StatusBar) {
         StatusBar.hide();
       }
     });
  })

Tried setting the following in my MainViewController.m

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES withAnimation:UIStatusBarAnimationFade];

and add new method

- (BOOL)prefersStatusBarHidden {
return YES;
}

I've tried about 3 different cordova plugins off of github.

I'm also a web developer, so when providing answers that involve changing obj-c, please explain like I'm 5 :}

http://forum.ionicframework.com/t/how-to-hide-uistatusbar/4025

Thanks!

enter image description here

I left a comment for you on your post but here's the solution I came up with.

What you can do is install the splash screen pluign

 $ cordova plugin add org.apache.cordova.splashscreen

Then do this in your .run function

.run(function ($ionicPlatform, $timeout) {
    $ionicPlatform.ready(function () {
        // Hide the status bar
        if (window.StatusBar) {
            StatusBar.hide();
            $timeout(function () {
                window.navigator.splashscreen.hide();
            }, 2500);
        }
    });
})

Try implementing prefersStatusBarHidden in your view controller. e.g. 

- (BOOL)prefersStatusBarHidden
{
  return YES;
}

For ios 7 in each view write method :

- (BOOL)prefersStatusBarHidden 
{
   return YES;
}

And for ios 6 write follwing once in homeview or appdelegate

[UIApplication sharedApplication].statusBarHidden = YES;

In 'CDVViewController.m', go to

- (void)viewDidLoad

and insert the below

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];

My CDVViewController.m looks like this,

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

    NSURL* appURL = nil;
    NSString* loadErr = nil;
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];
.....