this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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I never understood what the fuck was up with that. Most older dumb phones had that feature and even if they deemed it unnecessary, the sheer amount of flashlight apps would prove them wrong
Older flash bulbs weren't really made for long uptime. If you were using your flashlight for under a minute looking for something it was fine but any longer than that and it would start getting really hot. Once manufacturers caught on that everyone was using apps for it (and potentially damaging their phone in the process due to heat) we got better bulbs and baked in controls for it.
Wouldn’t agree.
You could’ve recorded a 30 minute video with the flashlight on without any issues. They also wouldn’t allow API access to the flashlight hardware for those apps if it was damaging the phones.
Plastic Sony Ericssons and Nokias had flashlights circa 2005 and could shine day and night and every one of those phones had internal power control of the LED (it would shine brighter when taking a photo and be dimmer when used as a flashlight).
Meanwhile metal and glass iPhones with even better heat dissipation didn’t have flashlight as a system feature until iOS 7 in 2013.
I don't know about the heat aspect, but third party flashlight apps are just using the camera API without showing you a viewfinder or exposing shutter controls.
Even the built-in flashlight toggles on Android are still just creating a camera session and enabling the flash.
To block third party flashlight apps, manufacturers would have to block third party camera apps too, or add in some sort of global time limit for the flash.
That’s actually correct but I assumed they opened up the API afterwards. I used to notice it before because the optical image stabilization would kick in and you could hear the solenoids kick the lens around as you move the phone.