Xperia 5 II - weak flashlight

[STeeL835]

25mA doesn't heat up the LED, but it's only enough to see contours a little bit better in the dark, or to read a text while lighting it from 30 cm distance. It's barely usable if you want to light up your path in the night - you can simply trip over something because youre walking and the flashlight is weak (I did, my eyes couldn't see a wire - it had low "special" contrast to background and it just blended in and became a part of a "noise", idk).

It's like a torch app on Galaxy Watch - helps you to see something a little bit better, but in case with watches, it's the best they can offer, while flashlight on Xperia is brighter than watches' screen, yet somehow not better + you have to hold the phone in your hands.

Sony could increase it's brightness to not be so far behind competitors or implement brightness slider with a warning notice with approximate time recommended for each brightness level. It could be accessible by long tap on flashlight quick settings tile.

I think every Xperia phone has a custom mod that increases flash led's brightness now, but Sony keeps setting it to lowest possible with no option to make it brighter, making it the weakest among others and sometimes even kind of dangerous (you can't trust it but you have no other choice)

[CosmicTomato]

But if they made the flashlights too strong the device would heat up quicker.

[STeeL835]

Well, I get that current brightness allows to use it for hours - I turned it on and left it on for 15 minutes and the LED didn't get even warm (as opposed to my old Z1c, which LED got hot after 2-3 minutes of 500mA, which is enough to see a texture of a fence on the opposite side of your backyard), but what's the point using it for so long if you barely see what's in front of you? For reading?

I don't deny that in some cases you may need it for so long, then this 'preserving' mode might come in handy, but I think people usually use phone's flashlight occasionally, for real work they should use real flashlights, and they dont usually turn them on for longer than 5 minutes. For such short durations you can let it shine a bit brighter, and turn it off/lower brightness after it got overheated.
As far as I know Samsung has a slider for LED brightness with warnings, but I don't actually know if they turn them off automatically.

[CosmicTomato]

Yess, a slider should end this dilemma of which is better to have, and then if the device overheats, of course it would be referred to as, misuse.

[MartJSony]

It is very week. I've tried lots of different apps from the play store to see if any have more control but can' t seem to find one that makes it any brighter.

[EMS_MO72]

yeah I've noticed that and i did try to download a 3rd party app, but it seems that it's within the hardware specs of the device as it can't get any stronger even with an external app.

[STeeL835]

It's not a hardware, but a software limitation: for different use cases
there are different values for current. Low for torch, high for a photo
flash (you can check). And without modification of firmware (in some cases,
root is enough, in other - modification of system libraries) these apps
won't be able to amp up the brightness. And even with this, many of such
apps don't even try to do so and just ask system to turn on the LED as
torch.
So, it's either up to Sony or ROM modders to change this

[EMS_MO72]

yeah that makes sense, since the camera lights up a completely dim room, and torch on its own doesn't.But you wouldn't root your own device, as you don't wanna lose your warranty though.